Fox News media analyst Lauren Ashburn on Sunday suggested that former prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl could be a Taliban sympathizer because he was released after five years of captivity wearing a Muslim "smock."
During a discussion on Media Buzz, host Howard Kurtz asked Ashburn if it had been fair for the media to spend so much time focusing on a Taliban-produced propaganda video of Bergdahl being handed back over to American troops.
"Why did it get so much attention? I mean, here's this central figure of this entire story, and we only have one picture of him in a military uniform?" Ashburn explained. "And now, we get to look into his blinking eyes, and imagine what happened to him or try to discern what the relationship was with his captors."
"You see him in a Pashtun smock," she added. "You think, 'Okay, maybe he's sympathetic to them, maybe he's not. Is he cognizant of what's happening? Has he been tortured?' I mean, you have to see that video to understand the story."
Following a commercial break, Ashburn went on to defend Bergdahl's father against Fox News hosts who had accused him of looking like a Muslim or a member of the Taliban because he had grown out his beard to mark the time that his son had been held captive.
"It's inappropriate that [Fox News host Bill O'Reilly] as well as Joe Scarborough from MSNBC are attacking a man whose son has been held in captivity for five years," she insisted. "You don't know what that father has been going through unless you have been in that situation."
"How can you even say or even question the motives of this father? You just don't know."
