Mark Halperin, one of the regular panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a senior political analyst for NBC News, demonstrated yet again on Thursday, August 31, why he and his fellow participants are not interested in being “fair and balanced.”
During a discussion about Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Halperin heaped praise on the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by calling him “a cyborg with a head, a heart and a brain.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough enjoyed the description so much that he asked the panelist to “say that again” because “I like that,” while fellow co-host Mika Brzezinski stated that Halperin’s description was “very good.”
Halperin repeated the phrase before adding that Mueller is “a relentless opponent” and continued by stating:
And one of the under-appreciated aspects of how he’s building this operation, I think, is his ability, because of his vast experience, to coordinate. He’s in sync with the congressional investigations.
His investigators and members are not issuing immunity to witnesses or bringing up witnesses who will interfere with the case. He’s coordinating within the Justice Department and the FBI. You don’t hear any unhappiness coming from there.
“And now,” Halperin added, Mueller is “coordinating with another guy [New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman] with subpoena power, another guy who is fearless and not afraid of Donald Trump.”
According to an article by Legal Insurrection blogger and former NewsBusters colleague Mark Finkelstein, “the threat of state-level indictments can put extraordinary pressure on potential witnesses since the president lacks the authority to pardon state crimes.”
“None of this is an accident,” Halperin stated. “We’re seeing through a glass darkly what this Mueller operation’s like.”
“We see only a tiny bit of it, but it’s clear from everything we see that there is a strategy here, there’s a fearlessness, and there’s a level of coordination that makes anyone trying to help the president on this be put in a very defensive position,” Halperin asserted.
Of course, this emotionally charged discourse showed that the people on Morning Joe support the concept that Mueller is expected to bring down President Donald Trump instead of being an independent, objective investigator of the situation.
As NewsBusters previously reported on August 17, Washington, D.C., “was rocked by the announcement that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to be the special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.”
The Big Three Networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- led with the development on their evening news programs, during which they celebrated it and slammed the right.
“We're reporting from the White House tonight because of the rapidly developing investigation,” anchor Scott Pelley announced to kick off the CBS Evening News, to verify or dismiss allegations of Russian interference with the presidential election and “if the president tried to shut down an FBI investigation of his administration.”
During CBS’s long series of reports, Nancy Cordes highlighted how excited partisan Democrats were at the appointment. “Democrats are hailing the appointment of a special prosecutor as a victory and a good first step, and the move will be welcomed by small but growing number of Republicans as well,” she said.
One thing all of the networks agreed on was how brilliant Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein’s pick of Mueller was. They championed him as a man of integrity that could not be swayed by Washington’s political pressures.
Just one day later, Chris Cuomo spent the entirety of Thursday’s New Day program on the Cable News Network in a crusade to push the Democratic Party’s narrative on the Trump-Russia situation.
He asserted that pointing out the lack of evidence in the investigation “is sabotage” and proclaimed that President Trump has shown “clear intent to influence this Russia investigation, even after the appointment of a special counsel.”
Then in mid-June, the media swarmed over a rumor President Trump was looking to fire Mueller.
“Is the president now considering firing special prosecutor Robert Mueller who is now overseeing the Russia investigation?” speculated ABC anchor David Muir during World News Tonight.
ABC, CBS and NBC all pushed the rumor despite the fact that their source admitted he never spoke with the president and thinks he wouldn’t do it.
In the months since Mueller was appointed, not a single shred of evidence has turned up in the investigation even though the media -- including MSNBC’s Halperin -- has done its best to cast a shadow of doubt over the GOP president. Apparently, “innocent until proven guilty” does not apply to a Republican in the White House.
