During MSNBC’s live coverage of Attorney General William Barr’s Wednesday congressional hearing on the Mueller report, known liar Brian Williams had the audacity to interrupt that coverage simply to smear Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham a liar. Graham’s supposed untruth? Accurately stating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller found “no collusion” between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
As the South Carolina Senator was in the middle of making his opening statement, just minutes into the hearing, he noted that Mueller found “No collusion. No coordination. No conspiracy between the trump campaign and the Russian government regarding the 2016 election.” Seconds later, Williams broke in and sneered: “We’re reluctant to do this, we rarely do, but the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said that Mueller found there was no collusion. That is not correct.”
Despite Graham’s description of the report’s findings being accurate, Williams used this highly technical distinction to claim otherwise: “...the report says collusion is not a thing they considered. It doesn’t exist in federal code.” Of course the media spent two years using the term “collusion” as short-hand to discuss the investigation.
Deadline: White House anchor and anti-Trump crusader Nicolle Wallace eagerly joined Williams in attacking Senator Graham:
And I’m sorry Lindsey Graham, but your defensiveness is showing. To talk about everything that went in to it and in the next breath distort it is a stunning, stunning mischaracterization of what the whole exercise is supposed to be about. It reveals what I talked about before, that he is sitting there today not as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but as a human shield for Donald Trump, and it would appear, William Barr.
Williams professed their reluctance in providing the nasty interruption: “ Again, we try to offer just gavel-to-gavel coverage, but that phrase, or the lack of it, it’s absence from federal code.” He further lectured: “This ‘no collusion’ mantra is so foundational to why we’re here today that we decided to flag it when we heard him use it yet again.”
The unmitigated gall for Williams, who notoriously lied about his experience reporting on the Iraq war, to pretend to be the arbiter of anyone else’s credibility is truly amazing. Not to mention that the ridiculous fact-check that he and Wallace offered was false and nothing more that regurgitated Democratic talking points.
Here is a transcript of the May 1 interruption of the hearing coverage:
10:10 AM ET
(...)
BRIAN WILLIAMS: We’re reluctant to do this, we rarely do, but the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said that Mueller found there was no collusion. That is not correct. Nicolle Wallace, the report says collusion is not a thing they considered. It doesn’t exist in federal code.
NICOLLE WALLACE: What’s stunning is that Lindsey Graham is offering answers to questions that aren’t on the table today. The question on the table today, after the reporting last night, is why did Barr mischaracterize what was actually in the Mueller report. And I’m sorry Lindsey Graham, but your defensiveness is showing. To talk about everything that went in to it and in the next breath distort it is a stunning, stunning mischaracterization of what the whole exercise is supposed to be about. It reveals what I talked about before, that he is sitting there today not as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but as a human shield for Donald Trump, and it would appear, William Barr.
WILLIAMS: Again, we try to offer just gavel-to-gavel coverage, but that phrase, or the lack of it, it’s absence from federal code. This “no collusion” mantra is so foundational to why we’re here today that we decided to flag it when we heard him use it yet again. Back into the Chairman and the committee room.
(...)
