As a media critic, I've seen and written about many egregious instances of journalistic malfeasance for the last ten years, but what Luke Russert told Kate Snow on MSNBC this afternoon has to be some of the most idiotic, gas-guzzling, dunderheaded analysis of a political event I've ever witnessed.
Digby caught this and tweeted about it earlier today.
Here's Russert's exact quote on how committee Dems blocked the Republicans #for10straighthours
@BarbinMD pic.twitter.com/prnuQBhQVo
— digby (@digby56) October 23, 2015
Transcript:
Russert: I think what you saw there was Elijah Cummings, Mr Schiff, Sanchez, they were able to block a lot of the things that would have been hurtful to her by bringing up things, 'hey your time is done chairman' or 'we shouldn't go on to this one, or how much longer are we going to be here.' That worked in her favor and they want to continue to do that.
In essence, what he's saying is that even though Hillary Clinton was grilled for almost eleven hours, and that's the time he ascribed to the hearing, he believed that the ten or fifteen minutes or so of Democrats like Elijah Cummings and Adam Schiff complaining to Trey Gowdy offered up an ample defense to block all those possible, hurtful questions that Republicans have been waiting to ask Hillary about for months. That they were able to save her! Really? He said that on live TV? Not even the most archconservative pundits had the nerve to actually make that claim.
Yes. Yes, that is it. No doubt Trey Gowdy would have finally gotten to the bottom of everything had several Democrats not asked him occasional procedural questions about how much longer they were going to be there and whether the staff should be breaking out marshmallows and sleeping bags.
That was surely the pivotal moment. Oh, just imagine how different things would have been if Democrats had not asked, as things approached the eleventh hour, how much longer they should expect to have to be there.
Usually Luke parrots the beltway media's conventional wisdom on most issues, but if that's what he came up on his own, I think he should leave the thinking to the Higher Broders of the Villagers.
