This week’s Liberal Media Scream features “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie’s grilling of White House press secretary Sarah Sanders over the exonerating report from special investigator Robert Mueller regarding collusion charges between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian agents.
Guthrie pressed Sanders to “acknowledge it is incorrect for the president to call this a total exoneration” given questions remaining about obstruction of justice. Pivoting from vindication for President Trump on conspiring with Russia, Guthrie relayed how “some critics are saying” it took Mueller years to complete his investigation, but it only took Attorney General William Barr two days to conclude there wasn’t a case for obstruction, “so the criticism is here’s a guy making a snap judgment who had already made up his mind about the case.”
Her comments followed weeks of media and Democratic pleadings to Barr for a quick release of any of the details once Mueller turned it over to Justice.
Guthrie followed up with how Barr was biased since “he wrote a 19-page memo stating there’s no obstruction case against the president before he saw one piece of evidence.”
Three of Guthrie’s questions to Sanders on Monday’s “Today” show:
- “Let’s be clear about what this report – what this letter is and what it isn’t. It is an exoneration, a legal exoneration with regard to conspiracy or collusion. As to this issue of whether the president obstructed justice in this investigation, the special counsel doesn’t say, and in fact, makes a point to say, ‘This report does not conclude the president committed a crime. It also does not exonerate him.’ So would you acknowledge it is incorrect for the president to call this a total exoneration?”
- “In point of fact, you have a special counsel because the person is supposed to be independent and supposed to make this legal judgment. In this case, for whatever reason, Mueller didn’t. Attorney General Barr took it upon himself to issue a legal conclusion, and some critics are saying, ‘wait a minute, is this on the level?’ He did it in 48 hours, and he wrote a memo six months ago, eight months ago, in June last year, stating there wasn’t an obstruction of justice case. So the criticism is here’s a guy making a snap judgment who had already made up his mind about the case and it’s on the record.”
- “What about the idea that he already had judged the case? I mean, he wrote a 19-page memo stating there’s no obstruction case against the president before he saw one piece of evidence.”
Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker explains our weekly pick: “File this under ‘Never satisfied.’ After journalists obsessed over learning of Robert Mueller’s findings, when, by vindicating Trump on collusion, they didn’t match the media narrative, Guthrie jumped to a new line of attack. Like much of the media reaction over the first 18 hours, to undermine Trump she focused on trying to discredit Barr’s judgment in order to keep a cloud over Trump and help justify the media’s otherwise embarrassing focus on collusion.”
Rating: Four out of five screams.
