Early in the 2:00 p.m. ET hour of MSNBC’s nonstop Mueller report coverage on Thursday, Hardball host Chris Matthews joined anchor Brian Williams to offer his first thoughts on the investigation’s findings. In his typical unhinged fashion, Matthews ranted that President Trump’s written responses to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s questions, included in the report, read like “he had failed an Alzheimer’s competency test.”
“I mean, can anybody believe the President’s responses, those written responses to the take-home exam he was given by Mueller?,” Matthews whined. The host flippantly declared: “My God, it was like he had failed an Alzheimer’s competency test. Thirty-six times he said, ‘I can’t remember. I can't remember. I can't remember.’”
Matthews concluded Trump must be lying: “My God, if you can’t remember anything, is that to be believed? No, of course it’s not to be believed. He’s competent enough to remember all those incidents, but he is somehow using that as his refuge.”
Earlier in the discussion, Matthews accused Attorney General William Barr of “covering up really for the Russian intervention, in fact effective intervention in the campaign” during his press conference before the release of the report. Williams replied: “And, Chris, don’t forget the net effect of the four-page letter on an otherwise newsless Sunday afternoon was to give the President air cover to claim, as he was up until today, total exoneration. No collusion, no obstruction.”
Just hours earlier on NBC, Justice Correspondent Pete Williams vouched for the fact that Barr’s letter “tracks very closely” with the Mueller report.
Here is a transcript of the April 18 exchange:
2:06 PM ET
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CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, this report is very clear “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion.” And then it goes into all the ways, rallies, websites, all the work that they did, the hacking, all the ways that they did interfere.
Mueller – rather, Barr – this morning, over and over again in his statement this morning, said “attempted to interfere,” “efforts to interfere.” Never once – and I think this was playing for the President – did he admit the statement in the bottom line of this report that the Russians did, in fact, interfere with the elections. I think those two points, hiding his disagreement over the obstruction of justice decision, and covering up really for the Russian intervention, in fact effective intervention in the campaign, are two big points he scored for Trump today.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: And, Chris, don’t forget the net effect of the four-page letter on an otherwise newsless Sunday afternoon was to give the President air cover to claim, as he was up until today, total exoneration. No collusion, no obstruction.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, and along those lines, I mean, can anybody believe the President’s responses, those written responses to the take-home exam he was given by Mueller? My God, it was like he had failed an Alzheimer’s competency test. Thirty-six times he said, “I can’t remember. I can't remember. I can't remember.” We’ve been talking in the last couple of days, thanks to Robert Kaiser in the Washington Post, about what is too old to be president. My God, if you can’t remember anything, is that to be believed? No, of course it’s not to be believed. He’s competent enough to remember all those incidents, but he is somehow using that as his refuge.
(...)
