Media Skip Murkowski's Criticism of House Impeachment Process

December 29th, 2019 6:20 PM

Did you hear that Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski is "disturbed?" It was probably hard to miss over the past few days as many mainstream media outlets repeatedly touted how "disturbed" Murkowski was by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell intending to coordinate strategy with the White House if and when the House ever gets around to sending their articles of impeachment over to them.

However what you probably haven't heard during all this "disturbed" hype is the rest of the interview in which Murkowski severely criticized the House impeachment process. You can get an idea of how incredibly cherry-picked that interview was by first watching the brief "disturbed" excerpt that appeared on NBC Nightly News and then comparing it to the full interview which was broadcast by KTUU TV in Anchorage Alaska.

HANS NICHOLS: Tonight President Trump dealing with a potential Republican defection on impeachment. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski signalling she's unhappy with Mitch McConnell's pledge to work in total coordination with the White House.

LISA MURKOWSKI: When I heard that I was disturbed.

And that is what most of the public heard about the interview. That Murkowski was "disturbed."

Of course there was the not so little detail of the rest of the interview that most of the MSM, including NBC News, very conveniently skipped while touting what they wanted to hear. In the full KTUU interview, you can see that the McConnell coordination strategy was only a part of what "disturbed" her and that she was also extrememly critical of the House impeachment process:

REPORTER: Alaska senior Senator Lisa Murkowski critical of the House impeachment process, saying it was rushed.

MURKOWSKI: Speaker Pelosi was very clear, very direct that her goal was to get this done before Christmas.

And not only was the impeachment process rushed in Murkowski's opinion but she was also critical of the demand for the Senate to call witnesses that the House avoided:

MURKOWSKI: If the House truly believed they had information that was going to be important they subpoena them. And if they ignore the subpoena, as they did at the direction of the White House, then that next step is to go to the courts.

Of course, that criticism of Nancy Pelosi and the House, didn't make it into the vast majority of the cherry-picked MSM reports about Murkowski being "disturbed."