Chuck Todd facing backlash for highlighting letter mocking Christian Trump supporters
'Meet the Press' host Chuck Todd faced pushback for touting a letter to the editor that claims religious people who believe in 'fairy tales' like Noah's ark support President Trump because they 'want to be lied to.'
NBC News' Chuck Todd aired a deceptively edited clip of Attorney General Bill Barr discussing the Michael Flynn case during his "Meet the Press" broadcast on Sunday, and one critic notes the show's belated apology for the botched segment was buried in a place where few people would see it.
Asked by a CBS reporter how history would judge the Department of Justice'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 on "Meet the Press," 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."
However, in the full CBS News clip, which Todd's 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."
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“Meet the Press” admitted the mistake Sunday on Twitter hours later, and only in reply to a tweet from Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec, who noted “the AG make the case in the VERY answer Chuck says he didn’t.”
“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 verified Twitter account of “Meet the Press” wrote on Sunday.
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Fourth Watch editor Steve Krakauer noted the number of people who could have seen the tweet is significantly smaller than the typical “Meet the Press” audience.
“It has 3,300+ RTs, but likely has not been seen by even a small portion of the accounts 630,000+ followers, because a reply is only seen by mutual followers of both accounts. Meet The Press has millions of viewers on NBC every Sunday, and another several hundred thousand through multiple re-airs on MSNBC. This mistake will not appear corrected for those viewers,” Krakauer wrote.
Todd takes the day off his MSNBC program, “MTP Daily,” on Mondays, after hosting the Sunday program. There was no mention of the blunder by Monday’s fill-in host, and MSNBC did not respond when asked if Todd would issue an on-air correction during Tuesday’s show.
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Krakauer feels that the mistake might be “minor,” but proves that mainstream media will “rush to believe the worst” from members of the Trump administration while also giving viewers a reason to lose faith in Todd as a “neutral purveyor” for the truth.
Late Sunday, President Trump tweeted that "Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd" should be fired, saying he "knew exactly what he was doing."
Fox News’ Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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