Amid reports that President Donald Trump is “showing renewed interest” in Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s plan to hand the war in Afghanistan over to a private army led by an “American viceroy,” MSNBC on Friday happily gave the notorious war profiteer a cushy platform to make his nonsensical and dangerous pitch to the president almost entirely unchallenged.
“Trumponomics: What’s better than an unwinnable war? An unwinnable war your political cronies can profit from on the taxpayer’s dime.”
—David Rothkopf”Shame on MSNBC for giving Erik Prince a megaphone,” Stephen Miles, director of Win Without War, wrote on Twitter following Prince’s interview with MSNBC‘s Andrea Mitchell. “He belongs in The Hague, not spewing his warmongering for profit filth on television.”
Highlighting the failure of both the deadly “conventional” approach the U.S. has taken in Afghanistan over the past 16 years and Prince’s plan to continue the war for profit, Miles went on to suggest an option that—for obvious reasons—Mitchell and Prince both ignored, one that is virtually never aired on corporate media networks like MSNBC.
“What if—hear me out—instead of privatizing the war in #Afghanistan, we ended it,” Miles wrote. “Crazy, I know.”
Watch Prince’s full appearance on MSNBC, during which the infamous mercenary was asked for his thoughts on Omarosa but wasn’t once seriously challenged on his “prescription for endless war”:
Prince’s appearance on MSNBC came shortly after NBC News reported that Trump is growing increasingly impatient with his own administration’s strategy and looking toward Prince—the brother of billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—for possible alternatives.
“The fact that Reality Winner is going to be sent to prison for 5 years and Erik Prince is still walking free and poised to send his murderous mercenaries into Afghanistan pretty much sums up where we come to as a country.”
—Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch
“When Prince’s plan had Trump’s attention in 2017, it had the backing of his former strategist Steve Bannon and the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner,” NBC reported.
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