Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Chuck Todd aired a clip of Attorney General William Barr’s interview with CBS News’ Catherine Herridge from this week, when he was asked how history would look back on his department’s decision to dismiss the case against General Michael Flynn.
Shortly after, Kerri Kupec, the Department of Justice Spox, ripped NBC’s Chuck Todd for “deceptive editing” a clip of the Attorney General, which appeared to cast his response in a negative way.
Chuck Todd said on Sunday to Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and the panel: “I want you to listen to this, Bill Barr’s answer to a question about what will history say about this. Wait until you hear this answer, take a listen.”
“Well, history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history,” Barr had said in the video clip, which aired only the first two sentences with his response.
“I was struck, Peggy, by the cynicism of the answer. It’s a correct answer, but he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law,” Todd said. “He was almost admitting that, yeah, this is a political job.”
During the CBS interview, however, the attorney general told Herridge right after: “But I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It helped, it upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.” Continued Below
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec responded on Twitter to the clip NBC aired and tweeted: “Very disappointed by the deceptive editing/commentary by @ChuckTodd on @MeetThePress on AG Barr’s CBS interview.”
While attaching screenshots of the Attorney General’s remarks from the CBS interview, she added: “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.”
Kupec also tweeted: “Also, no mention by Todd that the AG spent a large portion of the CBS interview explaining the legal reasoning supporting the request for dismissal. The full transcript has been available on CBS’ website since Thursday night, including the answer NBC aired in its edited form.” Video Below
Kupec tweeted a video from Daily Caller’s Greg Price, who posted a video of Barr’s full answer:
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
Full CBS interview transcript here: https://t.co/zCOtxLP22U
— KerriKupecDOJ (@KerriKupecDOJ) May 10, 2020
Also, no mention by Todd that the AG spent a large portion of the CBS interview explaining the legal reasoning supporting the request for dismissal. The full transcript has been available on CBS’ website since Thursday night, including the answer NBC aired in its edited form. https://t.co/R1c4HEcZi9
— KerriKupecDOJ (@KerriKupecDOJ) May 10, 2020
Catherine Herridge weighed in as well, and she tweeted on Sunday:
#FLYNN Two big moments from our exclusive AG Barr interview @CBSNews “I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It helped, it upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.” pic.twitter.com/aRtFnnx7da
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May 10, 2020
