Media Troll Propped Up By Trump’s White House Is “Not Buying” The Syrian Gas Attacks

Mike Cernovich: “I’m Not Buying It That Children Were Actually Killed By Assad In Syria”

Written by Jared Holt

Published

"Alt-right” media troll Mike Cernovich declared that he was “not buying” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out chemical attacks against Syrians, days after advisers of President Donald Trump praised him on Twitter for his “Pulitzer”-worthy coverage.

On April 2, Cernovich alleged that Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser under former President Barack Obama, requested “unmasking of incoming Trump officials” caught in surveillance. In a tweet the next day, Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway promoted Cernovich's appearance on 60 Minutes, calling it “a must-see ratings bonanza.” The day after, Donald Trump Jr. lauded Cernovich for his claim about Rice, tweeting, “In a long gone time of unbiased journalism he’d win the Pulitzer.”

During a live stream broadcast on April 5, Cernovich reacted to news of devastating chemical attacks in Syria that killed and injured dozens of people, including children, which Western leaders have blamed on Assad. Cernovich claimed that “a lot of pictures and a lot of video evidence” coming from reporters in Syria reminded him of the false testimony given by a Kuwaiti girl to Congress in the run-up to the Gulf War in 1990. The girl had falsely claimed that she saw Iraqi soldiers steal incubators from a hospital in Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the floor. In his broadcast, Cernovich went on to say, “I’m not buying it that children were actually killed by Assad in Syria.”

Cernovich frequently entertains numerous conspiracy theories, and often appears on leading conspiracy website Infowars. Cernovich has also helped popularize numerous conspiracy theories, including the “Pizzagate” story that claimed an underground child sex trafficking ring was run out of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor and involved top Democratic officials. Despite widespread debunking of the story, Cernovich still recently claimed that the restaurant was a place “where a lot of pedophiles meet.”

From Cernovich’s April 5 live stream on Periscope:

MIKE CERNOVICH: I don’t have an opinion on the Syria gas attack because I don’t know that much about Syria. So I’m not going to hold court and say, oh my God this, oh my God that. That’s what media Twitter does. They think that any -- whatever the topic of the day is, that you have to have an opinion on it.

But, here’s what I remembered. I can follow headlines and I can keep track of history. Do you remember that the first Iraq war, the run up to the war, a woman testified in Congress and she said Iraqi soldiers went into the hospital and they took babies and they took babies out of the incubators and they threw the babies against the wall and they threw babies out of the incubator. Right? Well, that never happened. That was completely fake. You can Google it. You can Google, “Iraqi soldiers incubators” -- completely fake. It didn’t happen.

But if at the time that story was floating around, if you had claimed that it was fake news, you would be called a conspiracy theorist, right? I don’t know what is happening today with Syria, but I’ve seen a lot of pictures and a lot of video evidence that make me really question what is going on and it makes me think about the Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators story. So go ahead and Google it.

[...]

So I’ve been watching some videos and some reporting coming out of Syria, and I’m not buying it. I’m not buying it that children were actually killed by Assad in Syria. I’m not buying it. The pictures that I’ve seen, the journalists I’ve talked about, who are -- I’m not going to say Assad is a good man. I don’t believe Assad is a good guy. It’s the Middle East, there are no good guys. They’re all warlords, OK?