Disappointment. Anger. Sadness. The journalists and hosts at MSNBC on Wednesday alternated between these emotions as it became clear that Robert Mueller’s testimony wasn’t going the way they thought it might. Various network personalities raged at how the hearings were turning into a “boring” “disaster.”
MSNBC analyst Jeremy Bash bluntly concluded, “I thought he was boring; I thought in some cases he was sort of evasive. He didn’t want to explain or expand on his rationale. He seemed lost at times.” Bash worried, “I fear that this hearing set back efforts to hold the president accountable for what the president did.”
MSNBC brought on former Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, to offer the Democratic Party response, and she was equally as negative: “Today, he was a witness. And he frankly wasn’t a really good witness. Because he declined to answer, by my account, over 100 times.”
Co-host Brian Williams openly spoke of liberal disappointment and anger as he branded the Mueller effort a “disaster”:
Most of the criticism has been in my view, looking at it from the left side of the partisan ledger. The Washington Post write through, which was just published, uses words like “halting, “short” and “clipped.” I’ve been following David Axelrod. “This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years and does not appear as sharp as he was then. The speed dating approach to questions is hard on Mueller.” A lot of Democrats in particular used the D-word and branded this a disaster early on.
In contrast, the journalists at CNN put on a brave face and cheered the “bombshell” hearings as a “big deal” and “really bad” for Trump. {eoa}
