MSNBC guest implies the Capitol riot was worse than 9/11: 'Osama Bin Laden never took over the Capitol'

MSNBC guest Paul Rieckhoff appeared on "Deadline: White House" and  implied that the January 6 Capitol riot was worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace asked Rieckhoff to elaborate on the Capitol police officers’ statements during a committee hearing earlier this week that the riots were worse than being stationed in Iraq. Rieckhoff agreed with the description and further stated that riot was "domestic terrorism" and that it is "the number one national security threat" above ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

"This is not an off-shoot. This is a strategy, and they continue to compound it in part because it animates that extreme part of this movement which I will say every time I’m on your show is the number one national security threat we face right now," Rieckhoff said. "It’s not Al-Qaeda, it’s not ISIS, it’s not Iran, it’s domestic extremism. Osama Bin Laden never took over the Capitol, these people did, and many of them are still out there."

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Rieckhoff maintained this opinion throughout the segment insisting "I’ve served in Iraq and very few of them have ever been in direct hand-in-hand combat, none of us faced anything that looked like that."

"January 6th is not the end. It’s the beginning, and it’s the biggest security threat we face," he added.

Liberal reporters and activists have compared the Capitol riot to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in spite of the 9/11 terrorist attacks yielding nearly 3000 deaths in a single day. Families of the victims of 9/11 as well as witnesses to that day have called out media pundits for making the comparison.

"It's a shame," retired New York Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches said. "Are they kidding me? 3,000 people died, plus we have more people dying from the air that was down there … They're comparing it to score points politically. The families are really [angry]. When I talk to them, when they compare it to that, they find that outrageous."

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Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was murdered while piloting American Airlines Flight 77, penned a Wall Street Journal opinion piece also decrying the comparisons.

"It is deeply offensive and sad that the brutal and harrowing memories of the worst terrorist attack in American history are being deployed by political partisans," she wrote.