MSNBC interrupts airing of Lindsey Graham's speech to criticize him: He's a 'human shield' for Trump

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Sen. Graham reads uncensored Strzok-Page texts on Trump during Barr hearing

Sen. Lindsey Graham reads text messages from fired FBI agent Peter Strzok to Lisa Page, including one calling Trump a 'f---ing idiot,' during his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the handling of the Mueller report.

MSNBC interrupted its broadcast of Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to correct him and criticize his actions as head of the committee tasked with questioning Attorney General William Barr about the special counsel's report.

Graham, during his speech, stated that the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report found that Russia and the Trump campaign didn't engage in "collusion" -- a term that seemed to irk MSNBC host Brian Williams who pushed back on Graham's use of the term.

"We're reluctant to do this, we rarely do," Williams said before telling viewers that Mueller's report didn't address "collusion." "The report said collusion is not a thing they considered — it doesn't exist in federal court," he said.

While Graham continued speaking, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace derided Graham's words and indicated he was engaging in an unnecessary attempt to defend the president.

MUELLER LETTER TO BARR ON RUSSIA REPORT

“What’s stunning is that 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," she said.

Her comments came amid a report that Mueller complained that Barr's memo -- which said the report found insufficient evidence to accuse Trump of obstruction and collusion -- "did not fully capture the context" of his report.

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"I’m sorry, Lindsey Graham, but your defensiveness is showing," Wallace added. "To talk about everything that went into it and in the next breath distort it is a stunning, stunning mischaracterization of what the whole exercise is supposed to be about.

"Reveals what I talked about before, that he is sitting there today not as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but as a human shield for Donald Trump and, it would appear, William Barr.”

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Wallace similarly called Barr a "human shield" for the president after he held a press conference prior to the release of Mueller's report.

"The rule of law had a deficit because Donald Trump had been kicking it in the teeth for 22 months, and what the country’s Attorney General did was walk in there and back up the guy doing the kicking,"  she said. For his part, at the time Williams compared Barr to the Iraqi propagandist "Baghdad Bob."