Salon editor repeats ‘secret Muslim’ comment, defends Joe Biden’s ‘knock off Jihadist’ remark
Salon editor and MSNBC contributor Joan Walsh joined Joy Behar on Current TV tonight to discuss, among other things, Vice President Joe Biden‘s speech at a memorial service yesterday for the MIT police officer killed by the Boston bombing suspects.
This is very similar to the Alex Wagner remarks, alleging the “Obama is a secret Muslim” motivations.
Behar says the comment has “set the teeth on edge in conservative circles” as Biden’s term “knock-off jihadis” to describe the terror suspects upset the right-wing.
She asked Walsh what about that phrase was getting under Republicans’ skins.
“They really want this to be all about terrorism,” Walsh said, “and all about terrorism that Obama missed. And all about terrorism that he missed because he’s a secret Muslim.”
She said that was the wrong narrative and Joe Biden has the “right narrative.”
“There’s an element of Islamic radicalism, we can’t ignore that,” she continued, “but there’s also an element of being idiots, and being products of a certain kind of American alienation, too.” Walsh’s explanation of Biden’s point is unlikely to sway many of his conservative critics, given her suggestion that American culture could have played as big of a role in the suspects’ motivation as Islamic culture did.
“Shouldn’t every murderer be able to take an insanity plea because you’ve got to be crazy to kill someone?” she asked. “But there is the element of Islamic fundamentalism that does ignite a certain type of young man, globally, and that’s going to be the only part of the storyline that some people want to pull out.”