Sen. Ted Cruz says the media have much to answer for after two years of non-stop coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion probe that largely exonerates President Trump.
The Texas Republican told Fox’s Sean Hannity Tuesday night the media has “egg on their face.”
“We’ve had now two years of this special prosecutor investigation, and during the entire time, virtually every Democrat and all of the media has been breathlessly covering every minute of it — insisting collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion,” Cruz said.
Over the weekend, Attorney General William Barr said Mueller’s report found no evidence to suggest that President Trump’s team colluded with Russia.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein also concluded from the report that there was no direct evidence to support charges of obstruction of justice against Trump.
“Everything the Democrats and media have been talking about for two years was lacking in a factual basis,” Cruz said. “And the entire media has egg on their face, and what are they doing now? They are not apologizing, they’re not backtracking, they’re not saying: ‘Gosh, our facts were wrong.’ Instead, they are attacking.”
When Mueller’s report came out, several of those outlets defended their coverage.
“We wrote a lot about Russia, and I have no regrets,” Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, said. “It’s not our job to determine whether or not there was illegality.”
The president of CNN, Jeff Zucker, also said he stood by the network’s reporting.
“We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did,” Zucker said. “A sitting president’s own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That’s not enormous because the media says so. That’s enormous because it’s unprecedented.”
Cruz, a 2016 GOP primary rival of Trump, said Tuesday he expects House Democrats to push impeachment proceedings, despite the Mueller report’s findings.
“Mark my words,” Cruz said. “The House Democrats are going to impeach the president anyway. Not because of any evidence, not because of any crimes, but because of the fact he is Donald Trump, and they hate Donald Trump. It is showing just how extreme they are.”
