Years ago, Cockburn was punishing himself by watching some CNN when fire alarms began blaring on set and the program anchors were ushered out of the building. Apparently, some nut was trying to send a pipe bomb to MSNBC contributor John Brennan but got his cable news networks mixed up. The perp was a man named Cesar Sayoc. He was a Donald Trump fan who had sent nearly a dozen defective explosives to high-profile Democrats.
Naturally, the media made themselves the victims of the entire event, even though they were not the intended recipients of the explosives. Imagine how much hay they would have made if one of them actually was targeted!
That’s why Cockburn was so surprised when he learned that CNN contributor and White House correspondent April Ryan apparently did receive a bomb while she was covering the Trump administration. She just didn’t bring it up until last week during an interview with CBS News.
Jazz Shaw, who flagged the interview for Hot Air, said Ryan “was asked about the difficulties she encountered while covering the Trump White House.”
“In addition to what she considered the poor treatment she received from the administration, she claimed that she had become a target of potential violence, presumably from Trump supporters,” Shaw wrote. “But among the claims she made during the interview, the most dramatic was when she told Vic Carter that someone had mailed a bomb to her house.”
Indeed, Ryan told Carter, “You’re in a home that I had to move to because of threats. FBI has been here. Bomb squads have been at home.”
Shaw noted that he could not find any news reports about Ryan being sent a bomb. He did find an interview she gave in 2018, wherein she talked about receiving death threats. Unfortunately, Ryan did not respond to Shaw’s attempts to gain clarification.
Cockburn was left similarly scratching his head, so he decided to reach out directly to the FBI to see if they had ever responded to reports of an explosive device at Ryan’s home.
Their response?
The FBI has no comment.
So, did Ryan really receive a bomb in the mail? It seems unlikely we’d just now be hearing about it. After all, she’s still talking about the fact that White House press secretary Sean Spicer once told her to stop shaking her head.
