Fox News host Tucker Carlson responded to MSNBC’s Brian Williams’ decision to fact-check Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s speech during Attorney General William Barr’s Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill.
“MSNBC, if you were watching, you may have noticed, could not contain its excitement during the Attorney General’s testimony. During the hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham noted quite correctly that Mueller’s report found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Brian Williams wouldn’t have it, they cut in to call Graham a liar,” Carlson began. (RELATED: Trump Lawyer Reads Directly From Mueller Report To Push Back Against Brian Williams)
“Just another fact-check from a guy suspended for lying. Nice guy, but please get some self-awareness. That wasn’t the only time something like that happened though today, an hour later they cut away again to say that Barr was a big fat liar, too,” he continued.
The Hill’s Joe Concha agreed, “Conforming to the hive, Tucker. Look, I’m a Jersey guy, he grew up down the Jersey Shore, he is a nice guy by all accounts. The environment that he is in, he realizes that he has to give his audience comfort food, what they want to hear at this point.”
“And the scary part about that is that he could just pivot into being what he’s become now, which is completely and totally partisan,” Concha concluded. “Remember, he was the anchor, the NBC Nightly News for many many years. And he’s gone the full Dan Rather I would say. These guys were people that you trusted because there they are, CBS and NBC giving you the news and now instead they’ve gone completely and totally from one side to the left and they’ve destroyed legacies in the process, unfortunately.”
The segment came after Williams cut into both Graham’s and Barr’s testimony during Wednesday’s hearings to say that they were lying about the facts in the Mueller report.
“We’re reluctant to do this, we rarely do,” Williams said about interrupting the broadcast of the hearing. “The chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said that Mueller found there was no collusion. That is not correct.”
Graham asserted that Mueller reported no collusion occurred between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, something Williams apparently disagreed with.
It wasn’t the first time Williams called Barr’s statements into question. In April, the MSNBC host called Barr “Baghdad Bill Barr,” a reference to an Iraqi Defense Minister known as “Baghdad Bob” who misstated Iraqi victories under Saddam Hussein.
“It’s already been mentioned around here — it would hearken back to a conflict decades ago — we would not be surprised if some headline writer somewhere came up somewhere with ‘Baghdad Bill Barr’ for what we saw today,” Williams claimed at the time.
Williams spent a great deal of time defending himself against claims of lying about his past when it came to light there were several stories that he reported on that were either complete fakes or greatly embellished.