Trump pollster John McLaughlin appeared Wednesday night on a BBC News interview, but it ended rudely and abruptly when McLaughlin dared to mock the Clintons for their largesse from the Russians. BBC anchor (or “presenter”) Mike Embley suddenly pulled a libel muscle and declared this (factual) mockery could not be permitted without a Clinton present to fight back.
But somehow, Embley thought it was eminently fair to speculate about impeaching Donald Trump:
MIKE EMBLEY: We hear a lot of talk, there is a lot of talk about impeachment, We’re always told by the commentators it’s never going to happen while the Republicans control Congress, unless they start to feel that the Republican base, his core voters, are losing it with him, in which case it might happen. You just think it’ll never happen.
McLAUGHLIN: No, because articles of impeachment are based on fact. There are no facts here. They’ve appointed an independent counsel that, you know, what’s interesting, the deputy attorney general that made the appointment was being stalled in the Senate, by the Democrats, who were obstructing him for four months. And what he does, when he gets on the job is, he fires Comey, because he had no political support in the country. He basically corrupted law enforcement in the United States. The FBI, which had always been seen as above board, above politics, you know, last year and this year, it was seen as pulling its punches, he was holding press conferences –
This is where the BBC man grew testy, that McLaughlin would mess with the leftist narrative that Comey is an incorruptible saint, and Trump is always up to something nefarious:
EMBLEY: – So I have to pick you up on that, Mr. Comey would have a lot to say on that, and he’ll probably get his chance next week when he gives testimony. But you can’t say there are no facts here, quite clearly. We don’t know! There are things to be investigated!
McLAUGHLIN: There no facts that prove there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
EMBLEY: We don’t know yet, do we? Nobody knows!
McLAUGHLIN: Oh, we do know there are no facts as of right now. And in fact, I worked on that campaign, and I can tell you there were no facts. It never came up in the polls, and it never showed up in the electorate, and there’s no evidence they ever tampered with any electorate, with any election ballots at all. So they keep spreading this – Hillary Clinton got destroyed in the election. She was supposed to win, and it was the biggest upset for the establishment that they’ve ever seen, so they invented this myth that the Russians interfered.
Embley’s intercession here is comical. “You can’t say there are no facts, because we’re still desperately looking! Keep hope alive! We might find collusion any day now!” Democrats from Sen. Dianne Feinstein to Rep. Maxine Waters have admitted there is no evidence of collusion. Reuters just reported a story pushing "18 undisclosed contacts" the Trump team had with the Russians, but still admitted: "The people who described the contacts to Reuters said they had seen no evidence of wrongdoing or collusion between the campaign and Russia in the communications reviewed so far."
Then the pollster went “too far” by mocking the Clintons and their own chumminess with the Russians:
McLAUGHLIN: And you know what? They’ll keep talking about General Flynn. You know who took more money from the Russians than General Flynn did?
EMBLEY: (interrrupting before an answer): John, I can’t –
McLAUGHLIN: It was Bill and Hillary Clinton.
EMBLEY: I can’t let you say that on air without the people you’re accusing being here to speak for themselves –
McLAUGHLIN: – It’s true. But it’s true!
EMBLEY: I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’d like to talk to you – I’d very much like to talk to you once we hear back from Mr. Mueller. Let’s do that. Can we do that? Can we make a date?
McLAUGHLIN (in disbelief, perhaps because he hadn’t just dissed Mueller): With Mr. Mueller?
EMBLEY: Let’s talk again!
McLAUGHLIN: But I’m talking about facts –
EMBLEY: I can’t let you make those allegations, John, I’m sorry, not on air. We’ll be held liable as well. These people have to be allowed to defend themselves.
McLaughlin on his website linked to articles like in The New York Times reporting in 2015 that Bill Clinton took a $500,000 honorarium from a Russian bank pushing the deal to acquire the company Uranium One. Meanwhile, Gen. Flynn is reported to have accepted $68,000 from Russian sources, most of that from the Russia Today TV network. In other words, it's somehow a potentially impeachable national-security scandal that he's accepted about 14 percent of what Bill Clinton accepted for one speech.
McLaughlin, who has had clients in Europe, joked about what an outlier this interview was: "The British are never rude!" BBC wouldn’t send McLaughlin a link to the video – perhaps, for obvious reasons – so he bought the footage and offered it to NewsBusters. A fuller version is at his website McLaughlinOnline.com.
PS: McLaughlin sent along Twitter messages Embley sent him after the interview, still doing the libel song-and-dance:
