When Obama's Lost NBC...

[jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”78217″]

And I don’t mean just MSNBC, the network’s crazy drooling id, but the actual top-level network where millions of elderly low-information voters still get their news at 6:30 at night. Which is where they heard the above exchange between newsreader Brian Williams and man in the field Richard Engel. As Noah Rothman quips at Hot Air, “The neoconservatives at NBC News predictably savage Obama’s approach to foreign policy… wait…” Heh:

Among those who took a baseball bat to Obama’s remarks were the arch-conservative Dick Cheney fans at NBC News. In the immediate wake of Obama’s State of the Union address, anchor Brian Williams and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Richard Engel just dumped on the president’s borderline delusional assessment of his own efficacy on the global stage. (h/t Washington Free Beacon for pulling this clip).

“Richard, we woke up here in the States this morning – new ISIS video. Two Japanese hostages,” Brian Williams began. “They’re asking for $200 million, or they’re going to assassinate both of them. Video of a Russian intelligence ship cruising into the harbor in Havana; it might as well have been 1962. And then this on-again, off-again possible coup in Yemen, a U.S. ally.”

While we we’re taking stock of the foreign policy disasters that were revealed only yesterday, Williams forgot to mention renewed combat operations in Eastern Europe between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

Richard Engel delivered the coup de grâce: “It sounds like the president was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in, but which is very different than the world you just described with terror raids taking place across Europe, ISIS very much on the move.”

Wait, this Richard Engel, who a decade ago said “I think war should be illegal,” to Howard Kurtz, then still with the Washington Post, adding, “I’m basically a pacifist.”

Oh, and speaking of MSNBC and elderly low-information voters, as Ed Morrissey adds that it’s fair to say that “Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell didn’t feel thrills running up their respective legs. In fact, both of them wondered what the color of the sky in Obama’s world might be:”

MATTHEWS: Because I kept thinking tonight that there’s a real world out there he didn’t really talk about, and had perhaps overambitious notions about where we stood in the war against ISIL, the Islamic State. He doesn’t want to call it the Islamic State, but that’s what they call themselves. Those two Japanese people with no guilt on their shoulders, just staring there out of the desert who are going to be apparently decapitated — that reality, what’s going on in Nigeria is reality. How close was the President to reality overall, globally, tonight?

MITCHELL: I think that on foreign policy, his projection of success against terrorism and against ISIS, in particular, as I said, is not close to reality. They have not come up with a strategy, and they’ve built a global coalition, but again, he’s talked about Ukraine, he’s talked about Putin being isolated. Yes, Putin is isolated economically and the falling oil prices have hammered his economy. But at the same time, there’s renewed fighting in Donetsk, and we haven’t figured out Ukraine, we haven’t figured out how the NATO alliance can push back. Sanctions have not really worked, and Ukraine is going to need more weaponry, and they have not reached that point. So you’re right, Chris, it doesn’t match the reality.

As Ed Morrissey adds, “It’s as though Obama was asleep between the 2014 SOTU and last night. That would explain a lot about last year, actually …”

I’d say that when it’s so bad that even NBC and MSNBC both notice, it might be a wake-up call for the White House — but perhaps not this White House, where the president obviously needs to be well-rested for his weekend leisure-time activities and late night bull sessions with actors and rock stars.

Sweet dreams for everyone else though. Oh and sug, don’t forget to say your prayers.