Thursday, November 23, 2023

RAINBOW BRIDGE CAR EXPLOSION
Fox News walks back claim car 'full of explosives' in 'terror attack' at Canada border
AND THEY IMPLIED THE CAR WAS COMING FROM CANADA
David Edwards
November 22, 2023 

Fox News/screen grab

Fox News on Wednesday changed its story on a possible "terror attack" at the U.S.-Canada border.

Following the vehicle explosion at the New York border with Canada, Fox News quickly called the event a "terror attack," citing "sources."

The network also reported that the vehicle was "full of explosives."

But within an hour, the network changed its reporting.

"Now we told you earlier that there was an explosion because there were explosives inside the car, and now authorities are apparently walking that back just a little bit saying it's unclear if there were explosives or how many explosives," Fox News host Trace Gallagher clarified to viewers.

"And so you can see as, as the fog clears on this air, and they're kind of getting a better idea of what's happening," he added.

Within minutes, the network also backed off its claim of a "terror attack" and instead labeled the motive as "unclear."

"Clearly, this might not be a terror attack at all," Gallagher said.

Watch the video below from Fox News or click the link here.



'Performative clown': GOP candidates slammed for assuming terrorism caused car explosion

M.L. Nestel
November 22, 2023 

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)


They're eating terrorism crow.

Two Republican candidates seeking higher office were both shouting terrorism and publicly shamed.

GOP presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy jumped the terrorism gun — early after a car bulleted toward a U.S.-Canada bridge checkpoint and then smashed and blew up causing the deaths of two people.

They later backed off its claim of a "terror attack" and instead labeled the motive as "unclear."

"I’ve been saying it for a long time & will say it again: we must secure our *NORTHERN* border too," Ramaswamy wrote in a post on Twitter/X. "It’s the forgotten frontier of the border crisis in our country."

Kari Lake, the failed Arizona pro-Trump gubernatorial candidate who is now running for Senate, also shouted terrorism.

"This looks like at attempted terrorist attack along our Northern border," she tweeted. "Our worst fears are being realized. @JoeBiden's open border invites chaos & misery into our country."

An hour later she changed her tune.

"Multiple outlets are walking back the initial reports of a terror attack," her follow-up an hour later reads. "While I mourn for the two men killed, I’m thankful this appears to have been a tragic accident. The sad reality is that an attack on this country seems inevitable with our border crisis. That MUST change."

At no point was it officially confirmed that the deadly incident at the Rainbow Bridge one day before the Thanksgiving holiday was a terroristic threat.

That didn't stop Ramaswamy or Lake from claiming straightaway, and without any validation, that the incident an attack by some kind of terroristic element. Ramaswamy soon clarified his statement, but not before he doubled down.

"One month ago, @GovChristie ridiculed me for demanding more security on the Northern Border: 'I don’t think you’ve heard anyone who knows anything ask for that.' Well, it’s radio silence from him today," Ramaswamy wrote. "The bipartisan establishment is filled with these clowns & it’s pathetic."

And critics came to give them a dose of humble pre-Thanksgiving pie.

GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie called out his rival.

"Radio silence from me because I have years of law enforcement experience fighting terrorists and crime and you do not. You jump to the conclusion it is terrorism without any definitive proof," Christie wrote on Wednesday. "This is why your judgment is so flawed and you’d be such an awful President. Here’s a hint for you: wait for the evidence and then make judgments. That’s what any experienced leader would do."

Heath Mayo, a conservative Christian lawyer warned Ramaswamy to rethink his attempt to run for president given his judgement to assume the incident in upstate New York was a terroristic act.

"If you fall for misreporting and jump to erroneous conclusions without the facts this quickly, why should anyone trust you to make major judgments as president," he asked in a tweet. "Spare the country, please. Take a job that doesn’t depend on your judgment."

And former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger (ret. R-IL) pressed Lake to remain a civilian and stay out of politics.

"Just a reminder that @KariLake was ready to change American policy and take a victory lap…. Before anything. Take a breath," his tweet from Wednesday reads. "But she is just a performative clown."

'Not responsible': Officials slam speculation on explosion as Fox calls it terrorism

Matt Keeley, The New Civil Rights Movement
November 22, 2023 8:30PM ET

 REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Canadian authorities said it’s irresponsible to speculate about the explosion at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing on Wednesday, as the investigation continues. Meanwhile, Fox News reported the explosion was an attempted terrorist attack without naming sources.

“We’re taking this circumstance very seriously, but to speculate on the origin of this particular circumstance, the reasons why this may have happened, until we have more accurate information is simply not responsible,” Dominic LeBlanc, Canadian Public Safety Minister, addressed reporters at about 2:20 p.m. local time.

At 2:30 p.m., Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the Canadian Parliament.

“We will continue to be engaged, we will provide updates. The update I can give right now is there are four border crossings that are right now closed, Rainbow Bridge, Whirlpool Bridge, Queenston Bridge and Peace Bridge. Additional measures are being contemplated and activated at all border crossings across the country. We are taking this extraordinarily seriously,” Trudeau said.

U.S. President Joe Biden has also been briefed on the explosion, according to The Guardian. The vehicle reportedly was coming from Canada into the U.S. when it was flagged for a secondary inspection by border officials. At this point, the car rapidly accelerated and drove through a fence and onto the bridge plaza, then drove towards the inspection lanes, hit a structure and exploded, according to the Niagara Gazette. The two men inside the vehicle were killed, and a border patrol official was injured.

Fox News called the explosion an attempted “terrorist attack” according to Reuters. Other outlets, however, including CNN, have said that it’s unclear whether or not it was an attack, an accident or a medical emergency that caused the acceleration. It is also unclear if there was an explosive device or if the car exploded on impact.

“Those bomb technicians are an absolutely essential part of this response. And they should be able to tell pretty quickly whether or not there was an explosive device in that vehicle. If the answer is no, and this is entirely the result of either unintentional or an inadvertent vehicle crash, that’ll tell us how quickly they’ll be able to restore service to that side of the bridge,” Andy McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, said on CNN.

Josh Campbell, CNN’s Security Correspondent, also pointed out that if the explosion is a terrorist attack, it doesn’t look like other terrorist attacks.

“Yeah, I’m just not seeing it,” Campbell said. “Most terrorists … their intent is to cause you know, mass loss of life as much loss of life as they can. And so just the very nature of that you have two individuals who are in a vehicle at the same time, that’s unusual. I mean, typically if you have you know, two terrorists, for example, they would select different targets and work to try to maximize the harm.”

McCabe agreed with Campbell that what happened was “something that really any car could do,” regardless of whether or not it had explosives.

“I think there’s a lot of circumstances that point in that same direction, as Josh Campbell was saying just few minutes ago, from what we know about terrorist operatives, and the way that they stage attacks. If you had a vehicle that was … loaded with explosives that you intended to detonate, you wouldn’t crash the car and then detonate the explosives. You’d wait, you take the car in an unobtrusive way, unremarkable way, as close as you could possibly get to the target and then you would intentionally detonate it, and that doesn’t seem to be that doesn’t fit the circumstances that we’re aware of so far.”

However, McCabe also said that it wasn’t a sure thing that the explosion wasn’t an attack.

“It starts to look more like trying to potentially, you know, to people trying to essentially push their way across the border because they’re afraid of getting stopped if they tried it in the lawful way,” McCabe said. “But we can’t rule out the fact … that this could have been two people trying to make some sort of a statement that ended up unfortunately in a in a life-taking way for themselves.”

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