NBC foreign affairs reporter Ayman Mohyeldin said Chris Kyle, the subject of the blockbuster movie "American Sniper" and believed to be the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, had "racist tendencies" towards Iraqis and Muslims and "went on killing sprees in Iraq on assignment."
Speaking on "Morning Joe" Thursday, Mohyeldin called the film a "great story," but only if you don't know it's a true story.
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"It's a story about post-traumatic stress disorder," Mohyeldin said. "It addresses the way these veterans come home. How their return to society is always posed with a lot of problems and challenges. So from that perspective it is a very compelling, very thought provoking, very emotional movie."
"But?" asked host Joe Scarborough.
"When you juxtapose it with the real Chris Kyle and the story and what has emerged about what kind of personality he was, in his own words," Mohyeldin said.
"A lot of his own personal opinions about what he was doing in Iraq, how he viewed Iraqis. Some of what people described as his racist tendencies towards Iraqis and Muslims as he was going on some of these, you know, killing sprees in Iraq on assignment," he said.
Special: Clint Eastwood: You 'Must Read' Chris Kyle’s Book — More
Scarborough responded: "Killing sprees? Chris Kyle was going on killing sprees?"
"When he was on assignments, in terms of what he was doing, a lot of the description that has come out from his book, and some of the terminology that he has used, people have described as racist, in his personal attitudes about what he was doing overseas, when he was on assignment," Mohyeldin said.
Scarborough later joked that Mohyeldin was next going to bash Santa Claus.
The Washington Free Beacon said Mohyeldin has a history of biased reporting on the Middle East, presenting an anti-Israeli viewpoint during coverage of the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas.
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