Pat Buchanan says he finds it hard to believe NBC News anchor Brian Williams' mea culpa that he was not aboard a chopper hit by fire and forced down in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a claim made as fact for years.
"I've liked Brian Williams. He's a good correspondent and a good anchorman. He's not a deeply controversial individual," the famed conservative pundit said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"But I do not know how you can misremember the fact that you were in a helicopter that was not hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
"That would be something you would remember quite clearly and if it didn't happen, how do you remember it? It's very damaging to his credibility undeniably."
Williams recanted his astonishing claim of being aboard a helicopter forced down by a rocket-propelled grenade
telling Stars and Stripes he had incorrectly remembered the events and was sorry.
"I would not have chosen to make this mistake. I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another," Williams told the newspaper.
As to whether Williams, who anchors "NBC Nightly News" should be reprimanded — or even fired — by the network, Buchanan won't say.
"I'm not going to get into the internal affairs of my former company," the onetime communications director for President Ronald Reagan told Malzberg.
Buchanan had his own tussle with NBC, when on 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland, he argued in an MSNBC opinion piece that Britain should not have declared war on Germany. The National Jewish Democratic Council balked, leading the network to yank the article.
In January 2012, he was indefinitely suspended from MSNBC after a minority advocacy group urged he be axed over a racial flap.
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