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BAKHMUT, Ukraine — Surrounded on three sides, this eastern Ukrainian city has held out for months in bloody defiance against invading forces, Russian shells pounding day and night against streets coated with snow and rubble. But, as the Kremlin’s troops advance here and threaten a major offensive across the war’s front lines, gunfire could be heard on a recent visit while the few thousand remaining locals sheltered in basements, stubbornly refusing to leave what remains of their homes. "Bakhmut holds" is a patriotic battle-cry heard across the country, cementing the city as a symbol of national resistance. And it still...

In all my many years of blogging MSM outbursts against Republican presidents, I've never seen anyone angrier than Richard Engel about Biden's Afghanistan fiasco. Well, there was Keith Olbermann. But for present purposes, let's leave aside the clinically disturbed. In a piece with which Morning Joe opened today's show, Engel absolutely unleashed on the Biden administration. Rolling heartbreaking footage of desperate Afghans clinging to a US military plane as it taxied toward takeoff, Engel quoted a US military official saying the situation is "100-times worse than the humiliating American pullout from Saigon."Get the rest of the story and view the...

Richard Engel has described himself as "basically a pacifist." But when it came to telling it like it was regarding the Afghanistan fiasco, NBC News' chief foreign correspondent was taking no prisoners Sunday. When on his MSNBC show this morning, Ali Velshi asked Engel whether it is surprising "not that it is happening, as much as how fast it is happening," Engel flatly rejected the notion. "No. Everyone keeps saying that. I've been listening all day: "oh my God, we're shocked at how fast" -- I'm not shocked at all! I thought Kabul was going to fall about now. And...

NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Wednesday that the COVID-19 coronavirus “is a bat virus, not a China virus.”...He also argued that “China certainly feels that” referring to the virus as the “Chinese virus” amounts to “scapegoating.”“This is a virus that came from the territory of China but came from bats,” he continued. “This is a bat virus, not a China virus.”

Joy Reid was apparently unaware of the old lawyers' rule: never ask a witness a question to which you don't know the answer! Because on her MSNBC show this morning, Reid asked NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel questions regarding the strike on Soleimani . . . and got answers that must have horrified her! Reid first asked if there was any evidence that Soleimani was in Iraq to plan an attack. Engel responded that whereas there was no information concerning a specific attack, planning attacks is what Soleimani did. Moreover, the fact that he was meeting with Shiite...

FULL TITLE: Muslim from Texas who joined the Islamic State: “I saw some crucifixions. You know, that’s just normal life there.” Of course it was normal life in the Islamic State, because the Islamic State adhered scrupulously to Sharia within its domains. And crucifixion is a Sharia punishment, based on the Qur’an: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That...

It’s unanimous! 7.5 billion to zero! No one in the entire world likes Donald Trump! That would be the conclusion you’d have to draw if you watched the segment NBC’s Richard Engel prepared for today’s Morning Joe on international reaction to Trump’s first 100 days. From the UK to South Korea, the West Bank to Germany, there was amazing consensus against Trump. Among people Engel aired, the best anyone had to say about Trump was British news anchor Alistair Stewart’s observation that at least we’ve literally survived his first 100 days. Said Stewart: there isn’t “all-out nuclear conflict—although it is...

On Friday, NBC’s Today skipped any mention of CIA Director John Brennan detailing Obama administration failures in the fight against ISIS while testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The morning show ignored the major story despite Thursday’s NBC Nightly News devoting a nearly two-minute segment to the topic. On Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt declared: “Now to a stark warning here at home from the director of the CIA over the threat from ISIS. John Brennan told Congress today efforts to defeat ISIS on the battlefield have not put a dent in the group's ability to carry out terror attacks....

During NBC’s breaking news coverage of the terrorist attacks in Belgium Tuesday morning, correspondents Andrea Mitchell and Richard Engel wasted no time warning of the “rise of the right wing” throughout Europe in response to such attacks. In a special report just before 7 a.m. ET, Mitchell worried: “This is going to have big implications for the migration crisis in Germany and elsewhere because there is a popular notion that migrants are somehow connected with the terror threat. Whether or not that's true, that is the reality.” She added: “And there has been most recently last week in Germany, a...

What if the biggest mystery surrounding Col. Moammar Gadhafi had nothing to do with his long, brutal reign as the world's most eccentric and violent leader turned pariah? And what if a long-lost letter from a Catholic cardinal who knew Gadhafi's true identity was evidence that could have solved the mystery? To many Libyan people, the biggest question mark about Gadhafi does not involve his repressive and dictatorial rule, delusional statements or brazen lies. Behind closed doors, for years, they've wondered if he is Jewish. Last week the issue came out in the open, as NBC's Richard Engel reported from...

Maybe you're a liberal, reluctant to accept Charles Krauthammer's conclusion that President Obama's speech on terror tonight was a "complete failure." Fine. But there's no getting around Richard Engel, whom no one would accuse of conservatism. Speaking with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, NBC's chief foreign correspondent bleak assessment was that President Obama laid out "the same strategy that hasn't been working for last several years." After a point-by-point takedown of Obama's weak tea, Engel concluded "the course of treatment that he laid out for this sick patient with cancer with no immediate cure does not seem like an incredibly strong...

Richard Engel: Military Officials Say Allies No Longer Trust Us, Fear Intel Might Leak to Iran (Video)

NBC Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and MSNBC’s “Hardball” anchor Chris Matthews criticized President Obama’s address on ISIS during MSNBC’s special coverage of the speech on Wednesday night.

NBC News Correspondent Richard Engel, reporting live from Kurdistan in northern Iraq Wednesday night, said U.S. troops are on the ground in Iraq and avoiding reporters. "They are troops who are staying away from reporters, they are embedded with local fighters trying to guide in air strikes, gathering intelligence -- But, Engel added, "The rest of the strategy seemed incredibly fuzzy -- how there was going to be this international coalition that would lend its moral support of Sunni countries, that you would have to rebuild the Iraqi army, which has lost a tremendous amount of credibility so far; and...

Salim Idris, commander of the Free Syrian Army... said the attack on the rebel enclaves around the capital on Aug. 21 was ordered as pressure mounted on Assad -- even from his own supporters -- for a reprisal to the Aug. 8 attack, in which rebels fired rockets at his motorcade as it rolled through the Malki neighborhood of Damascus, headed to a local mosque for prayers marking the end of Ramadan. Assad is not believed to have been in the motorcade at the time of the rocket attack, but the brazen assault on the president's own doorstep had a...

NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel spoke about President Barack Obama's "diminished" influence over global affairs this morning on NBC's Meet the Press, saying that "authoritarian" China was being seen as a model for governance by more of the world's youth than the United States.Engel was on a panel hosted by David Gregory that also included Obama campaign honcho David Axelrod, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, NBC's Tom Brokaw and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough.Engel made his comments toward the end of the first segment of the round table discussion on Obama's second term which started today.Engel faced push back from Scarborough,...

Richard Engel has reportedly gone missing in Syria, with the NBC News foreign correspondent out of touch since last Thursday. Reports of EngelÂ’s disappearance have come from Turkish news sources, which also note that a Turkish journalist working with Engel, Aziz AkyavaÅŸ, has also gone missing. Engel had been reporting on the ongoing conflict between rebels and forces backing President Bashar al-Assad.

NBC is unable to reach its Middle East bureau chief Richard Engel, who was also reporting from inside Syria.

Quick! Get NBC's Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel a chair. Engel claims that he was so shocked at Barack Obama's statement that he now considers Egypt neither an ally nor an enemy that he "almost had to sit down."  So if this is true, why did Obama support the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak who was very much our ally, Engel wonders. Here (and below the fold) in this video is Engel in desperate need of a chair over the shock administered by Obama's uncertainity about whether Egypt is friend or foe.

NBC's Richard Engel has done some good reporting from Iraq. But scratch the reporter's surface, and you find a political partisan eager to echo the anti-Bush party line. Witness his exchange with Ari Fleischer on Morning Joe today. Engel twisted the former Bush press secretary's words, accusing him of alleging an Osama Bin Laden connection with Iraq. Fleischer had palpably said no such thing. The springboard was Fleischer's citation of a 1998 OBL interview in which the terrorist boss said America was weak because it is unable to see through long wars. Fleischer went on to argue that America's resolve...