Dearest readers, spare a thought for the folks at CNN because, as Thursday wore on, they’re having a difficult time accepting reality of no collusion and no charges on obstruction of justice following the release of the Mueller report. Between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. Eastern, CNN Newsroom was filed with media statements divorced from reality.
Still soldiering on since the morning hours, chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin hilarious asserted the he “hope[s]” he’s “not playing a semantic game here, but Barr said that there was no evidence of collusion” which he thought was a lie because the report argued “there was....insufficient evidence to bring a criminal case involving the Trump campaign and Russian interests.”
Making his first set of lengthy remarks since the report dropped, chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta whined that “the B.S. meters have been going off today in the press room” because the White House’s claims about “no collusion” was, to him, false and that it indeed happened (click “expand”):
ACOSTA: [O]ne of the things that she said when she came out to the cameras is that, you know, there was no collusion, no conspiracy. But what the Mueller report clearly lays out and you were just talking about this a few moments ago, there were these inappropriate contacts.
CHRIS CUOMO: 100%.
ACOSTA: Unless you are the most diehard Trump Republican, I suppose you will say that’s not inappropriate [sic] but just about everybody else in the world knows that is inappropriate.
Acosta then mounted his high horse and sought to gallop way with this screed that included a pat on the back to himself and the media (click “expand”):
[W]hy was there so much lying? Why was there so much B.S.-ing. Why was there so many false statements? Why does it continue....[O]ne of the things they've said to us and doing this touchdown dance for about three weeks now and accusing the media of trying to, you know, pull a fast one on the President here and a fast one on the American people, time and again in this Mueller report, reporting from major news outlets is confirmed in this Mueller report. Time and again, it is revealed they gave us false statements about what was going on during the course of this Russia investigation instances and so there were legitimate questions about Michael Flynn, the Trump Tower meeting, those bogus things to excuse all of this and so my goodness, of course we're going to spend 22, 23 months very closely examining all of this this because there were so many lies. My God, you know, you — the Mueller report at 400 some odd pages can't possibly address all of the lies because there have been so many of them and I think that is the part that they get in trouble with and, you know, when the President tweets no collusion, no obstruction, once again, it is a lie.
Former Comey flack-turned-CNN analyst Josh Campbell was also irritated, wondering whether “the damning nature” of the Mueller report was worse “or the way in which this report was rolled out” because “I suspect that we, we the people, are the victims of flimflam artists here when you look at the way this was rolled out.”
Cuomo brought in former Mueller aide Michael Zeldin at the 2:46 p.m. Eastern mark and simultaneously asserted that collusion did happen but claiming “‘no collusion’ is a red herring” (click “expand”):
You were one of the first, Michael to tell me, listen, you keep throwing around this world collusion. Let me take you inside of the prosecutor's mind. Collusion doesn't exist. It is a behavior, not a crime. If you’re going to analyze this, you look at it as a conspiracy and whether or not you could prove they did things to help Russia interfere. You were exactly right. The special counsel goes out of his way in the introductory comments to explain exactly that. So the idea of “no collusion” is a red herring and a distraction. They say they couldn't prove the crime but there was plenty of collusion. There was behavior that was potentially wrong and they were deceptive about it.
Over 15 minutes after the low-rated host smeared Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as having “no shame,” Cuomo insulted the intelligence of those who remained skeptical of the collusion by declaring that “no exoneration is grossly distorting what the reality of this report is” because “there’s tons of that documented in here and the actions were lied about repeatedly.”
Also in the 3:00 p.m. Eastern hour were these love notes to the liberal media writ large by Cuomo and crime and Justice reporter Shimon Pokupecz, ignoring the fact that the media got a lot wrong (click “expand”):
CUOMO: I’ve got another reason for you to take the time to read through this Mueller report. You're going to wind up having more confidence in the free press of the United States of America because when you look through this, the questions that were asked, the persistence about why it seemed the White House/the President/those around him and surrogates were not telling you the truth about things is born out in the facts. Now, it is true, there were people pushing a conclusion that did not come to fruition. The idea this was going to end the presidency, the idea that this would end in a criminal prosecution, that we’d end up in a court, if you watch my show, you've been hearing for months that wasn't likely and I know not everybody said but in general, the reporting is borne out by what you read and that’s an important exercise.
(....)
PROKUPECZ: And the other thing this report did is that it really corroborated a lot of the good journalism that was done in this entire — you know, he went after all of us every single day. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and when you go back and you look at this report and you look, you’re like, all of these stories that were fake news, well Mueller shows this was actually going on.
Too bad, so sad, CNN!
To see the relevant transcript from April 18's CNN Newsroom, click “expand.”
CNN Newsroom
April 18, 2019
2:16 p.m. Eastern
JEFFREY TOOBIN: And also, you know, I — I hope I'm not playing a semantic game here, but Barr said that there was no evidence of collusion. No, what the conclusion of the report is is that there was no prosecutable case. There was not enough evidence to bring a criminal case,
JAKE TAPPER: Insufficient.
TOOBIN: — insufficient evidence to bring a criminal case involving the Trump campaign and Russian interest. That is different from no evidence and I think there is more evidence in the report than I had certainly known about connections between the Trump campaign and Russia and I certainly understand and respect Mueller's conclusion that there was not a criminal case to be made there. But the idea that this was somehow some fantasy and that there was — that there was never any basis for suspicion about the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia is clearly refuted by this report.
(....)
2:37 p.m. Eastern
JIM ACOSTA: And I will tell you, Chris, the B.S. meters have been going off today in the press room. That was one of those moments. Another moment is when I pressed Kellyanne Conway on the Trump Tower meeting in 2016 because one of the things that she said when she came out to the cameras is that, you know, there was no collusion, no conspiracy. But what the Mueller report clearly lays out and you were just talking about this a few moments ago, there were these inappropriate contacts.
CHRIS CUOMO: 100%.
ACOSTA: Unless you are the most diehard Trump Republican, I suppose you will say that’s not inappropriate [sic] but just about everybody else in the world knows that is inappropriate.
CUOMO: Look, you could feel that. But one of the things that is blown out of the water, and look, let's give Kellyanne Conway her due, I don't see her anywhere in here. I don’t believe that she was asked anything about Mueller
ACOSTA: That’s right.
CUOMO: I don’t think she was accused of anything. I don't think that she is a realistic target of any part of this probe except for the spinning and reckoning of that and that is a choice that she makes in defending the president.
ACOSTA: That is exactly and agree with you and that’s exactly right and it gets to the key point that I was going to make and, you know, Kellyanne, at that point, when I was asking her about the Trump Tower meeting, she was saying oh, we told you guys what happened. They didn't tell us what happened there. They told us additionally it was about Russian adoptions and it wasn't about Russian adoptions. It was about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton so we know that is not true and it goes to this — what I think will be one of the underlying lessons learned in all of this, Chris, and that is if there was nothing wrong and nothing wrong was going on, why was there so much lying? Why was there so much B.S.-ing. Why was there so many false statements?
CUOMO: And why does it continue?
ACOSTA: Why does it continue? Sarah Sanders, in the briefing room, time and again told us things that were just false.
CUOMO: And she admitted it to Mueller.
ACOSTA: That’s right. It was revealed in this Mueller report.
CUOMO: She had to admit to Mueller, because if you lie to him —
ACOSTA: That’s right.
CUOMO: — it is different than lying even to the redoubtable Jim Acosta.
ACOSTA: That’s right.
CUOMO: And she said multiple occasions, oh, yeah that was based on nothing. That is a slip of the tongue in the meet of the moment. It is all B.S.
ACOSTA: And Chris, I will tell you one of the things they've said to us and doing this touchdown dance for about three weeks now and accusing the media of trying to, you know, pull a fast one on the President here and a fast one on the American people, time and again in this Mueller report, reporting from major news outlets is confirmed in this Mueller report. Time and again, it is revealed they gave us false statements about what was going on during the course of this Russia investigation instances and so there were legitimate questions about Michael Flynn, the Trump Tower meeting, those bogus things to excuse all of this and so my goodness, of course we're going to spend 22, 23 months very closely examining all of this this because there were so many lies. My God, you know, you — the Mueller report at 400 some odd pages can't possibly address all of the lies because there have been so many of them and I think that is the part that they get in trouble with and, you know, when the president tweets no collusion, no obstruction, once again, it is a lie.
CUOMO: Right.
ACOSTA: In the Mueller report, obviously it says the — the special counsel was serious on this note saying they could not come to a conclusion on that answer and very important to — to note and we've been noting this and reporting this all day long, they didn’t have enough information to say he didn't obstruct and so I think that one of the underlying lessons learned in all of this, had they been telling us the truth, had they straight with us all along, they wouldn't have been in this mess, Chris.
(....)
2:44 p.m. Eastern
JOSH CAMPBELL: I don't think any word in this 400-page report was there accidentally. I think each word was there for a specific purpose. And the reason why it is so in fulsome and we have this robust report is to tell the story and that was the goal. My problem here is that I can't understand — I haven't come down on yet, which is worse, what is in the report, the damning nature, or the way in which this report was rolled out. I suspect that we, we the people, are the victims of flimflam artists here when you look at the way this was rolled out. There is something called the lie of omission. As you know as a lawyer, right, you tell a story and selectively leave things out. You go back nearly four weeks ago from when the attorney general came out with the letter saying that this report found no collusion and I made the decision that there was no obstruction. What he left out were these damning details that we see where he talks about the President attacking investigators and talked about the President trying to control the investigation. He talks about the President trying to tell witnesses not to cooperate. That is damning. Why that was left out, we could try to, you know, speculate now, it doesn't look good. But had that been included, had the attorney general come out and said there are elements in here that paint a picture that may be damning, I determine this is the final conclusion, that’s a lot different. But this is baked into the American people's narrative for the last four weeks and now it has to be undone by good people reading this for themselves.
(....)
2:46 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: Now I want to bring in former Special Assistant at DOJ, Michael Zeldin first with a thank you. You were one of the first, Michael to tell me, listen, you keep throwing around this world collusion. Let me take you inside of the prosecutor's mind. Collusion doesn't exist. It is a behavior, not a crime. If you’re going to analyze this, you look at it as a conspiracy and whether or not you could prove they did things to help Russia interfere. You were exactly right. The special counsel goes out of his way in the introductory comments to explain exactly that. So the idea of “no collusion” is a red herring and a distraction. They say they couldn't prove the crime but there was plenty of collusion. There was behavior that was potentially wrong and they were deceptive about it.
(....)
2:48 p.m. Eastern
MICHAEL ZELDIN: And in fact, when Robbie Mook the chairman of the Clinton campaign announced that their private company determined that this was Russian hacking, Don Jr. went forward and said, you know, the shamelessness of these people that they will lie to advance — to advantage themselves rather than to say, you know what, we should take this seriously and that’s, I think, to me one of the biggest shames on the Clinton -- rather, sorry, on the Trump orbit, that they just never took any action. They were just completely receptive to the overtures.
CUOMO: Right and no shame in their game. Shimon, we see that in Sarah time and time again and no shame in their game.
SARA MURRAY: No and you saw the press conference with —
CUOMO: No shame.
MURRAY: — with Donald Trump out there saying Russia, if you have Hillary Clinton's emails, like I would like to see them and then, you know, this did not constitution a formal agreement but Russia responded within five hours —
CUOMO: Right.
MURRAY: — Russian intelligence was trying to dig up the e-mails.
CUOMO: And it wasn't a joke. We know from the report. He was asking his people
MURRAY: And he asked — yes.
CUOMO: — to try to find the emails, see what you can do. And in here it says, I guess it was to Mr. Gates where, in the Mueller report, said the President told Gates more Wikileaks were coming.
(....)
3:11 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO [TO JENNIFER RODGERS]: This — help me explain to the audience why saying no collusion, no exoneration is grossly distorting what the reality of this report is. Mueller goes out of his way to say how, I don't think about collusion. We're not going to use that term. It’s not a crime. We're only looking for proof of conspiracy and whether or not these people were foreign agents. If you want to use collusion by the Webster dictionary, clever behavior, secretive behavior, there’s tons of that documented in here and the actions were lied about repeatedly.
(....)
3:25 p.m. Eastern
CUOMO: I’ve got another reason for you to take the time to read through this Mueller report. You're going to wind up having more confidence in the free press of the United States of America because when you look through this, the questions that were asked, the persistence about why it seemed the White House/the President/those around him and surrogates were not telling you the truth about things is born out in the facts. Now, it is true, there were people pushing a conclusion that did not come to fruition. The idea this was going to end the presidency, the idea that this would end in a criminal prosecution, that we’d end up in a court, if you watch my show, you've been hearing for months that wasn't likely and I know not everybody said but in general, the reporting is borne out by what you read and that’s an important exercise.
(....)
3:39 p.m. Eastern
SHIMON PROKUPECZ: And this report obliterates him. I mean, in terms of his credibility and his character and time and time again, this report obliterates it. He is essentially painted as a liar. Someone who misleads, will do anything to win. When he feels he's in trouble or if someone is going to say something bad about him, he was concerned that when they fired Michael Flynn that he was going say some bad things about him so he reached out and made sure he is okay. Even Michael Cohen, he went through cutouts to talk to him to make sure he was okay. Always concerned that something perhaps someone will say something bad about him and the other thing this report did is that it really corroborated a lot of the good journalism that was done in this entire — you know, he went after all of us every single day. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and when you go back and you look at this report and you look, you’re like, all of these stories that were fake news, well Mueller shows this was actually going on.
CUOMO: There weren't fake news, they were fake views.
