Media excusing radical Islamic terror attacks in Boston?

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Media excusing radical Islamic terror attacks in Boston?

Press scramble to place America's suffering in global context

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," April 29, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: "Exploring the Brotherly Bond." That was the title of another CNN segment on the bombers, rife with more cheesy photos of the dead one.

Seriously, what is with CNN's obsession with beef cake bombers? Does Ted Turner have a fetish for men in Everlast trunks? Exploring the brotherly bonds of terrorists is like exploring the health benefits of cyanide or the calming effects of nerve gas. Do you think they've ever explored the mother-son bond of the Lanzas?

Heck no. With gun violence, the media predetermines that guns are evil. But when terror strikes, the media humanizes the heathens giving their defense lawyers a head start.

And a top defense lawyer is already there showing that it's way cooler to defend evil than to prosecute it.

CNN also hawked a film called "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," about a man who changed after 9/11. Not from the attack, but from being profiled. The implication is that profiling for potential terror is somehow no better than terror itself. FYI, there is no such thing as a reluctant fundamentalist. It's as rare as a reluctant moon landing.

This contradiction in turns veils truth with funny relativism and its message: profiling encourages terror is deadly, for it seeks to blunt your desire to deduce danger. So, rather than prevent attacks from Muslim supremacists, just place America's suffering in the context of global ills. When you grieve over Boston, a crank on MSNBC can say, now you know how Somalia feels.

Now you get why so many hacks refuse to call the bomber an enemy combatant. If you just got to know him a little better, you'd know he would be a blast.

Dana, welcome back to the program. We missed you, I guess. I'm supposed to say that.

Anyway, why is it? What is with the constant cycle analysis of bad people? Does it help?

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Well, it doesn't help us prevent -- for some people like psychologists or if you are an FBI profiler or in the CIA and you're trying to figure out what kind of person would do this to innocent people, psychoanalysis could help. But we have spent so much time worrying about the why that we are not focused on the more important questions which are the who else, the when and the how to prevent it from happening again.

And throughout this coverage it somehow insinuated that it's our fault. It somehow we didn't help them assimilate best into American society, that what could we have done differently to prevent them from being radicalized?

I think actually there's no way to explain evil that to just call it what it is and then deal with it appropriately.

GUTFELD: Yes, that's what I do with you.

E.B. --

ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: Yes?

GUTFELD: -- I get the feeling that the media when they are doing this stuff is somehow subconsciously mapping out the defense. Somewhat this is how the defense is going to portray?

BOLLING: They are mapping out the Alex Jones conspiracy theory really early. "60 Minutes" last week, within a few days of the bombing had friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev saying, oh he is a great guy. Never went to mosque. If you knew him, you would love. They had a girl saying, I had a crush on him.

I mean, they really started that ball running. CNN again late to the game by about a week.

But, again, what's the sympathy for the bad guys?

Dana is 100 percent right. Before we start venturing into that, let's find out what he knows, who he knows, who else he did with, where the money came from? There are so many questions and this constant playing of the mom's rant -- oh, America, how can you do that to me? -- enough of that already. America didn't do anything to you or the Tsarnaev family.

PERINO: We need more uncle, less mama.

GUTFELD: Yes. By the way, do you want to see what happened to the mom? Let's do a before and after picture before she became radicalized.

See, she actually looked like she might have been fun. She looks like she used to be in the quarter flash or the back up of Joan Jett's band.

But now, I mean, this is what happens when you become radicalized, Bob.

You would have dated either one.

I want to talk about Congressman Keith Ellison. He was on "Meet the Press" with Peter King yesterday and they were talking about profiling and things like that. And I believe he made a comparison to the Japanese internment camps.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEITH ELLISON, D-MINN.: This ricin attack, for example, that's an act of terrorism. That doesn't come out of the Muslim community. We don't have enough resources to just go after one community. And remember, we went after a community in World War II. And the Japanese internment is a national stain on our country. And we are still apologizing for it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: Bob, does that comparison hold or help?

BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: No, I don't think it holds or helps. It is an entirely different situation and an entirely different war. The Japanese war was defined for us. We understood who attacked us and it was very clear when you are the reasons for it.

My problem with that is if it wasn't for the fact that every terrorist act that has been committed against the United States either here or abroad going back to the USS Cole had been done by Muslims. I've been accused of profiling, as you know, from what I said about student visas. It is not profiling when you have a group of people constantly being the source of these attacks, where are you going to look first? It seems to me that's not profiling. That's much more using the evidence that you have before you and saying this is where we need to go first. We are not going to the Lithuanians.

GUTFELD: Yes. Although, who knows?

I want to play Attorney General Eric Holder. He was at an Anti- Defamation League Centennial Summit. This is what he had to say about the attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Our investigation into this matter remains on going. And I want to assure you and all Americans, that my colleagues and I are determined to hold accountable to the fullest extent of the law all of those responsible for this attack. But --

(APPLAUSE)

But I also want to make clear that just as we would pursue anyone that would target our people or attempt to terrorize our cities, the Justice Department is firmly committed to protecting innocent people against misguided acts of retaliation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: Dana just said that he cuts a nice figure.

I got to ask you, K.G.

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, CO-HOST: Yes?

GUTFELD: The relativism there -- he says we are going to go after these guys, but the next thing is, I'm going to block against any kind of backlash.

How much backlash is there, really?

GUILFOYLE: Well, listen, I think he is completely misguided. I thought the first day he was in office and his acts and decisions and ideology has taken over the Justice Department. I don't think he cuts that fine a figure.

I saw him this weekend. The only nice thing I can say about Eric Holder is he agreed to pose for a picture with Eric Bolling.

BOLLING: I haven't been beat up by my Twitter followers that much about anything I've ever done.

Here's what he said. I took a picture. I said, Attorney General, can I take a quick picture? He's like, are you sure you wanted to? Yes, whatever, I want to post it on Facebook. He goes, you're going to lose a lot of followers.

And guess what? I think I lost a lot of followers.

GUILFOYLE: But he did take the picture with you.

BOLLING: He did take the picture.

BECKEL: I mean, I had no problem about his message about, you know, going after people and putting people in situations where they are arrested or investigated and they had nothing to do with it.

But let's go back to the Japan thing for a second.

Japan was a country, an imperialist country. We're talking about a religion here. It's a much different situation. The Japanese are not fighting over the supremacy of religion as the fundamentalist Islamists are. And that I think is a much different situation.

And the Japanese did not have, for example, mosques or whatever they had in the United States perpetuating this stuff.

BOLLING: Can we -- I'm sorry to jump back, though. But let's stay on Holder for a minute. We are committed to relentlessly pursue those who did it. Well, don't read them their Miranda rights within 48 hours.

GUILFOYLE: Right.

BOLLING: Number two, and then he goes on to apologize saying, let's be careful for any sort of backlash that may happen if we continue to interrogate these guys.

But most importantly, you want to relentlessly pursue who did this? How about you relentlessly pursue who did Benghazi? I haven't heard a word of Benghazi ,Benghazi, Benghazi in three months.

GUILFOYLE: But also we lost opportunities here in the piece by John Yu (ph) that we sent around that had so much response and things that went on in the Bush administration successfully against the war on terror.

So, this is a real loss, an opportunity here for us to make advancements in our national security. But the way that this individual was treated and, by the way, by a federal, a magistrate, not even a federally -- but a judge. This is so unusual the way this happened, that they brought that guy into this guy's hospital room, a magistrate -- not elected, not -- you know, somebody who can get that position. I can get that position tomorrow, OK? And goes in and gives the Miranda rights.

They should have stepped in and said, this is not how it's going to be done. A real opportunity was there and lost, to find out who helped radicalize them, where they get the money, who's behind it -- because I don't believe it was the two of them. They even have, the Russians have their tape of the mom talking to the son about jihad.

GUTFELD: Speaking of the radicalization -- I want to read Dana a quote to try to follow along.

PERINO: Got you.

GUTFELD: This some from an ex-girlfriend. Do we have it here? This is the ex-girlfriend saying about when she was dating the dead guy.

"One minute, he's this funny, normal guy who liked boxing and having fun. The next, he is praying four times a day, watching Islamic videos and talking insane nonsense."

That was from Nadine Ascencao.

PERINO: What gave you the first clue he might, you know, try to kill innocent people?

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: You know what he didn't have? And he was taken in at some point, but not charged with domestic violence.

GUTFELD: Right.

PERINO: What we needed from him is a mug shot.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: Remember Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from the 9/11 bombings? There was a mug shot where he looked a mess and he looked evil and he looked bad. There is also the sweet one of him. I hate when the media shows that sweet picture of him as a sweet little imam.

The mug shot picture actually helped to drive coverage. And he should have had one given his history.

On Holder -- can I make a point?

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: Mark Thiessen of The Washington Post, also of American Enterprise Institute, wrote a column today talking about how remember about the Christmas bomber and they got a lot of criticism in the Obama administration for having read him his Miranda rights. A week later, on Sunday shows, Eric Holder says we are going to go forward and try to do some reform for the Miranda rights.

Congress held three or four hearings, and the effort just sputtered out. Congress needs to follow through and take him up on his offer for the Miranda reform because maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now if they've done that.

BECKEL: You know, the other thing -- I think Holder, if he is talking about pursuing things, he ought to relentlessly pursue why the FBI blew this. And it seems to me that if you're going to be in this battle, you might as well be in it with the best forces you have and the best agencies you have.

And, finally, if they have a problem, why they did. I mean, why does it take the Russians two times to tell us about this? And that seems to me to be one area I would pursue aggressively.

PERINO: In their defense, I can understand where you are besieged and the Russians over exaggeration and overreact when it comes to the Chechens.

And so, maybe you discount it. We don't have limitless numbers of people.

We can't be profiling everybody.

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: How often do we get stuff from the Russians?

PERINO: I think a lot. I think they got a lot from the Russians.

GUTFELD: Really?

PERINO: Yes. A lot of cooperation there.

GUTFELD: I didn't know that, Dana. Thanks for that.

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