MSNBC breaks into live hearing to report that Lindsey Graham is lying

Sycophantic Trump supporter and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham kicked off a Wednesday hearing for Attorney General Bill Barr with a lie — and MSNBC was having none of it.

In a rare move, anchors Brian Williams and Nicolle Wallace cut into Graham’s opening remarks to point out that Graham’s statements were false, and that they were going to fact check him in real time.

“We’re reluctant to do this, and we rarely do, but the chairman of the judiciary committee just said that Mueller found there was no collusion,” Williams said, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. “That is not correct.”

Wallace then piped in to accurately point out that Mueller’s report “says collusion is not a thing they considered” because it “doesn’t exist in the federal code.”

Wallace went on to bash Graham for once again moving the needle and lying to protect Trump.

“What is stunning is that Lindsey Graham is offering answers to questions that aren’t  on the table today,” Wallace said. “The question on the table today, after the reporting last night, is why did Barr mischaracterize what was actually in the report? I‘m sorry Lindsey Graham, but your defensiveness is showing.”

Wallace continued, “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 we talked about before: That he’s 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.”

Wednesday’s hearing with Barr got exponentially more interesting after both the New York Times and Washington Post revealed that Mueller was unhappy with Barr’s false characterization of the Mueller report.

Mueller was so unhappy that he wrote a letter to Barr on March 27 demanding that Barr release the summaries Mueller’s team had prepared in order to squash the confusion Barr had created with his lies.

Barr, however, refused.

And in an even more brazen move, Barr went on to lie to Congress not once but twice about whether he knew why Mueller’s team was frustrated with Barr’s summary.

Barr’s lies have led to calls for his resignation, and are sure to set off fireworks at Wednesday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Those fireworks, however, clearly won’t be sparked by Republicans like Graham, who are already trying to run defense for Barr and the Trump administration.

Because for the GOP, loyalty to Trump trumps doing what’s right and moral every time.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.