FLASHBACK: Brian Williams: “They’ve decided to burn it all down with us inside”

UPDATE: shout out to my friend Robin Bullock who reminded us all of this story during his latest “Intelligence Briefing” on Elijah Streams…

So for everyone who hasn’t seen this before and is looking for it, here you go.

In case you haven’t heard, Brian Williams is OFF the Peacock Network for good, giving his final sign off this week.

And his final remarks are going viral at the moment.

Before I show you those, I feel compelled to recap a few things….

First, no I have not forgotten Brian Williams’ history of lying.

In fact, to the best of my knowledge there are three separate events of him making up wild stories that ended up not being remotely true.

Which of course has led to this hilarious meme:

Brian Williams is a colossal fraud pic.twitter.com/xNPDYjThha

— Shaun Doherty (@SDohertyNH) December 12, 2021

Business Insider chronicled at least three examples of Williams telling whoppers on the air, here a snip:

Flying into Iraq with SEAL Team Six

Williams has said on television multiple times that he flew into Baghdad with the Navy’s SEAL Team Six, which was responsible for carrying out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, about three days after the US invaded Iraq, according to The Huffington Post. He has also said he received a SEAL’s knife and a piece of the helicopter from the bin Laden raid as gifts.

As far as The Huffington Post could tell, Williams started telling these stories only in 2011, the year bin Laden was killed. Williams reported from the Baghdad airport on April 9, 2003, more than three days after the invasion of Iraq, but he didn’t mention going anywhere with SEAL Team Six, possibly because he was told not to discuss their activities.

Sources who talked to The Huffington Post said these stories seemed implausible, with US Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw saying the organization did not “embed journalists with this or any other unit that conducts counter-terrorism missions.”

NBC has not confirmed whether Williams’ stories about SEAL Team Six are accurate.

Being in Berlin the day the wall fell

Williams said in 2008 that he “was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the wall came down,” but that is most likely an exaggeration, as CNN reports.

Although Williams was in Berlin in 1989 to report on the fall of the Berlin Wall for WCBS-TV in New York, Tom Brokaw was the only American anchorman to report live from the scene the night the wall actually fell on November 9, CNN notes.

Williams has said publicly that he didn’t arrive at the wall until 12 hours after Brokaw, but it seems as if in some retellings of the story he has misspoken about when he actually arrived on the scene.

Meeting the pope

Williams says he met St. John Paul II when the pope spoke at Catholic University’s Washington, D.C., campus in 1979, according to CNN. While delivering the commencement address at Catholic University in 2004, Williams recalled the moment he “shook hands with the holy father” during the pope’s visit to campus.

So yes, I know that history.

And I’m not Brian Williams fan, but I did find his final sign-off very interesting.

It’s not entirely clear to me who he is blaming for the decay of America, and you would suspect it’s the Left, but there are portions of this speech that make me wonder if he doesn’t have more common sense than we all thought he had.

You can watch his final sign off here:

WATCH: Brian Williams gives an on-air goodbye to his audience as he signs off for the final time after 28 years with NBC. https://t.co/VRRmGdoi80 pic.twitter.com/mb8zSoUnkq

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 10, 2021

And here:

Below is a partial transcript of his comments and I’ve highlighted the parts in bold that I wonder if they may be referring to the Left as the ones destroying this country:

“After 28 years of peacock logos on much of what I own, it is my choice now to jump without a net into the great unknown.

The truth is, I’m not a liberal or a conservative, I’m an institutionalist.  I believe in this place and in my love of country I yield to no one, but the darkness on the edge of town has spread to the main roads and highways and neighborhoods, it’s now at the local bar and the bowling alley, at the school board and the grocery store, and it must be acknowledged and answered for.

Elected officials who swore an oath to our Constitution have decided to join the mob and become something they are not, while hoping we somehow forget who they were.

They’ve decided to burn it all down with us inside—that should scare you to no end, as much as it scares an aging volunteer fireman [Editorial Comment: you have to wonder if this is another fib — is he really a volunteer fireman?]

The state of the nation is unrecognizable to those who came before us and fought to protect it—which is what you must do now.

SIGN THE PETITION: We Need National Voter ID!

It has been and remains a wonderful life.

Where else, how else, was a kid like me going to meet presidents and kings, and the occasional rock star?

I will probably find it impossible to be silent and stay away from you and lights and cameras.  After I experiment with relaxation and find out what I’ve missed and what’s out there.

Every weeknight for decades now, I’ve said some version of the same thing: ‘Thank you for being here with us,’ Us, meaning the people who produce this broadcast for you. And you…Well, without you, there is no us.

I’ll show myself out until we meet again. That is our broadcast for this Thursday night. Thank you for being here with us. And for all my colleagues at the networks of NBC News, goodnight.

What do you think?