The Award For Media Hyperventilating After The Soleimani Strike Goes To . . .

In the wake of Trump’s targeting of Iran’s Gen. Soleimani, the MSM seems to be competing among themselves for the most hyperbolic stories.  To give them their due:

We start with CBS and never-Trumper Mike Morrel for the headline soundbyte: “’There will be dead Americans’ as a result of Iran general being killed, ex-CIA deputy director says.” And how exactly will that be different than the previous weeks, months, years, or even decades of Iran’s war on the U.S.? No one thought to ask Morrel how many Americans died due to Iran and Soleimani during Morrel’s career at the CIA, nor to ask Morrel what he did to prevent those deaths, nor why he failed?

Slate’s Fred Kaplan writes the dramatic headline that “Trump Just Declared War on Iran.” Funny, I’m pretty sure Iran’s been at war with us since 1979. Kaplan doesn’t even try hard to muddy that reality; he just glosses over it, going so far as to imply that Soleimani acted at times as a U.S. ally.  Kaplan then quotes a statement from the mad mullah, Khamenei, that Iran will mount a “forceful revenge” and assures us that Khamenei means what he says. Only in the last paragraph of his article does Kaplan around to the recent Kataeb Hezbollah (really, Iran/Soleimani) strike against a military base, killing a contractor and wounding several troops, and Kataeb Hezbollah’s/Soleiman’s subsequent attack on American soil (i.e., our Embassy). He then dismisses those events as of no great importance. Apparently in Kaplan’s world there is nothing that Iran can do against the U.S. that amounts to war, nor anything the U.S. is justified doing in response unless it passes some new test Progressives developed only for Donald Trump: proportionality.

The NYT blares that “Iran is challenging Trump” by “announcing the end of the Nuclear Deal.” They tell their readers that “Mr. Trump’s gambit has effectively backfired,” as if the Nuclear Deal were viable and we were depending on it actually to stop the regime’s march to a nuclear arsenal. The fact that neither is true is explicitly why Trump pulled out of the “Deal” well over a year ago.

The next entry did not win the grand prize, but it has won the coveted Sherlock Holmes Award. That prize this evening goes to CNN, which publish the remarks of Chief Sitting Bull as if they are serious. CNN reports that Lieawatha is questioning “the timing of the Trump administration’s drone strike that killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. . . ” CNN tells us that her question adds “to mounting skepticism about whether the President’s order was justified.” Sure, Soleimani was a really bad guy, but just the fact that he has spent the last 30 years of his life killing and plotting to kill Americans, and the fact that the attack was launched just as Soleimani was meeting in Baghdad with an Iranian proxy leader who had just killed an American . . . that timing is “very suspicious.” You know, sort of like her claims to Cherokee ancestry.

W. James Antle III at the Week goes grasping for any negative image he can settle upon compare Trump’s attack killing Soleimani and al-Muhandis. According to Antle, it makes him feel like he has “traveled back in time to May 1, 2003.” As he explains, “that’s when George W. Bush gave his ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech . . . ” Antle, though, draws precisely zero factual parallels in his article, but that’s okay, because in the era of Orange Man Bad, it is only feelz that count.

Which brings us to the runner up for the award Media Hyperventilation award – It’s the Intercept, which tells us that Trump “. . . May Have Kicked Off WWIII.” To paraphrase the article, Trump is a moron’s moron’s moron who acted very moronically. The article finishes with the flourish of a crie de couer that we’re all going to die because of Trump’s being a moron.

While the Intercept article is a very strong contender, even it can’t compete with the final nominee.

. . . Drum roll please . . .

Tonight’s grand prize winner for the most overwrought piece of melodrama goes to Gerrard Kaonga writing at the UK’s Sun for his WATCH Terrifying moment Iran unveils red flag at Mosque warning of severe battle to come. One can only hope that Gerrard was wearing his brown pants as he stared in abject terror.