MSNBC And CNN Feed John McCain’s Narcissism Over Downed Airliner In Ukraine

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On Thursday, shortly after news broke that a Malaysian airliner had crashed in Ukraine, apparently after being shot down by a missile, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) made sure to get himself in front of a television camera. McCain not only rushed over the MSNBC to speak to Andrea Mitchell about the developing situation, but he also ran over to CNN shortly after to get his face on that network and spout his opinions about the tragedy. Of course, to no one’s surprise, McCain beat his war drums, telling Mitchell that if Russia or pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine were involved, there’d “be hell to pay.”

Below is video of McCain’s interview with Andrea Mitchell, courtesy of MSNBC:

McCain used his time with Mitchell to make rampant speculation over the cause of this tragic event while at the same time getting in his jabs at the Obama Administration over its lack of military action in Ukraine. Hilariously, McCain said he “didn’t want to draw conclusions,” yet proceeded to draw many conclusions during his time with Mitchell.

“This was an airliner headed towards Russian air space. And it has the earmarks — and I’m not concluding — but it has the earmarks of a mistaken identification of an aircraft that they may have believed was Ukrainian. If that’s true, this is a horrible tragedy event which was certainly unanticipated by anybody, no matter who they are.”

Going with the assumption that Russia is directly to blame for the downed airliner, McCain then attacked President Obama and Europe for only issuing economic sanctions on Vladimir Putin and Russia. He pushed for the United States to supply Ukraine with heavy weaponry.

“The sanctions so far in exchange for Crimea have been minuscule. These latest enacted by the Obama administration, I think, are helpful. But if you ask the Ukrainian government that’s struggling, they would say they need weapons with which to defend themselves.”

At the end of the interview, McCain then made his big push for military action.

“If it is the result of either separatist or Russian actions mistakenly believing that this was a Ukrainian war plane, I think there’s going to be hell to pay. And there should be.”

Really, that was the point of him going on MSNBC and CNN Thursday morning. (Well, that and feeding his narcissism.) He just wanted to make another hard push for the United States to get militarily involved in the crisis in Ukraine. He sees this event as the impetus for a larger confrontation with Russia. While he said in his interview with Mitchell that he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, he actually sent out the following tweet a couple of hours before appearing on her show.

And we still won’t provide #Ukraine gov’t w/ lethal weapons… “Ukraine says Russia shot down fighter jet” http://t.co/atMGuAfFpY

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) July 17, 2014

Yep, Ol’ Johnny sure wasn’t jumping to any conclusions. Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed called out McCain’s fame whoring and rampant speculation with the following tweets.  

John McCain has already appeared on MSNBC and CNN to talk about the plane crash.

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) July 17, 2014

John McCain on CNN: “We don’t know what caused it BUTTT…later I don’t want to leap to any conclusions….BUTTTT…”

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) July 17, 2014

Once again, I am going to make a plea to the networks. Please, please, PLEASE stop interviewing McCain. Absolutely nothing good comes from it.

Justin Baragona

Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).