MSNBC’s Chuck Todd decided to thrill viewers on Thursday’s MTP Daily with a highly analytical deep dive into President Trump’s tweets, focusing specifically on whether they might somehow constitute obstruction of justice.
Sometimes, a single leak or piece of information can drive an entire news cycle. Such was the case on Thursday when The New York Times reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was examining the President’s tweets in his “wide-ranging obstruction inquiry.”
Todd’s show fell squarely in the thick of this particularly speculative news cycle, which resulted in the first half of the broadcast focusing exclusively on the President’s Twitter habits. During the first two segments, tweets were mentioned more than once per minute.
To assist him in his in-depth analysis, Todd brought in attorney and NBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos. Todd spent the majority of the conversation rephrasing the same question ad infinitum – “is this evidence of obstruction?” – and allowing his guest to extrapolate at length.
The MSNBC host then began reading Trump tweets aloud for Cevallos to respond to. This lightning-round format soon devolved into a sort of “Trump’s greatest hits” conversation, in which the pair reminisced about various tweets that had stuck with them throughout the presidency.
“Remember there was one really controversial tweet,” Todd inquired excitedly “...and then his lawyer said, ‘No, no, no, I wrote it’?”
Cevallos smiled knowingly: “Oh, yes, maybe my favorite tweet of the year.” He proceeded to pick apart the structure and verbiage of the tweet in detail, including spelling mistakes, in an attempt to prove conclusively that it had in fact been authored by the President.
Perhaps the Mueller probe will conclude that the President’s tweets bolster the obstruction case against him. Or perhaps not. Regardless, despite all of the heady analysis that took place on Thursday's MTP Daily, the President still has not been impeached.
