 On Sunday, 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, who is an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force, went to the Israel Embassy in D.C. and he lit himself on fire and he streamed it. And these were his last words. Quote, My name is Aaron Bushnell. I'm an active duty member of the United States Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme active protest but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all. Now, I'm not going to play the video for you because it would violate YouTube's terms of service but it's out there if you want to watch it but I do believe it's my responsibility to make sure that his message is heard far and wide and his last words were incredibly important. That was the last message that he shared but it's not the last thing that he said before collapsing. Brett Wilkins of Common Dreams describes the incident. Quote, Get on the ground you fucker, someone, presumably an officer can be heard saying in the video as Bushnell screams and writhes in agony. He managed one final garbled yet unmistakable shout of free Palestine as his body was engulfed in flames. And he was yelling free Palestine, free Palestine over and over and over again until he no longer could. But with his last breath, he spoke out on behalf of Palestinians facing extermination at the hands of a genocidal Israeli government that is being fully supported by our government. And he did this to make sure that his message, that message could not be ignored. As Abby Martin put it, Aaron Bushnell is the second person to self-immolate over the Gaza genocide. The first was a woman whose name we do not know because her story was buried. Our monstrous rulers are forcing people to engage in the most extreme desperate act of political protest just to be heard. And that's really what this is about, right? Media just isn't doing a sufficient enough job of informing the American public about the severity of the atrocities being committed in Gaza. And to the extent that they do cover it, major outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post have published coverage that is biased towards Israel. And this isn't me saying this. This was proven by an investigative report published by The Intercept. So Bushnell wanted to force the media to pay attention by doing this extreme form of protest because in theory, you can't talk about his actions and what he did here while ignoring his words. But media certainly tried. For example, Assal Rod, a scholar in Middle East history writes, four major news outlets have almost the exact same headline for the self-immolation of 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell. Not one of them mentions the words Gaza or genocide, the reason for Aaron's protest, or the word Palestine, his last word spoken. Now you can see the examples that she provided here. The New York Times says a man set himself on fire outside of Israel Embassy in Washington. The police said CNN says US Airmen set himself on fire outside of Israeli Embassy. Reuters, US Airmen set himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy in Washington. And the Washington Post says active-duty Airmen set himself on fire outside DC's Israeli Embassy. None of them actually mentioning what she said. Gaza, Palestine, genocide. Now another one shared by Waleed Shahid here from CBS, breaking an active-duty U.S. Air Force member has died after he set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on Sunday. Official said. Now Waleed adds, how would American media cover a Russian soldier self-immolating in Moscow to protest Putin? It would probably mention a reason for the tragic act of defiance in the headline. But it gets worse, because Mike Elk shared a screenshot from an NPR article. There's a line that reads, as of Monday morning, NPR was not able to independently verify the man's motives. Now Mike tagged them, letting them know what his motives were. He was literally shouting free Palestine as he burned to death. What more do you need? So the stunning level of ignorance that we're seeing, regardless if it's winning or unwitting from media, does a disservice to people who they're supposed to be informing. These headlines suggest that Bushnell's self-immolation occurred in a vacuum. And if you didn't read past the headlines, you'd likely assume that his action wasn't actually a form of political protest. You just think that he was mentally ill. And this is actually how some outlets are reporting on this, implying that he was mentally ill even when they share his dying words. Take MSNBC, for example. Yesterday, 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell of San Antonio, Texas, the active duty airman in the US Air Force who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war, has died. That identification made by a metropolitan police here. Bushnell filmed his own self-immolation on his cell phone yelling free Palestine before collapsing to the ground outside the embassy. He was rushed to the hospital for treatment, but later succumbed to his injuries. And if you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the suicide aid. Now, look, I'll never be mad at anyone for sharing information that could help someone experiencing a mental health crisis because that is important. And I'm thankful that they did share his last words. But to make this about mental health and imply that this is what that's about kind of misses the point. And Brett Wilkins shared a couple of examples of tweets in his article from people who explained why that angle is so tone deaf. For example, Joshua Frank of Counterpunch writes, Please stop saying Aaron Bushnell was mentally ill, the real mental illness is witnessing a genocide taking place and not doing a thing to stop it. Also, Joseph Azam adds, American media won't question the mental health of those who gleefully blow up neighborhoods full of children and hunt, humiliate, torture and kill for sport, as we see with the IDF. That is in view through a lens of dysfunction, but protesting it by self-immolation? Of course, Rafael Shimonov writes, Notice after Aaron Bushnell burns himself alive to protest Israel, how everyone cheerleading Israel's carpet bombings of Gaza have overnight become mental health experts. They learned it from the NRA after mass shootings of children. That's who they've become. And worse, yeah. So shifting focus from Bushnell's protest and his final words to a conversation about his mental health. That is a form of obfuscation and it allows the media to conveniently not address the elephant in the room. The reason why he's protesting in the first place. But I don't want to pretend like all media coverage was bad because even though CNN's written headline purposefully omitted really important context, their on air coverage did a surprisingly good job at communicating his message in a really objective manner. So let's watch that. Authorities identified Aaron Bushnell as the person who on Sunday set himself on fire. The 25 year old was an active duty member of the US Air Force. CNN's Gabe Cohen joins us now with the details and Gabe, this is something that he did in protest. Yeah, that's correct. And we're learning much more about this 25 year old active duty airman, Aaron Bushnell, as you mentioned, he's from San Antonio, Texas, and he live streamed his actions on Sunday in broad daylight on the streets of DC outside the Israeli embassy. We are not going to show that video. It is extremely graphic and disturbing. I have watched the video. I can tell you at the beginning, at the start of it, you can see Bushnell walking up to the embassy on the street in his military fatigues. He's speaking calmly to the camera. I want to read a portion of what he says. He said, quote, I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it is not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. He then goes on to pour some sort of accelerant, it looks like, on his head out of a water bottle he was carrying. And then he lights himself on fire, Boris. And as the flames engulf him, you can hear him yelling, free Palestine, free Palestine, again and again until finally he collapses. And that is when officers, you can see them race in one of them with a fire extinguisher in their hands trying to put out the flames. But it takes time. And as we have learned, Bushnell died in the hospital at some point later on. And look, it really speaks to the tensions that are continuing to escalate around the war in Gaza, not just across the world, but here in the United States. We saw a similar incident in December when someone self-immolated, lit themselves on fire outside of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. But this feels different. This is an active duty member of the military burning himself to death on the streets of the nation's capital. That right there is what we should expect from media. They read his message, read his final words, and they contextualized his protest. That was well done. And credit to Joshua P. Hill for sharing that clip on Twitter. I don't know that I would have seen it if he didn't share it because CNN hasn't posted this to their YouTube channel. But there's one more thing that I want to talk about with regards to Bushnell and it doesn't involve media. It's about the way that he was treated in his final moments on earth. And you already kind of got a hint of this when we read that quote about somebody telling him to get down on the ground. But I want to share just one image from the video that was posted by Chudza TikTok. So you see an armed guard or policeman pointing a gun at him while he was literally burning to death. And if you watch the video, you can hear somebody saying, get down on the ground, you fucker. And to this, Chudza TikTok writes, this image should become infamous. There is no better example of the brutality inherent in the American system than trained security pointing his gun at Aaron Bushnell as he self-immolates in protest. Now, a man in a white shirt who is trying to help said something to the effect of, I don't need guns, I need fire extinguishers. Yeah, and it's just so telling about the brutality of this country that a man who is literally dying after lighting himself on fire to protest a genocide that his government is supporting gets a gun pointed at him in his final moments. Is he a threat to anyone but himself in that moment? What is he gonna do? It just, it speaks to how little regard we have as a society for human life and as a country, right? And how violence is just always our first instinct. That's the first thing we think to do, be violent. It's just so sad. But what I wanna do is encourage everyone to just share Aaron Bushnell's final words on social media. You don't have to share the video because it's very difficult to watch. But his final words are important and they've been transcribed in the description so you can copy and paste them for others to see, put it on Twitter, on Facebook. Don't let his death being vain. And I think that sharing his words far and wide is one way you make sure that that's the case, that what he did has an impact. So yeah, we'll leave that there. Rest in peace, Aaron.