CNN is being accused of what could turn out to be the network’s worst act yet.
A few months ago, the network aired a report praising supposed liberal “rednecks” who were bucking stereotypes and were the “good guys.”
That report may have featured a domestic terrorist accused in a dangerous and violent attack on an immigration detention center near Seattle.
Over the weekend, Willem Van Spronsen was shot and killed by Washington state police as he allegedly tried to burn buildings, a propane tank, and threw “incendiary devices” (homemade bombs) at vehicles outside a holding facility for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“This could have resulted in the mass murder of staff and detainees housed at the facility had he been successful at setting the tank ablaze,” Shawn Fallah, who heads the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility, said in a news release. “These are the kinds of incidents that keep you up at night.”
Yet the man allegedly behind the Antifa domestic terror attack may have been part of a glowingly enthusiastic CNN profile earlier this year!
Both Newsbusters and Tucker Carlson of Fox News point out that he seems to have appeared on W. Kamau Bell’s CNN show “United Shades of America” in May in a profile of the “rednecks” of the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club.
Van Spronsen is not identified during the segment, and CNN has not confirmed that it’s him.
However, the group featured in the segment has confirmed that Van Spronsen was at least at one point part of their organization.
“We’re stunned, shocked, and saddened by his death,” the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club wrote on Facebook, adding that “the rounding up of our neighbors into for-profit detention centers was not a semantics debate for Will, it was an abomination.”
Many of the commenters on the Facebook post praised Van Spronsen as a “hero,” a “martyr” and a “courageous comrade.” Several also used the phrase “rest in power, comrade.”
But on Fox News, Carlson accused Bell of “literally promoting violence” with his fawning segment on the club full of over-the-top praise.
“Good job, white people,” Bell declared as he accompanied the group to places such as gun ranges, according to Newsbusters.
At one point, he asked: “Why aren’t more white people here? And I mean, maybe not here with us right now, but maybe here, in this frame of mind?”
Online, he went even further with his calls for more people to join them — in that frame of mind and perhaps in other ways. Because after the segment aired, he asked people to help the group out.
He claimed the group was “being targeted by white supremacists” as a result of his profile, and urged his followers to “support” the organization.
And Carlson said that could’ve have horrific repercussions for anyone who took up that call.
“He is literally raising money, CNN is raising money for Antifa,” Carlson said on his show this week as he denounced Bell and the network’s support of this organization. “Keep in mind that the viewers who took that advice, who followed CNN’s guidance and sent money to Antifa, helped fund Saturday’s terror attack. Not that CNN cares.”
While the group claims to have been surprised by his death, Van Spronsen had something of a history. He was arrested last year for lunging at a police officer during a protest, according to The Washington Post.
When he was arrested, police found a baton and knife on him, the newspaper said, noting that he eventually pled guilty to obstructing a law enforcement officer.
Deb Bartley, who had known Van Spronsen for decades, told the Seattle Times that Van Spronsen was both an anarchist and anti-fascist, and didn’t seem surprised by his death.
“He was ready to end it,” Bartley told the newspaper. “I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs … I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.”
Bartley is among those who had received what police are calling a manifesto that was sent to friends by mail before his attack on the detention facility.
“Doing what I can to help defend my precious and wondrous people is an experience too rich to describe,” he wrote according to KIRO. “I am Antifa.”
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”