MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance slammed after tweeting ‘deal with it’ about Kabul explosions

‘This ain’t new. It’s why we are leaving – deal with it’

Terrorism and intelligence media pundit Malcolm Nance has been criticised after writing on Twitter that “there have been terrorist suicide bombers killing civilians nearly DAILY in Afghanistan” for 20 years.

“This ain’t new. It’s why we are leaving” he wrote, adding the hashtag: “Deal with it.”

“Imagine not just thinking this, but feeling so beyond shame and perspective that you tweet it publicly,” the editor of Fourth Watch and producer of The Megyn Kelly Show podcast, Steve Krakauer, tweeted in response.

A reporter at the conservative Washington Free Beacon, Joe Gabriel Simonson, wrote that it was “always genuinely disturbing to be reminded that these guys worked at the highest levels of the US government”.

Journalist Jack Crosbie tweeted that he “can’t think of anything witty to say here but maybe if your tweet about a suicide bombing includes ‘hashtag dealwithit’ it’s not a good tweet”.

Rick Dickson added: “I cannot believe the callousness in this tweet when I think of all the people I’ve known, and heard stories about, who’ve died in the past 20 years. Imagine telling a grieving family, partner force or US ‘It happens. Deal with it.’”

Mr Nance, who served in the Navy, later added in a follow-up tweet that the loss of US service members “is terrible”.

One Twitter user responded to his initial tweet: “Thank you sir. Finally someone giving context to this situation. [The Mainstream Media] just want the sound bites - no context, no meaning, just whataboutism; denigration and division. No more for me though - no more.”

“There were a million different ways you could have made your point, and yet you chose the one that makes you an asshole,” lawyer Ari Cohn tweeted.

Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport on Thursday, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the waning days of an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. At least 60 Afghans and 12 US troops were killed, Afghan and US officials said.

US officials said 11 Marines and one Navy medic were among those who died. They said another 12 service members were wounded and warned the toll could grow. More than 140 Afghans were wounded, an Afghan official said.

One of the bombers struck people standing knee-deep in a wastewater canal under the sweltering sun, throwing bodies into the dirty water. Those who moments earlier had hoped to get on flights out could be seen carrying the wounded to ambulances in a daze, their own clothes darkened with blood.

A US official said the complex attack was believed to have been carried out by the Islamic State group. The IS affiliate in Afghanistan is far more radical than the Taliban, who recently took control of the country in a lightning blitz and condemned the attack.

Associated Press contributed to this report