Two Pennsylvania teenagers drove to New York City last week, threw homemade bombs packed with TATP military-grade explosive at a protest, pledged allegiance to ISIS on camera, flashed the ISIS hand salute in handcuffs, and told police they wanted the attack “even bigger than the Boston Marathon bombing.”
CNN’s official X account called them “two Pennsylvania teenagers who crossed into New York City for what could’ve been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.”
They deleted it. The screenshot didn’t.
CNN starts the day yesterday with the now-deleted “two teenagers” post —
— then rounds out the evening with Abby Phillip claiming there was “an attempted terror attack against New York's mayor Zohran Mamdani."
Banner day, CNN. pic.twitter.com/ONsuJkMFAZ
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 11, 2026
Seth Dillon — CEO of The Babylon Bee — went on “The Bottom Line” and said out loud what the screenshot already proves: CNN was “deliberately trying to conceal the truth.”
Let’s be precise about what CNN left out: Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, and Emir Balat, 18, constructed several IED devices with TATP — the same explosive used in London 2005 and Paris 2015. They pledged ISIS allegiance on camera, before the attack. Flashed the ISIS salute after the arrest. FBI found explosive residue in their Pennsylvania storage unit. One of the men told police he wanted casualties “even bigger than Boston.”
But to CNN that’s just a normal afternoon in the city!
The Bee and CNN are very similar — we both publish funny fake news. The difference is that one of us is joking. https://t.co/1ceqOp4By1
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 10, 2026
Who writes this garbage?
They are radical Islamic terrorists. https://t.co/gWjc4VC8xf
— Rep. Eli Crane (@RepEliCrane) March 10, 2026
'AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE': CNN Blasted for Downplaying NYC Terrorists as 'Pennsylvania Teenagers' — 'The Worst Post Ever'https://t.co/0NzNuxYSnk
— Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 (@seanhannity) March 10, 2026
CNN deleted the post. The problem with deleting things in 2026 is that the screenshot had already lapped the deletion by the time anybody at CNN hit the button.
CNN’s defenders will say this was a clumsy editor, a rushed post, an honest mistake. The Babylon Bee CEO — whose entire business is knowing exactly how language is used to inform/mislead people — says no. This was deliberate concealment. And the pattern backs him up.
This isn’t the first time. After the 2013 Boston bombing, major outlets ran sympathetic profiles of the Tsarnaev brothers emphasizing Dzhokhar’s love of hip-hop and his college ambitions — before the facts buried that framing. After the 2015 San Bernardino attack, CNN spent the first 24 hours on “workplace violence” before the ISIS connection became undeniable. After the 2016 Orlando Pulse shooting, early coverage led with gun control before the shooter’s ISIS pledge became impossible to ignore.
Same reflex, every time: find the frame that protects the narrative. Teenagers, warm weather, the city, a nice day out. Everything except the TATP, the ISIS pledge, and the salute in handcuffs.
The second thing to watch: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has spent the past month publicly cataloguing legacy media’s credibility collapse and naming it as an institutional problem, not a series of individual errors. The appetite for making CNN answer for this stuff is very much alive at the FCC right now. What CNN did on this post is precisely what Carr is describing when he says the old gatekeepers “conceal truth rather than reveal it.”
CNN deleting the post didn’t end the story. It confirmed the story.
The radicalization model here is also worth naming: two suburban strangers, an online connection, a Pennsylvania storage unit, TATP on day one of Ramadan. No overseas travel. No foreign handler. The algorithm did the recruiting. This is what domestic ISIS looks like in 2026 — and the liberal media’s instinct is still to describe it as teenagers enjoying the weather.
“The most trusted name in news.”
Sure.
— Dipsh!t_Finder (@dipsh1t_finder) March 10, 2026
