Talk about a turn of events from a few weeks ago. MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews closed out Thursday’s show on a hopeful note that the Mueller report bodes ill for President Trump and his orbit and a love note for the news media being “ready to carry” the “truth” of “public servants” wanting to take down the Trump administration “into the grace of public light.”
Okay, sure, Mr. Poet Laureate.
“In the last 24 hours, we’ve had significant news out of the Mueller investigation. Last night, we had the breaking news that some of the special counsel’s investigators believe four — that four-page letter put out by Attorney General William Barr withheld alarming evidence against President Trump,” Matthews ominously stated at the start of his commentary.
After touting additional anonymously-sourced stories that came out Thursday in hopes of changing the narrative, Matthews continued spinning the growing liberal media narrative that Barr had somehow lied to the American people about the Mueller report findings.
This led to Matthews’s farcical conclusion that sounded like something that was meant to be read from a teleprompter, tweeted, or inserted in a nightly newsletter by CNN’s Brian Stelter:
It all paints a picture that the American people and future presidential candidates really need to see. President Trump and his toadies can speak petulantly and relentlessly about fake news and unfair partisanship, but the only facts we get through the stonewall of White House flackery is carried by public servants who will not sit quietly and by journalists ready to carry their truth into the grace of public light.
Let the record show that it’s tough to top an industry that loves itself more and thinks more highly of itself as above the rest of us peons than those in the national news media and especially those on the political beat.
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on April 3, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s Hardball
April 4, 2019
7:58 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: The Grace of Public Light]
CHRIS MATTHEWS: In the last 24 hours, we’ve had significant news out of the Mueller investigation. Last night, we had the breaking news that some of the special counsel’s investigators believe four — that four-page letter put out by Attorney General William Barr withheld alarming evidence against President Trump. Alarming. And today, we had further reporting that revealed that some members of the Mueller team believe Barr should not have cleared Trump on obstruction of justice, that the evidence was stronger than the Attorney General relayed in his letter. We also had additional reporting that some of Mueller’s investigators believe members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, while not engaged knowingly in a Moscow conspiracy, were nonetheless manipulated by what was sophisticated Russian intelligence operation. All these news reports that some Mueller investigators believe that AG Barr buried alarming evidence in his four-page letter, that perhaps these same Mueller investigators saw the evidence — said the evidence Barr left out showed the President engaged in obstruction of justice, that the Trump presidential campaign was manipulated by Russian intelligence. It all paints a picture that the American people and future presidential candidates really need to see. President Trump and his toadies can speak petulantly and relentlessly about fake news and unfair partisanship, but the only facts we get through the stonewall of White House flackery is carried by public servants who will not sit quietly and by journalists ready to carry their truth into the grace of public light.
