The attack that involved two IEDs being hurled at anti-Islam protesters outside the mayoral residence in New York City over the weekend is being investigated as an “act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” but those tuning into CNN would not know from watching to Abby Phillip’s primetime show this week.
In fact, those viewers would be forgiven for believing NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, was the target of the attack because that is what Phillip and at least one of her guests falsely reported.
Phillip was forced to apologize for the erroneous reporting on Wednesday – just days after her network got shamed into taking down a tweet due to its absurd framing of suspects involved in the terror plot.
The Errors
Heading into a commercial break Tuesday night, Phillip teased an upcoming story on the reaction to the terror attack in NYC. “Two Republicans say Muslims don’t belong here after an attempted terror attack against New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing, really, to condemn those comments,” Phillip told the audience.
During a later segment, panelist and The View host Ana Navarro made a similar claim that went unchecked by the anchor. “What I find ironic is, so supposedly some of these comments are as a result of the attempt against Mayor Mamdani in New York who was raised Muslim — was he not — himself? So, they’re being anti-Muslim to — and they’re finally defending Mamdani over something,” Navarro said.
That is when a fellow panelist, former New York City Council minority leader Joe Borelli, stepped in to set the record straight. “To frame it as an anti-Muslim attack would actually completely reverse what happened,” Borelli clarified.
Borelli’s correction was apparently lost on Phillip, who did not offer any sort of retraction or reframing of her own during the broadcast. As a result, her audience was left completely unaware of the actual facts of the case.
The Delayed Apology
In reality, Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, have been charged with material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and use of a weapon of mass destruction for throwing two IEDs – at least one of which contained the highly volatile homemade explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP), which is infamously nicknamed “Mother of Satan” for the danger it poses – at the 20 or so people gathered for a “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” protest. Balat and Kayumi were part of a counterprotest called “Drive the Nazis Out of New York” that drew about 125 people.
During a Monday press conference, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch explained Khayumi said in post-arrest statements that he watched ISIS propaganda on his phone and his actions were partly inspired by ISIS. She referenced the criminal complaint that details how Balat made “spontaneous statements without being questioned by NYPD officers” after being apprehended about the motive.
“He said, ‘This isn’t a religion that just stands. When people talk about the blessed name of the prophet, we take action. We take action,’ as well as, ‘If I didn’t do it, someone else will come and do it,'” Tisch said. “And later, after waiving his rights, he requested paper and wrote a message, declaring, in part, ‘I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic State. Die in your rage, you kufr.’ Now, ‘die in your rage’ is a commonly known ISIS slogan, and ‘kufr’ is an Arabic term that refers to non-believers.”
Those allegations from the commissioner and criminal complaint were made public a full 24 hours before Phillip and Navarro falsely claimed the suspects targeted Mayor Mamdani. And it took Phillip until 8:30am Wednesday to acknowledge the sin.
“I want to correct something I said last night,” she wrote on X. “The bombs thrown in New York City over the weekend by ISIS inspired attackers was thrown into a crowd of anti-Muslim protestors and not specifically targeted at Mayor Mamdani. That wording was inaccurate and I didn’t catch it ahead of time. I apologize for the error.”
Tweet Trouble
On Wednesday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn doubted the sincerity of the overdue clarification. “This is not good enough. I have sat on [cable news] sets. You see the scripts. You follow through on your laptop; you see what’s coming up; you read them,” she noted. “She read it in the prompter… After it came out of her mouth, she did not apologize. She did not correct herself. And then [there was the Navarro-Borelli] exchange… that kind of puts the lie to it as well. She had no problem with this, [but] she clearly just got woodshedded by somebody at CNN with a brain.”
But is there a chance Phillip genuinely didn’t know the facts of the case? Megyn’s guest, Charlie Kirk Show executive producer Andrew Klovet, believes it is possible. “When we saw this [break] over the weekend, there was a bunch of press headlines that were saying ‘outside of Mamdani’s Gracie Mansion,’ so I think she probably just thinks that that is true,” he posited. “I think this is ignorance because, if you listen to her show, all she knows how to do is parrot left-wing talking points.”
Klovet’s theory doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you consider Phillip’s own network was forced to take down an X post about the attack after swift and significant backlash. A now-deleted tweet read:
“Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home. Here’s what we know so far.”
Upon removing the absurd post, CNN issued a statement admitting it had “failed to reflect the gravity of the incident” and breached “the editorial standards we require for all our reporting.”
‘Boring and Biased’
Fellow Charlie Kirk Show producer Blake Neff said both the tweet and Phillip’s coverage reflect a broader problem for CNN. “It is a network that has repeatedly had a problem with how it has framed things,” he said. “Growing up, CNN’s reputation was the sort of in-the-middle news outlet compared to Fox [News]… or MSNBC… but they positively did lose their minds during the first Trump presidency, and they’ve never really found their footing again since then.”
As Neff noted, CNN was embarrassingly behind the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” reporting about the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the August 2020 police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake. “It has just recurred again and again,” he added. “There is just not a lot of value to whatever CNN used to be. It’s incompetent people, it’s inaccurate people, it’s extremely biased people, and even the left doesn’t really like CNN for various reasons… Who does this network even exist for at this point?”
Megyn agreed. “As I’ve said about CNN for a long time: Boring is one thing. It’s always been boring. But boring and biased? It’s too much,” she concluded. “That is a death knell to your organization, which is what’s been happening there.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kolvet and Neff by tuning in to episode 1,270 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.