The leftist media can’t help but fawn over the now fallen leader of ISIS Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. First, the Washington Post described him as an “austere religious scholar” instead of a brutal terrorist who beheaded Americans with knives while they were still alive.

Now, it would seem NPR was also on the cheerleading bandwagon. During a roundtable discussion lead by NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NPR reporters Greg Myre, Tamara Keith and Daniel Estrin discussed the death of Baghdadi, and couldn’t seem to hold back their reverence for him.

Particularly Myre, who called the late ISIS head a “real leader,” and spoke glowingly of his accomplishments:

He did something or led a movement that we had never seen before. ISIS had tens of thousands of members, fighters coming in from all over the world. They controlled massive amounts of territory in eastern Syria and western and northern Iraq, controlled several big cities – Raqqa in Syria, Mosul in Iraq – millions of people under their control. They administered cities. They collected taxes. They had this incredible online recruit presence in terms of spreading propaganda, recruiting followers. So this is a guy that sort of just emerged on the scene. I mean, he had a history but was not – you know, in 2014 is when he really sort of exploded on the scene and led this group that had done something we’d never seen before.

Myer later added that “it’s not the end of ISIS. But he was a real leader.”

“It’s not somebody they can just – appoint somebody else, take over and the movement continues. So his leadership was critical,” he continued.

Just to make sure you remember that this is NPR, they took a break from reverently discussing Baghdadi to hit Trump, and claim that it allows Trump to start a narrative that distracts from his pulling troops out of Syria.

“So, you know, in some ways, this moment allows President Trump a moment where he can take focus away from the muddle and confusion around U.S. policy toward Syria and a civil war and the Kurdish allies and Turkey and all of that and move the focus to what is sort of a more clean, clear victory and allows the president his narrative, which is, look at this, ISIS is defeated, which he’s been saying for more than a year,” said Keith.