Senator Kamala Harris's questioning of Attorney General William Barr was reminiscent of her questioning of Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, @maggieNYT writes. Follow along as our reporters discuss Barr's testimony: https://t.co/CxSJFtaafJ pic.twitter.com/OjqA7QtNV8— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) May 1, 2019
When I left it, the kewl kids at the NYT confab kibitzing about Barr's testimony said they saw nothing remarkable, but maybe "social media" would think otherwise, I mean, who knows about social media, amirite?
Fortunately, we have Nicole Wallace:
“Donald Trump has had a ‘help wanted, looking for Roy Cohn’ sign outside 1600 Pennsylvania avenue for two years and two months,” Wallace said, laughing disdainfully. “It would take someone like William Barr to make Jeff Sessions and even Matt Whittaker, who has far as we know didn’t go as far as William Barr did — Barr makes the two of them look better by comparison.”It's not a legal defense; then again, the AG shouldn't be offering the POTUS a legal defense. It's not a factual defense. It barely rises to the level of pounding on the table.
“William Barr at that press conference the day the Mueller report came out before we’d seen it, and read any of it for ourself, he said ‘no collusion,'” Wallace recalled, and then affected a hilarious “poor baby” accent. “But then he did a good little Dr. Phil schtick and said ‘the president was so fwustwated. He wasn’t obstructiony, he was frustratedy.'”
“I have a 7-year-old, I don’t excuse his conduct. He doesn’t get to bang on the table at restaurant because he’s frustrated,” she added flatly. “The A.G. made excuses for the sitting president that I wouldn’t make for my 7-year-old son. “
“And then to hear it again today, and sort of this parsing and finagling as the country’s sitting attorney general offers some defense of Donald Trump that really wasn’t rooted in anything legal,” she scoffed. “It was sort of this psychological examination of just how stressed the president must be. It was ridiculous.
It WAS ridiculous.
And somehow, too, also, as well, the NYT kewl kids missed this little nugget:
“Some of us are still picking our jaws up off the floor from what we have witnessed. Let me reset the day’s dramatic events for anyone just joining the coverage,” [Nicole] Wallace said.Social media, amirite? Whaddareyagonnado?
“Attorney General William Barr was on Capitol Hill all day testifying before the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee on the Mueller report,” she explained. “That testimony commenced this morning. Just hours after explosive reporting broke in The Washington Post and The New York Times about a rift between special counsel Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr over Mueller’s concerns that the Attorney General had mischaracterized the special counsel’s findings.”
“That rift revealed in two never before reported letters written by Robert Mueller to William Barr,” she explained, reading from the second letter.
NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilemann offered his thoughts.
“I will say I watched a lot of today and throughout the day I kept thinking about [former] Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), who once said Bill Clinton was an unusually good liar,” Heilemann said. “Bill Barr is an unusually bad liar.”
“He lied a lot today and he lied in ways that were large and he lied in ways that were small,” he explained.
“I think lie is the only right word,” Heilemann added.
(This chart, by the way, was used in the hearing. Charts are meaningless, of course, because they don't create soundbites, and soundbites are what matter, donchaknow?)
From the Lawfare blog. Says it all... pic.twitter.com/GsmGZNB5kb— Samantha Goodman (@SamanthaGoodman) May 1, 2019
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