Following the news that Attorney General Eric Holder will be resigning, “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd told Andrea Mitchell that Holder was “a very non-political person” despite the vitriol he faced over the past six years from Republicans.
“I think people used to mistakenly think that this guy was this long-time political operative who happened to be an attorney general. That’s not him at all,” opined Todd. “The guy wasn’t political at all and in many ways, he’s just ended up being the point person to attract a lot of attacks.”
Todd also told Mitchell that Holder clashed repeatedly with former White House officials Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod over a multitude of issues, and that the overarching problem, from their point-of-view, was that Holder wasn’t considering the “politics of an issue.”
Meanwhile on Fox News, National Review editor Jonah Goldberg told host Jon Scott the exact opposite. Holder has been roundly criticized for his handling of the IRS targeting scandal and the botched Fast and Furious operation.
“He’s basically been a political fixer, a firewall for the president of the United States. A stonewaller. He serves much the way Bobby Kennedy did for JFK as a politicized attorney general/hatchet-man for the president,” said Goldberg.
“If John Ashcroft had behaved half as politicized as Eric Holder has, The New York Times would be sparking riots,” he added.
Holder’s resignation will be announced at a news conference Thursday afternoon. Holder is one of the few remaining Obama appointees from the beginning of the president’s first term.
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