Late last night Trump called for NBC’s Chuck Todd to be fired over his show taking AG Barr way out of context:
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd should be FIRED by “Concast” (NBC) for this fraud. He knew exactly what he was doing. Public Airwaves = Fake News! @AjitPaiFCC @FCC https://t.co/fLTDhjMXo4
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2020
As we posted last night on, NBC’s Meet the Press did admit to making a mistake:
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 remaining clip included important remarks from the attorney general that we missed, and we regret the error.
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 10, 2020
Mollie is right, that NBC’s tweet no way covers the error. But the error is greater than just a small mistake, because it means either one of two things happened. 1) Chuck Todd was so ill-prepared for the segment that he wasn’t even aware of AG Barr’s full answer, so that when the ‘mistake’ happened with the video he thought that was all Barr had said. Or 2), Todd absolutely meant to take Barr out of context, which is likely the popular opinion.
Even if it was the former, though, it’s still really bad. Because if Chuck Todd had been prepared for the segment and the video had cut off AG Barr mistakenly, as NBC admits, Todd would have just continued reading AG Barr’s answer instead of claiming that Barr didn’t say exactly what he DID say. Either way you slice this, Chuck Todd is at fault. And I’ll remind you that Megyn Kelly was let go from NBC’s Today Show for far, far less.