More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.
Appearing on Friday's NBC Today, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd brushed aside criticism of President Obama's refusal to accurately label terrorism as "Islamic extremism": "...we're having what has turned into sort of a cable news fight and a cable news-type debate. All of this, they're not dealing with the two bigger issues here....So we're having this bizarre fight on the sidelines and we're actually not confronting the two reasons why, you could argue, ISIS has risen."
Todd's "two reasons" behind the rise of ISIS: "...some of these allies who aren't very much into freedoms who have actually over the years quietly had people feed and fund some of these terrorist groups....Or the fact that western Europe has ghettoized Muslims..." Obama's complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and his foreign policy failures in the broader Middle East did not make Todd's short list.