To paraphrase tweets from great Stephen Miller (no, not Stephen Miller from the White House), leave it to Al Sharpton to be the voice of sanity amidst MSNBC’s network-wide meltdown. Reacting on Sunday’s PoliticsNation to AG Bill Barr’s letter concerning the Mueller probe’s findings, he admitted that “the Democrats also now have to move on and really deal with hard issues.”
No, that is not a misprint. That is word-for-word what Sharpton told MSNBC viewers on Sunday. Or at least all five of them.
But wait, there’s more! Speaking to Morning Joe co-host and Trump friend-turned-enemy Joe Scarborough, Sharpton added that “I think the politics is — is that we're now going to have to start talking about tax reform and climate change and other things because the Mueller situation, I think, has ended up a clear victory for the President.”
Scarborough responded by agreeing with the far-left activist by going on a Steve Schmidt-lengthy rant on this point. It’s as if Scarborough didn’t know that he was part of a panel!
At any rate, here’s portions of Scarborough’s screed (click “expand”):
[Y]ou have said this all along. A lot of Democrats haven't figured this out over the past couple of years. They have been distracted by the Mueller investigation, but you have understood and I think the smarter people in the Democratic Party have understood, that they were never going to win elections talking about Russia. They were never going to win elections talking about Robert Mueller. They're going to win elections talking about — and by the way, check the tape. This isn't Monday morning quarterbacking again....It's health care that people are concerned about. It's wages that people are concerned about....criminal justice. People are concerned about. They want to understand what people like Robert Kraft got a massive tax cut? People like Jeffrey Epstein got a massive tax cut? And yet working class Americans didn't get that massive tax cut....Those are the bread and butter issues. How do people pay for school? How do they pay for health care? Are there two Americas when we're talking about criminal justice? What's our standing across the globe? Are we going to be able to continue to count on our allies when our allies can't count on us? Those are the issues that matter most and maybe, just maybe, this exoneration will refocus Democrats on the campaign trail to start talking primarily about those issues[.]
Scarborough also spoke directly to diehard MSNBC viewers, asserting that plenty were “secretly hoping that Robert Mueller was going to run Donald Trump out of office,” but Sunday revealed that “[h]e's not,” so “the only way to get Donald Trump out of office is to beat him in the fair marketplace of ideas.”
Imagine that.
Earlier in the hour, MSNBC host Katy Tur and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd were still attempting to make sense of what had taken place.
“Although [the President] committed no crime, the report does not exonerate him. They also said that Mueller found no obstruction. Mueller did not find no obstruction. Mueller laid out the evidence on both sides of the issue and allowed Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein to make the decision,” Tur complained concerning the reaction from the President, his allies, and the White House.
As for Todd, he was struck by how “this is the PR head start that essentially the Trump administration — the President is getting, thanks to the fact that his Attorney General that made this assessment and this is where Democrats are in a huge box here.”
He added that he’s not sure “how [Democrats] ever get...back” the narrative that the President’s guilty in any sort of way.
In other words: WOMP, WOMP!
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s PoliticsNation on March 24, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s PoliticsNation
March 24, 2019
5:08 p.m. EasternKATY TUR: Chuck Todd, one thing that has — I guess stuck this process up in the past couple hours, is that, even though this is a good day for the President in terms of finding no collusion, finding no conspiracy, and Bill Barr saying there was no obstruction, essentially clearing the president from the DOJ angle of this, the President and the White House and Sarah Sanders are still continuing to be misleading about the results of this investigation. They're both saying it completely exonerates him. Bob Mueller says specifically, this does not exonerate him. That was William Barr's assessment of the Bob Mueller report. Although he committed no crime, the report does not exonerate him. They also said that Mueller found no obstruction. Mueller did not find no obstruction. Mueller laid out the evidence on both sides of the issue and allowed Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein to make the decision. Why continue to be misleading about good news?
CHUCK TODD: Well, I think they take Bill Barr's assessment as exoneration on obstruction, and he —
TUR: But Sarah Sanders in her statement said Mueller exonerated the President on obstruction.
TODD: I'm shocked by the conflation attempts by these folks. This is — Katy, as we know, this is what Donald Trump does, over — overexaggerates everything, whatever it is. And this is the PR head start that essentially the Trump administration — the President is getting, thanks to the fact that his Attorney General that made this assessment and this is where Democrats are in a huge box here. We're all taking Bill Barr's word for the — clearly, Robert Mueller found troubling evidence on the obstruction question because he could not come to a conclusion. He left it for the Attorney General to come to this conclusion. So he found troubling evidence. It's Bill Barr that has cleared him. This is where Democrats are going to have their back up on this. They're going to be very upset and this is where from a PR standpoint, I don't know how they ever get this back. Once you see the report, if it doesn't match the tone of what Bill Barr wrote or at least to reasonable folks, then it is only going to polarize the perception of this even further. So that is — but on the PR front, this is the head start that they have. They're going forward. They're filling a vacuum before we ever get to read the actual report and so they're going to have spun and spun and spun. They got their supporters worked up. They've got everybody lined up and, again, nobody has seen the actual evidence that apparently Robert Mueller has put out there that does at least raise questions of the obstruction question. But again, politically, they got the head start, and I don't know if Democrats will ever be able to sort of get that PR perception back, which is important if you want to have political legitimacy for continued investigations.
TUR: Reverend Al Sharpton, you're with us as well. An historic day.
AL SHARPTON: No doubt about it. I think it is. Let me — I want to bring Joe Scarborough back in from Morning Joe because I think he's right. This is a clear day of victory for the President, but I think that the question that he raises that I wanted him to elaborate on is that if all is as we are seeing from Barr's letter, then why did so many people lie? We're talking about 37 indictments. So if it was not Russian collusion, then what was it, and is any of that criminal, Joe? Because the question is, people don't just lie about anything or about nothing. So then what do all of these people — I mean, I would hate to be one of the guys headed to jail if all of this was nothing.
(....)
5:16 p.m. Eastern
SHARPTON: But the Democrats also now have to move on and really deal with hard issues. I think the politics is —
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Exactly.
SHARPTON: — is that we're now going to have to start talking about tax reform and climate change and other things because the Mueller situation, I think, has ended up a clear victory for the President.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, and Reverend Al, listen, you have said this all along. A lot of Democrats haven't figured this out over the past couple of years. They have been distracted by the Mueller investigation, but you have understood and I think the smarter people in the Democratic Party have understood, that they were never going to win elections talking about Russia. They were never going to win elections talking about Robert Mueller. They're going to win elections talking about — and by the way, check the tape. This isn't Monday morning quarterbacking again. We have said it on the air together and you've said it and I've said it. It's health care that people are concerned about. It's wages that people are concerned about —
SHARPTON: Criminal justice.
SCARBOROUGH: — a lot of — criminal justice. People are concerned about. They want to understand what people like Robert Kraft got a massive tax cut? People like Jeffrey Epstein got a massive tax cut? And yet working class Americans didn't get that massive tax cut. The Dem — they're going to be a lot more interested about what Donald Trump said after they passed the largest tax cut in American history for the richest multinational corporations of the richest people. When Donald Trump bragged to his friends at Mar-a-Lago, I just made a lot of you a lot of money today. Those are the bread and butter issues. How do people pay for school? How do they pay for health care? Are there two Americas when we're talking about criminal justice? What's our standing across the globe? Are we going to be able to continue to count on our allies when our allies can't count on us? Those are the issues that matter most and maybe, just maybe, this exoneration will refocus Democrats on the campaign trail to start talking primarily about those issues and I know they are talking a lot about those issues, but you and I also know that a lot of people have been secretly hoping that Robert Mueller was going to run Donald Trump out of office. He's not. He didn't. And now the only way to get Donald Trump out of office is to beat him in the fair marketplace of ideas and have better policies on health care and by the way, can I just say, every promise that Donald Trump made during the campaign, he's broken whether you talk about the wall and Mexico paying for it. He said he was going to balance the budge. This past month, we had the biggest deficit in the history of the United States this past month. We've got the biggest national debt ever. We've got the biggest trade imbalance that we've ever had before. Donald Trump better — had promised more health care, better health care, cheaper health care. He hasn't delivered on that either. That's where Democrats are going to win in 2020. And that's what they have got to refocus on today.
