Running for office should not preclude someone from being told when they are lying, being deceitful, victim blaming, or using antisemitic dog whistles to garner political traction. Yet ABC’s local affiliate station, Denver7 News, enabled one local politician to do all of that without challenge.
ABC’s Denver7 News’ Micah Smith conducted an interview with Colorado Congressional District 1 Democratic candidate Melat Kiros on Oct. 21, 2026, during which she asked Kiros about her past comments surrounding the Boulder, CO. firebombing attack from January 2025. Kiros answered by blaming the Jewish victims of the attack for bringing it on themselves by supporting Israel, while refusing to label the attack antisemitic.
The antisemitic terror attack targeted a group of predominantly Jewish demonstrators supporting the release of Hamas-held hostages in Gaza. The assailant, Egyptian national and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman, shouted “Free Palestine” during the attack, while saying that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people,” which of course represents the majority of world Jewry. For Soliman, his rally cry was the same as saying “kill most of the Jews!”
In June 2026, Kiros, a declared Democratic Socialist, stated in a separate interview with Next 9News’ Kyle Clark that, regarding the motivations of convicted assailant Mohamed Soliman, that she didn’t “know what was in the heart of the perpetrator. All [she] know[s] is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed, and [she doesn’t] even know what the people that were at that protest believed, too.”
Melat Kiros, Democratic Congressional Candidate from Colorado, Andra Turner via Wikimedia Commons
Pressed by Smith on these past comments, Kiros once again stated that the firebombing was “an attack that was specifically attacking Zionism and Israel. And the reality is, is that this war and this genocide in Palestine right now is putting Jewish and Muslim people in danger all across the world.”
That is, she was describing an attack on local Jews and their allies as an attack on “Zionism and Israel.” The antisemitism does not get any clearer.
By the time both interviews aired, Soliman had been charged by federal authorities with and pled guilty to 12 counts of hate crimes in the incident, which Department of Justice (DOJ) referred to as an “anti-semitic terror attack” and what FBI Director Kash Patel called a “targeted terror attack.” He also plead guilty to more than 100 state charges and been sentenced to life in prison.
Instead of pointing that out, or challenging Kiros’s blatantly antisemitic statement, she merely pointed out that Kiros’s “stance on that” was the “one thing stopping” Jewish Democratic constituents from supporting her candidacy. Even in the full-length interview, which was published as a write up instead of a standalone video, Smith does not press Kiros further on the Boulder firebombing.
Contrast Smith’s initial response with CNN’s Laura Coates, who quoted Boulder firebomber Soliman’s antisemitic statements during and after the attack to Kiros during a previous interview, to which Kiros answered:
What happened in Boulder was a horrific attack on a group of Jewish people that were engaging in peaceful protests, it was an attack that has made many Jewish people in our city and our state and across this country feel incredibly unsafe. And the fact of the matter is that this conflation between the actions of the state of Israel and Judaism and the Jewish people is making Jewish people less safe. It is leading to a rise in antisemitism that’s taking place all across our country. My commitment is to protecting the sanctity and dignity of life for everyone. That means standing strong, side-by-side to our Jewish brothers and sisters and neighbors to make sure that they are protected against this rising hate and this rising antisemitism.
Coates correctly pointed out that “Well, just from your description of what took place there, it would meet that criteria of antisemitism.”
Kiros then doubled down, blaming the victims of the attack for the attack itself:
“I believe what we’re talking about here is the attacks that are taking place on the Jewish community as a result of the actions that are taking place in Palestine.”
Notably, her response to Smith’s question inherently legitimizes such violence, since attacking American Jews is, in Kiros’s mind, an attack on Israel.
Take also the example of Kyle Clark, who grilled Kiros on whether she believed “that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America were the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.” Kiros made a fool of herself here as well, exposing her backwards understanding of extremism and America’s sworn adversaries.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East and that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros answered, evoking the infamous Ilhan Omar line about the attacks, that “some people did something.”
Her most recent comments to Smith reflect the same level of victim blaming and refusal to call an attack targeted against Jews (including a Holocaust survivor) antisemitic.
The issue is not just that Kiros’s comments are wrong and, as fellow CD 1 candidate Shimon Blau points out, serving as a “dog whistle” to allow for more antisemitism. The issue is that Smith did not push back, at least not in the snippet clip or full length write up. If she had, like Coates did, and like Denver9’s Clark did way back in June, she may have exposed the absurd foundation upon which Kiros’s statements were built upon. Like how about Kiros blaming Americans, whom she seeks to represent, for the September 11 attacks?
Kiros admitted that there was rising antisemitism in the United States while tying in the firebombing, which goes against her refusal to label the attack antisemitic. Smart journalism allows extremist candidates like Kiros to expose their own argument’s structural fallacies.
A journalist’s job is not to rescue a candidate from the implications of her own words. But Smith needed to do what Coates and Clark did: challenge Kiros’s claims, expose their contradictions, and give voters the scrutiny they deserve. Letting them go unchallenged in a time when perverse rhetoric like Kiros’s fuels antisemitism worldwide is dangerous. Kiros deserved far more scrutiny than she got from Smith.