The political bias within intelligence agencies is nerve-racking – and getting worse by the term. Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Hayden recently retweeted a picture that explicitly compared Donald Trump supporters to the Taliban.
Hayden was the second person to serve as CIA director under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He’d previously served as Director of the National Security Agency under the Clinton Administration.
The picture was a split image of Islamic terrorists in their pickup trucks waving the Taliban flag, alongside Trump supporters in pickup trucks waving American flags. The caption read, “Their Taliban. Our Taliban.”
The retweet comes less than a week after the Taliban seized the Afghan government and took control over Kabul. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has failed to manage its withdrawal of the American forces or put a plan into place for the thousands of Americans still trapped there. The Taliban announced shortly after seizing control that they had completely taken over the Hamid Karzai International Airport.
Hayden went so far as to say he thinks it’s a “good idea” to deport the unvaccinated Trump supporters to Afghanistan. A Twitter user asked if they could send the MAGA wearing unvaxxed to Afghanistan and that there’s “no use sending that plane back empty.” Hayden replied “good idea.” Hayden still serves on the board of Newsguard, a supposedly neutral project that claims to fight “fake news.”
This isn’t the first time Democrats have targeted Trump supporters in comparison to the Taliban. CBS’s Stephen Colbert compared the Taliban to the Trump supporters who raided the Capitol building on Jan. 6. He even praised Biden’s botched speech on the Afghanistan debacle.
“He’s right. Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan? We’ve got our own on Capitol Hill,” Colbert said.
The audience continued to laugh as an image of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot appeared on the screen.
MSNBC host Joy Reid was also blasted for comparing Republicans and conservative Christians to the terrorist organization as they continue to gain control of Afghanistan. She wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread about the “religious right” of the Taliban.
Reid explained how schools have been shut down in the country and that when women tried to enter the grounds of their university, they were told to go home. She described the situation as a “real-life Handmaids Tale” and called it a cautionary tale for the U.S today, which “has our own far religious right dreaming of a theocracy that would impose a particular brand of Christianity, drive women from the workforce and solely into childbirth, and control all politics.”
Reid continued to push her points trying to compare the Christian Right to the Taliban and included several articles linking the Christian faith with the pro-Trump supporters who raided the Capitol building.
“What we keep learning, forgetting and relearning, whether in Afghanistan or here in the U.S., is that religious extremism, backed by a willingness to use violence to impose a particular sectarian belief system as governing law, is incredibly dangerous — anywhere in the world,” Reid wrote.
NewsBusters Curtis Houck called out the hysteria of Reid’s comparison. He stated how he does not believe the press is the enemy of the people, but that many people in the press push the belief that conservatives are the enemy of the people.
But this has been a tacky arguing point for a long time now. Robyn E. Blumner wrote a piece over a decade ago for the St. Petersburg Times arguing that the “religious right” has spent years chipping away at the wall of separation between church and state, even describing it as “Taliban-like ways” to inject religion into public schools and government.
The Daily Kos liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas also wrote a book in 2010 called the “American Taliban,” where he compared religious conservatives in the U.S to the Taliban. Al-Jazeera American even published an opinion piece with the headline, “What the Taliban and Christian Conservatives Have in Common.”
The comparisons are disturbing (to say the least) but it’s all about the liberal commentary that stirs people up and enhances the ratings. Especially with a network that crumbles by the minute.
