MSNBC's Brian Williams and Nicole Wallace interrupted Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham's claim there was "no collusion" found in Robert Mueller's report, offering a rare real-time fact-check Wednesday.
Williams cut in on the South Carolina Republican's lengthy lecture at the Senate committee hearing on Attorney General William Barr's handling of the Special Counsel Russian investigation report. Graham was expressing how absurd he believed the hearing to be, listing off several items including, "no collusion, no coordination, no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government."
But as Graham continued in the background, the MSNBC hosts interrupted to fact-check him on the air.
"We're reluctant to do this, we rarely do, but the chairman of the judiciary committee just said that Mueller found there was 'no collusion.' That is not correct," Williams said Wednesday. "The report says collusion is not a thing they considered, it doesn't exist in federal code."
Wallace then continued the on-air fact check, "And what's stunning is Lindsey Graham is offering answers to questions that aren't on the table today. The question on the table today, after the reporting last night, is why did Barr mischaracterize what was actually in the Mueller report? And sorry, Lindsey Graham, but you're defensiveness is showing."
The MSNBC hosts labeled Graham's Senate spiel "stunning," calling him a "human shield" for Trump and Barr.
"To talk about everything that went into it and then in the next breath distort is a stunning, stunning mischaracterization of what the whole exercise is supposed to be about and it reveals what I talked about before," Wallace said. "That he's sitting there today, not just as the chairman of the judiciary committee but as a human shield for Donald Trump, and it would appear, William Barr."
Williams apologized again about the "no collusion mantra" being spouted by Graham, and explaining the cable news network decided to flag it when they heard Graham utter the fabrication.
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