Rush Limbaugh on Mueller's letter to Barr: “This is classic misdirection and classic fake news.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the May 1 edition of Premiere Radio Network's The Rush Limbaugh Show:
We make the complex understandable. This isn't complex. It's being made to look complex but it isn't complex. Here's the bottom line.
The attorney general is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. The drive-bys want you to believe that he's up there testifying because the special counsel told The Washington Post that the attorney general is misrepresenting the Mueller report. And that is not at all what has happened.
Nothing has changed. There was no collusion, Mueller has not said there was. His report says there isn't and there has been no change. There was no collusion. The attorney general has concluded that there was no obstruction. The special counsel works for the attorney general. What Bob Mueller wants and what Bob Mueller needs is irrelevant. What Attorney General Barr determines is gonna be said is what's gonna be said. Robert Mueller is the equivalent of a U.S. attorney, he is under and reports to the attorney general.
It doesn't matter. Nothing has changed, there is no collusion, there was no obstruction. All that is happening here is an ongoing process where they are discussing the process of how all of this was arrived at. Because the Democrats can't give it up and because the media made the decision two and a half years ago to become complicit in this effort to get rid of Trump, they can't get rid of it either.
How did all of this start? This all started with a leak of a letter, a letter that was written specifically to be leaked. A letter written by Andrew Weissman, who was the lead investigator, lead Hillary supporter, was on stage with Hillary during her concession speech, he cried with her when she lost, he's the lead investigator for Mueller. They write a letter to Barr saying, “Boo-hoo I don't like the way you characterized it -- the media's not reporting it.” So Barr said, “Well, wait a minute, did we get something wrong?” “Well no, nothing's wrong, we just don't like the way the media's talking about us.”
Well boo-hoo. Go stand in Trump's shoes for one day, Mr. Mueller, and see how you handle it. You can't stand what the media's doing? Here's the substance of this, we're going to get the audio sound bites to back this up. And I have to tell you, it is a joy to listen to William Barr testify. All of these senators, most of them think that they are going to outsmart him and that they're going to trick him into admitting that there was collusion and that he's covering it up. They think they're going to get him to admit that he's simply running a front operation for the president. And he's not. The stupidity is all possessed by these Democrat senators today, and it's on full display. Barr is simply clear and factual. And I'll tell you something. It's actually -- It is refreshing to see somebody in official Washington who can be simply factual in their answers.
Now here's what happened. Last night The Washington Post published an article that was supposed to be the mother of all bombshells. It was supposed to rock Barr, it was supposed to turn Barr inside out, it was supposed to make Barr resign, it was supposed to convince people that Barr has been lying but that it had been uncovered and discovered and that Barr was going to be facing the music today. It was a leak timed to do as much damage to Barr's credibility before his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning.
Now as usual, in all of these stories, this is a phenomenon that we pointed out here on the EIB network throughout the two-plus years of the Mueller investigation. Every day for two years, there were two to three, sometimes four stories, New York Times, Washington Post, in which bombshell after bombshell after bombshell was alleged by anonymous sources from the intelligence community, from the FBI, and every one of these bombshells was made to look like the walls were closing in on Donald Trump, that the jig was about up, that Trump was about finished. And then if you read far enough, usually the 13th to 15th paragraph, you would find that the story admits that there is no evidence for what has been alleged in the previous 12 paragraphs. It was uncanny. And that's exactly what this is. If you drill down to about 13 paragraphs into this Washington Post story, you find information that completely undercuts the big scoop. And again, this is a journalistic phenomenon that we uncovered and have been reporting, probably the first to do so, beginning two years ago.
The Washington Post reports that Robert Mueller complained in a letter to Barr on March 27 that Barr's 24th of March letter that summarized the report's conclusions quote -- in other words, Mueller sends Barr a letter on March 27 three days after Barr issued his summary to the nation -- no conclusion, no obstruction. Mueller gets on his high horse and starts crying, says, “But, but, but, your summary did not fully capture the context and nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions.” And that Barr's summary caused public confusion over the results of the investigation.
Folks this is flat out BS. This is simply Robert Mueller -- the letter was probably written by Andrew Weissman under Mueller's name.
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This little smear job today designed to impugn Barr is actually a lie, and it is made up and exposed. Both things happened in the Washington Post story. So this report is textbook fake news.
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The Washington Post never published the Mueller letter, by the way. There's no reason not to. It certainly doesn't contain any grand jury material or national security secrets. The Washington Post didn't publish the whole letter because they wanted to cherry pick their quotes in order to spin it to suggest that Bob Mueller claimed Barr lied about the report. This is classic misdirection and classic fake news.
Previously: