MSNBC host suggests killing American citizens with drone strikes

During a discussion regarding domestic terrorism, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace floated the idea of the U.S. government killing American citizens with drone strikes.

Wallace brought up the National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin that was released to all law enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security last week. The bulletin, which is in effect until April 30, warns that the DHS allegedly received information that there is the threat of "ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence."

Wallace notes, "There's a bulletin released to all law enforcement earlier this week, that there is, until the end of April, a persistent threat of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism carried out in the ideology and around this belief that the election was fraudulent, that the Covid restrictions are unnecessary. All of those ideologies pushed by Donald Trump."

The "Deadline: White House" host then said, "But my question for you is around incitement. We had a policy, and it was very controversial, it was carried out under the Bush years, and under the Obama years, of attacking terrorism at its root."

"Of going after and killing, and in the case of Anwar Awlaki, an American, a Yemeni-American, with a drone strike for the crime of inciting violence, inciting terrorism," Wallace stated.

"Mitch McConnell was in the Senate then. He was in the Senate after 9/11 too," the MSNBC anchor said. "How does Mitch McConnell, who understands that the way you root out terrorism, is to take on, in the case of Islamic terrorism, kill those who incite it. How does he not vote to convict someone that he said, on the floor of the Senate, incited an insurrection?"

Al-Awlaki was an alleged American member of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization who was assassinated in Yemen by a drone strike approved by then-President Barack Obama in 2011. Awlaki was believed to be the former head of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and was linked to several terrorism plots, including an attempt to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit in 2009. He was one of the United States' most wanted terrorists.

The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2010, "There is no indication Mr. Awlaki played a direct role in any of the attacks, and he has never been indicted in the U.S."

The Brookings Institute declared Al-Awlaki's assassination as "the first extra-judicial killing by the United States government against a U.S. citizen."

His 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in a U.S. drone strike two weeks later.

This is the second time that al-Awlaki has been mentioned on Wallace's show in the last two weeks. Previously, MSNBC contributor and former FBI agent Clint Watts hinted that former President Donald Trump was inciting violence against the U.S. government much like al-Awlaki with the Capitol riots on Jan. 6.

Watts told Wallace, "We had a period after 9/11, where we were trying to get 'left of boom' as they would say in counter-terrorism. Which is, can you get way up, up the stream of an attack and start to root out all of the confluences which bring about that attack?"

"If you took what President Trump said, and you instead put it in Anwar Awlaki's mouth, we would be talking about a drone strike overseas," Watts said on the left-wing cable news network. "So that's one aspect of our political leaders talking about this rhetoric."