On Tuesday, former congresswoman Michele Bachmann compared President Obama to the Germanwings co-pilot who reportedly downed an airliner last week, intentionally killing 149 other people and himself — but nobody in media seems to care.
Bachmann’s remarks were made on Facebook, in reference to Obama’s apparent determination to score a nuclear deal with Iran.
“With his Iran deal, Barack Obama is for the 300 million souls of the United States what Andreas Lubitz was for the 150 souls on the German Wings flight — a deranged pilot flying his entire nation into the rocks,” Bachmann, a one-time Republican presidential candidate, said Tuesday in her Facebook post.
“After the fact, among the smoldering remains of American cities, the shocked survivors will ask, why did he do it?” she wrote.
The press’ reaction to Bachmann’s provocative remarks has so far been complete silence, save for a smattering of stories mocking her tone, which stands in sharp contrast to media’s collective outrage earlier this year when another one-time Republican presidential candidate questioned Obama’s commitment to the people of the United States.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” former New York City Mayor and one-time presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani told a group of donors in New York City in February. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
Giuliani’s remarks — which were off-the-cuff and patently less offensive than Bachmann’s — were denounced immediately by the press, with reporters and commentators alike sharply criticizing his comments as “low,” “sad,” “stupid,” “repugnant,” “the worst,” “weak,” “sick” and “offensive.”
The Associated Press just last week published a story suggesting that the former mayor’s “fiery rhetoric” may overshadow his legacy as “America’s mayor.”
But for Bachmann, who competed in the Republican presidential primary just three years ago and even managed to come in first in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll, there has been no such media reaction to her comparing Obama to the Germanwings co-pilot.
Bachmann, a one-time GOP fundraising heavyweight and rising Republican star, has gotten virtually no calls from the press to apologize to Obama. There is no chorus of media figures condemning her remarks as “low” and “stupid.”
The different response to the two comments suggests reporters judge the two former politicians to have very different statuses. Giuliani, who hasn’t held elected office since 2001, still has a place in U.S. politics.
On the other hand, Bachmann, who just a few years ago was running for the highest office in the country, can’t seem to generate media attention even with extremely provocative and too-soon remarks, suggesting that her fall from the media spotlight is now complete.
