On Sunday, May 10, 2020, Chuck Todd, on Meet the Press, committed an unforgivable act. He flat out lied about remarks made by Attorney General Bill Barr. NBC has tried to cover for Todd, but it’s not going to work. The excuse rings hollow and is part and parcel of the NBC ethos.

Here are the basics of what happened. Chuck Todd had a panel that included Peggy Noonan. Todd introduces a clip from an interview that Catherine Herridge, of CBS, conducted with A.G. Barr. Todd says, “What will history say about this? Wait till you hear this answer.” You could feel Todd’s distaste for Barr, not just in the words he said, but in the skeevy way he said them.

The clip plays; it’s very brief. Herridge asks Barr what history will say about the Department of Justice’s decision to drop the prosecution of Mike Flynn. Here is the next part of the story from Fox News:

Asked by CBS News’ Catherine Herridge how history would judge the DOJ’s decision to move to dismiss the Flynn case, Barr initially responded, laughing: “Well, history is written by the winners, so it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

After the brief clip aired, Todd remarked that he was “struck 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. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this was a political job.”

Chuck Todd was “struck by the cynicism”. What a lying piece of elephant excrement! Todd is allegedly a journalist. He is the Moderator of Meet the Press. He is responsible for everything that airs on that program. He flat out lied. Todd flat out lied because he knew that wasn’t Barr’s full answer. Again, from Fox News:

In the full clip, which the NBC show did not air, Barr immediately went on to state explicitly that, in fact, he felt the Flynn decision upheld the rule of law.

“I think a fair history would say it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law,” Barr said. “It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.”

To show just how egregious this lying was, here are the clips played back to back:

That should enrage any sentient being. Completely different answer when played in full, right? When called out, did NBC apologize? Hale to the no. NBC lied some more:

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.

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 10, 2020

Yes, it was inaccurate. But, the edit was not inadvertent. It was malicious and intentional. The malicious edit is part of the NBC ethos. From Brian Williams’ false claims to the rigged, exploding gas tanks on pick-up trucks in the early 1990’s, this is NBC.

President Donald Trump has called for Chuck Todd to be fired. In a just world, Todd would be fired and shunned in polite society. We don’t live in a just world. Chuck Todd is going to not only keep his job, but he is probably also getting huzzahs from his cohorts in the journalism world.

So, I will close with this. I get a lot of flak from my Liberal friends (fewer of those these days) because I don’t watch the legacy media. I watch a lot of C-Span so I get unfiltered information. I read a lot of foreign press because those outlets are often more fair in their reporting. The Sunday morning political shows used to be must watch for those who wanted to be informed. Now, they are just a bunch of lying hacks. Who needs to watch that? Not this broad.

Featured Image: Chuck Todd by Donkey Hotey/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)