Even NBC was forced to admit that Todd blew it on this one.
For this story, let’s start at the end, and work our way backward.
NBC, after being called out, offered a tepid apology on Twitter for ‘errors’ (if you can believe this was unintentional) that were ‘inadvertently’ made to lie about Bill Barr.
“Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by @ChuckTodd on @MeetThePress on AG Barr’s CBS interview,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec wrote. “Compare the two transcripts below. Not only did the AG make the case in the VERY answer Chuck says he didn’t, he also did so multiple times throughout the interview.”
In response, the “Meet the Press” Twitter account posted: “You’re correct. Earlier today, we inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr before offering commentary and analysis. The remaining clip included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed, and we regret the error.”
“‘Inadvertently strikes again!'” tweeted independent journalist Mike Cernovich.
…But, the show did not say it would apologize on-air. NBC News did not respond to Fox News’ request for information about an on-air apology, either.
“A tweet in no way covers the error,” wrote The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway. “A lot of people are rightly angry at @chucktodd for willfully lying about AG Barr’s comments on rule of law — but @JoeNBC also did it days ago. These intentional lies in service of false narratives have gone on for years. Infuriating.” (That was a reference, in part, to NBC’s Joe Scarborough sharing a debunked, deceptively edited clip of Vice President Mike Pence handling boxes of PPE.) —FoxNews
What was the deception?
This tweet contains both videos back-to-back so you can see Chuck Todd’s manufactured outrage, cutting the clip short while Barr’s lips are still moving, followed by the actual statement made by Barr.
Today on Meet The Press, @chucktodd wildly took context out of an answer AG Bill Barr gave about his decision to drop the case into Gen. Michael Flynn.
I cut Todd's segment along with Barr's full answer together. Look at how blatantly dishonest this is. pic.twitter.com/tODOEwL48V
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 10, 2020
The very ‘nuance’ Todd claimed that was missing in Barr’s answer WERE the next words out of his mouth… the ones Todd conveniently cut off.
And Chuck dares to drop the word CYNICAL into his criticism of Barr? He claims that Barr was almost admitting that this was a political job.
Does Chucky here have ZERO self-awareness?
There’s more. When Barr said history was written by the Victors, he wasn’t declaring ‘victory’, he was acknowledging the grim reality that not everyone who enters events into the public record — whether TV, print, online or as published books — has an interest in telling events as they actually happened.
Many have a dog in the fight, and tell the story that they would LIKE to see remembered.
Which, ironically, is exactly the cynical dynamic we saw play out in Chuck Todd’s show. Chuck was trying to rewrite history.
The clown COULD have told the story about a plot to weaponize government apparatus against an innocent man being foiled so that the innocent man could go free. It would include acknowledging perhaps the greatest political scandal in US history. But that would be a problem for Chucky, as it would implicate some key Democrats, and hurt their chances in the next election.
So Chuck Todd, instead, told the story (despite documentary evidence of an intent to entrap and destroy a man who was a political rival) that Bill Barr was somehow acting in a corrupt or partisan manner by dropping this entirely unpredicated case against General Flynn.
This sad episode has told us far more about who Chuck Todd really is than it does about any of the subjects he purported to discuss.
It also prompts a question about how uninformed Chucky really is.
Did he actually watch the original video he was commenting on, and this hit piece was his own takeaway?
Or is he handed pre-digested hit pieces and reacting to snippets someone else provides to him.
Asked differently — is Chuck Todd an intentional liar? Or is he just a trained monkey following someone else’s script?
