Coulter: “Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists.”

Written by Oliver Willis

Published

Echoing posts from members of right-wing online forum FreeRepublic.com and her own previous statements, Ann Coulter again wished violence upon journalists.

From the February 7 edition of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer:

LAWRENCE KUDLOW (host): We got a couple of seconds before the break when you guys are all going to come back, but, Ann, I just want to give you first whack at this. Eason Jordan, top news executive at CNN -- I mean, to me, this is absolutely incredible -- this guy says at a big conference in Davos that the U.S. military is deliberately targeting and assassinating American journalists. Huh? He still has a job, huh? You got a take on that?

COULTER: Would that it were so!

KUDLOW: Would what were so?

COULTER: That the American military were targeting journalists.

KUDLOW: Oh, no! Don't go there.

COULTER: No, but, I mean, he immediately -- it was just an incredibly cowardly thing to do. He says it, he immediately backs down to -- from the statement that it is official government policy to be targeting journalists to, 'Oh, it's just a rumor I've heard,' and it might just be a few random individuals about which he has no facts. So it's a story that's not only implausible but not particularly interesting to what he has backed down to. And I agree with you, he shouldn't have a job.

Coulter and Kudlow were referring to a controversy over comments made January 27 by CNN executive vice president and chief news executive Eason Jordan at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Some witnesses, including members of Congress, reported that Jordan suggested members of the U.S. military were deliberately targeting and killing journalists in Iraq. Jordan denied that he had said this, saying that he “wasn't as clear as I should have been” and that he “never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist.”

Coulter said in a 2002 interview that "[m]y only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building," as Media Matters for America has previously noted. McVeigh was convicted and executed for his role in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168.

As Media Matters has also noted, posts at FreeRepublic.com advocated violence against NBC News correspondent Kevin Sites after he recorded and reported the close-range shooting by a U.S. Marine of an unarmed and wounded Iraqi insurgent in November 2004.