The Glenn Beck Program - April 19, 2019


Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Andy McCarthy ｜ 4⧸19⧸19


Episode Stats

Length

57 minutes

Words per Minute

166.67917

Word Count

9,628

Sentence Count

693

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

On today's show, Pat Gray and Jason Buttrell join Glenn to discuss the Robert Mueller report and why it's time to move on from it. Plus, the Easter Essay and Glenn's annual Easter message.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the podcast. It's Stu in for Glenn, who was sadly indicted in the Mueller report.
00:00:06.020 If you missed that, you'll have to catch up on another station because we're too embarrassed to talk about it here.
00:00:10.480 A terrible, terrible crime you committed, and I'll just let you discover it yourself.
00:00:14.120 Either that or he's sick. Glenn is going to be back on Monday, but today we had the podcast to kind of go through and talk about the Mueller report.
00:00:21.900 Where were we? Where are we? And where are we going?
00:00:24.800 And I think, you know, you'll see a good portion of where the Democrats are going to go here.
00:00:30.400 What are they going to chase? What are they after? And we'll get into that on today's program.
00:00:35.020 We have Pat Gray joining us as well. He goes over his take on the Mueller report.
00:00:40.160 And his, I think he has a very common, common plea for us to be able to move on from this.
00:00:48.160 And a common realization that it's just never going to happen, is it?
00:00:51.260 And we have another update about the Mueller report with Jason Buttrell.
00:00:55.060 He'll be on. We have Glenn's annual Easter essay, his Easter message.
00:00:58.740 So this is a great thing if you are a person of faith and you want to bring this out.
00:01:03.560 Maybe have your kids listen to it.
00:01:05.300 If you have maybe a little older kids that can, you know, that care and you want to kind of let them have a little bit of an intense telling of the Easter essay.
00:01:15.540 It's a great piece. We've run it for years. It's one of the most requested things we do every single year.
00:01:19.780 And Andy McCarthy from National Review and the New York Post has a take on the Mueller report.
00:01:24.580 I don't think you've heard anywhere else. It's really interesting.
00:01:27.720 We go through that, a bunch of audio from the media, and the secret plan of the Soviet Union back in the day
00:01:32.980 to write letters from the KKK to African athletes,
00:01:39.480 along with the creation of the myth that AIDS was created by the U.S. government.
00:01:45.340 They were involved in that. We'll tell you the story on today's podcast.
00:01:49.780 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:01:59.360 So the spectacle of the Mueller report happened yesterday, and what a spectacle it was.
00:02:10.320 Very proud of the way our nation handled this whole last couple of years.
00:02:14.520 It's worked out very well.
00:02:16.120 We had the big reveal with the press conference with Barr yesterday.
00:02:19.540 Then he put the Mueller report onto CDs, and then it was transferred to cassettes for the congressman to listen on their Walkman.
00:02:30.460 Then each congressman's individual beeper would go off, and that would indicate that the floppy disk copies were ready.
00:02:38.160 And once the floppy disk copies were ready, they were uploaded via 5,600 baud modem via America Online to make sure they could get onto the interwebs.
00:02:50.440 And finally, the technologically advanced congressman could read the entire thing on their Palm Pilots, which is pretty great.
00:03:00.980 It really worked out well, and it wasn't an embarrassing procedure at all.
00:03:04.780 This is an incredible kind of thing, because you had two parts of this.
00:03:09.360 Part one, collusion.
00:03:11.500 You're not hearing much about that.
00:03:13.200 There's a couple things in there that the left is trying to hang on to.
00:03:16.280 There's a couple of incidents here and there where they're trying to make it seem as if there was something there.
00:03:24.880 Some of it is just interesting to see what the Russians attempted to do.
00:03:29.740 Some of it you can kind of see an inexperienced campaign, maybe not handling things the right way.
00:03:35.820 Maybe they should have just gone to the FBI with some of these things.
00:03:38.480 Whether they realized them or not, I mean, Mueller quite clearly says there was no intent to do anything wrong here.
00:03:44.760 There was no intent to collude with Russians, which is, again, the title of the report, which you'd never guess.
00:03:52.360 Is the title of the report, how do we figure out if Trump screwed up?
00:03:56.480 Is the title of the report, hey, you know who's awful is Donald Trump?
00:04:01.400 How do we figure out how to get him out of office?
00:04:03.640 Stunningly, that's not the title of the report.
00:04:05.540 The report is, Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.
00:04:11.800 And we found that.
00:04:13.480 We have a lot of examples of it.
00:04:14.940 We're going to go through some of those and also some crazy historical examples of when Russia actually did do this and they were caught.
00:04:22.920 And it's incredible.
00:04:24.540 And they've been doing it the entire time.
00:04:25.900 They spent billions and billions of dollars.
00:04:28.400 The estimate is in 1980, so go back to the Soviet Union.
00:04:32.580 In 1980, they were spending $3 billion on these practices.
00:04:36.540 Back then, I mean, there's been some inflation since then.
00:04:40.980 Not to mention, it's a lot easier to do these things now.
00:04:44.460 You don't have to spend $3 billion.
00:04:45.840 You can spend a lot less.
00:04:47.040 But they were trying to influence the election.
00:04:48.880 The Mueller report captured that very well in multiple documents.
00:04:51.340 Really, the interesting stuff on that part of the investigation came in the indictments of the 25 Russians that came out earlier.
00:04:58.860 But this turns now into a political issue because you have the collusion thing, which is pretty much dead.
00:05:04.540 But you have the obstruction thing, which they're going to try to keep alive.
00:05:08.060 They're going to try to get as much fuel out of this as possible.
00:05:10.060 And they have this difficult line to walk as Democrats because they have this realization that they want to impeach Donald Trump very badly.
00:05:21.360 They want to remove Donald Trump from office very badly.
00:05:25.120 They realize no matter how badly they want that, they don't have enough to actually achieve it.
00:05:31.920 And the reason they don't have enough to achieve it is the Mueller report quite clearly does not even think obstruction of justice rises to these levels.
00:05:42.240 They didn't exonerate him, but they didn't convict him.
00:05:44.620 They're in the middle there, and we'll get into that a little bit.
00:05:47.040 Andy McCarthy is going to be joining us later, and he's got the legal background to be able to kind of break this down for us.
00:05:57.000 But basically, you know, you look at this and you say he kind of fell in the middle, and it's not a good place for the Mueller report to land.
00:06:04.180 And we'll get into that a little bit later on.
00:06:07.000 But the Democrats now have to figure out politically what they're going to do with this.
00:06:11.000 And you know what they want so badly if they could just get it is impeachment.
00:06:19.320 And people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are not going to be able to hold themselves back.
00:06:23.640 The problem here is you're not going to be able to get it through the Senate, even if you wanted to.
00:06:27.440 So you might be able to impeach Trump in the House.
00:06:30.140 It's going to go to the Senate.
00:06:31.060 It's going to fail in the Senate.
00:06:32.420 It's going to become very unpopular.
00:06:34.620 And it's the type of thing that could derail their entire campaign.
00:06:39.240 There is a sect of the Democratic Party that understands this, right?
00:06:44.140 The Nancy Pelosi's of the world, you know, she's got a million flaws.
00:06:48.800 And she tries to cover most of them with Botox, but a lot of them still exist.
00:06:52.300 And the idea that she can come out and understand the fact that this would be unpopular and probably hurt their electoral chances in 2020.
00:07:01.900 She's on that bandwagon.
00:07:04.160 But you have the Ilhan Omar's.
00:07:05.720 You have the Rashida Tlaib's.
00:07:07.300 You have the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
00:07:10.480 You have all of them who are going to come in here and say, I don't care if it's good electorally.
00:07:14.760 I want to go after him anyway.
00:07:17.320 Just like they wanted to kill the Amazon jobs, right?
00:07:19.680 Like that's not a good position for anybody.
00:07:21.540 People in New York believed that this was, Amazon coming to New York City was a great thing.
00:07:27.940 And she helped kill the Amazon deal because she doesn't care about that.
00:07:35.560 You know, she's in a safe district.
00:07:37.800 As Nancy Pelosi correctly pointed out, a cup of water could run in that district and win.
00:07:43.080 So there's no risk there.
00:07:44.360 What they want is impeachment, badly.
00:07:47.760 And you know what they're going to do?
00:07:49.120 They're going to come as close to it as possible without actually doing it.
00:07:55.320 This is what they want.
00:07:56.280 It's like if you are told,
00:07:58.200 The thing you can't do is eat this box of donuts.
00:08:03.080 But you really, really want this box of donuts.
00:08:09.460 You know you can't have them.
00:08:11.400 You know you can't eat them.
00:08:12.800 But you got the giant box of donuts.
00:08:15.260 There's 12 of them in there.
00:08:16.240 They're perfectly glazed.
00:08:17.980 You know what it looks like.
00:08:18.800 When someone opens a box of the Krispy Kreme and they just look perfect and you just want to eat all of them.
00:08:23.980 And many times you do.
00:08:25.380 But in this instance, you can't.
00:08:28.320 So what are they going to do?
00:08:29.540 They're going to get in their car.
00:08:31.140 They're going to drive to Krispy Kreme.
00:08:32.980 They're going to go through the drive-thru.
00:08:34.960 They're going to buy the donuts.
00:08:36.580 They're going to bring them back home.
00:08:38.540 They're going to open the box.
00:08:40.680 They're going to look longingly at this box of donuts.
00:08:45.160 They're going to sniff each individual donut.
00:08:50.680 They are going to lick the outside of the glaze.
00:08:55.020 They're going to nibble at the edge of the donuts just to get a little taste.
00:09:02.540 They're going to shake the box.
00:09:04.460 And then they're going to take their finger and lick it.
00:09:06.780 And they're going to slide it around the bottom of the box and pick up all the excess glaze.
00:09:10.660 And they're going to taste the excess glaze.
00:09:12.740 They're going to take a bite of the donut.
00:09:16.720 They're going to chew the donut.
00:09:18.580 And then they're going to spit it out.
00:09:20.840 What they want the American people to come away with here is that, number one, they absolutely could impeach this president because of the terrible things he's done.
00:09:32.440 And number two, we're just, you know what?
00:09:35.900 It's time for voters to decide.
00:09:37.740 We're so close to the election and we have plenty to get him out of office, but it would be an extended process.
00:09:44.700 And we know those Republicans, we know what they would say.
00:09:48.440 So we're going to get really close to these donuts that we want.
00:09:51.840 We might even, might even get into the bathtub naked and cover ourselves in donuts.
00:09:56.920 But the one thing we're not going to do is eat all the donuts.
00:09:59.920 We're going to stay just outside of that area.
00:10:04.100 The one thing we're not going to do is consume the donuts.
00:10:06.380 And if they do decide to eat the box of donuts, in this case impeachment, that is when, you know, they get fat, right?
00:10:13.120 This is when they are going to pay a price with the American people because the American people see this for what it is.
00:10:21.020 If it was a criminal action, they would support impeachment.
00:10:25.600 If they caught Donald Trump, you know, texting and saying, you know what, Vlad, honestly, like, can you just come over here and, you know, give me a flash drive.
00:10:34.060 I'll plug it into the digital voting machine myself.
00:10:37.380 We'll win this election.
00:10:38.960 If they had that, if they had something that convinced the American people, the American people would come along.
00:10:46.200 I mean, we are pretty much in our silos here.
00:10:48.620 And most people are not going to change their mind because of the Mueller report.
00:10:51.380 But they're really not going to change their mind because of this Mueller report because of the fact that there's nothing there that's overwhelming or convincing.
00:10:59.940 We know that there is, there were some actions that were taken by the Trump administration that I think in retrospect they probably would have done differently.
00:11:07.420 And we're going to go through a lot of those today.
00:11:09.120 But the way the press is handling this is just utterly insane.
00:11:14.360 There's a story in the New York Times about this today.
00:11:18.320 And the lines they draw and the way they cover this is incredible.
00:11:26.580 And also exactly what you would expect.
00:11:30.000 So Robert Mueller releases this report and the New York Times gets to work.
00:11:34.060 And this is, it was interesting to see how everyone covered this.
00:11:37.100 Everyone jumped into like the mode of this is the biggest breaking news story of all time.
00:11:41.860 And obviously it's very, it's very, it's been on the top of the news cycle for a long time.
00:11:46.440 I expect them to cover it.
00:11:48.000 A lot of resources expended here to do this all in one day.
00:11:51.560 Story comes out today that the Mueller, Mueller reveals Trump's efforts to thwart Russian inquiry and highly anticipated report.
00:11:59.580 It goes through some of the basics here.
00:12:01.180 Mueller laid out how his team of prosecutors wrestled with whether Trump's actions added up to criminal obstruction of justice offenses.
00:12:09.100 They ultimately chose not to charge Mr. Trump, citing numerous legal and factual constraints.
00:12:15.100 But pointedly declined to exonerate him and suggested that it might be the role of Congress to settle the matter.
00:12:21.680 I like the phrasing there.
00:12:23.760 When you don't have the information to convict someone, you could say they didn't do it.
00:12:30.500 You could say, look, maybe they did it, but we don't have enough evidence to show that they did it.
00:12:35.380 The New York Times calls it factual constraints.
00:12:41.780 Factual constraints?
00:12:43.000 What is that?
00:12:44.660 I mean, there are some parts of this that are talking about how, okay, it's the President of the United States.
00:12:49.100 There are different considerations here.
00:12:50.500 Obviously, he has constitutional power to do a lot of these things.
00:12:53.960 And so if he has constitutional power to do them, well, I mean, is it a crime?
00:12:59.080 Could it be a crime?
00:13:00.800 But no, they say factual constraints were one of the issues.
00:13:04.740 Then they say this, and I love the wording of this.
00:13:07.760 Every once in a while, one word makes a difference.
00:13:10.600 You know?
00:13:12.320 The difference between like and love is really significant, isn't it?
00:13:16.880 I like you, honey.
00:13:19.040 I love you, honey.
00:13:20.040 Those are two big different things.
00:13:21.560 They make a big difference in the way you say them.
00:13:23.980 And that's the case here.
00:13:26.040 The report laid bare that Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power.
00:13:31.080 Now, that is, that's a pretty amazing statement, isn't it?
00:13:35.980 And the actual answer to that question is no.
00:13:39.800 It's not an amazing statement at all.
00:13:42.340 Listen to it very carefully.
00:13:43.600 The report laid bare that Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power.
00:13:50.560 They're not saying he was elected because of the help of foreign power.
00:13:55.520 They're saying he was elected with the help of a foreign power.
00:13:59.620 Now, we do know that Trump posted a lot of, or the Russia posted a lot of social media thing,
00:14:05.340 campaigns.
00:14:06.020 They did obviously go after Hillary's emails.
00:14:08.540 They did things believing that their interactions with the Trump administration would be better
00:14:12.780 than their interactions with the Clinton administration.
00:14:16.140 And they go through a lot of the details here.
00:14:18.000 And this is not something that is new.
00:14:19.640 It's been out there for a very long time.
00:14:21.780 It wasn't exclusively to help Trump, their efforts, by any means.
00:14:25.040 There was a lot of efforts on both sides just to cause chaos.
00:14:28.660 But some of the things they did, you know, theoretically could have helped Donald Trump.
00:14:32.780 They're not making the case that these actions did help Donald Trump.
00:14:36.120 They're saying he was elected with the help of a foreign government.
00:14:40.480 It's like saying the Golden State Warriors won the NBA championship with the help of the
00:14:45.460 fan in Section 342, Road W, Seat 11.
00:14:49.240 Right?
00:14:49.420 Like, yeah, that guy was clapping pretty loud.
00:14:53.160 But that didn't make the difference.
00:14:54.840 It was Kevin Durant nailing those threes.
00:14:56.980 Right?
00:14:57.160 It's Steph Curry pulling up on a fast break and making shots.
00:15:00.120 And it had nothing to do with the clapping in Section 342.
00:15:02.740 And there's no evidence whatsoever.
00:15:05.420 And again, this goes through the Mueller report.
00:15:07.900 There's no evidence that this had any effect on what actually occurred in the election.
00:15:13.540 It's an important thing.
00:15:15.620 Everyone knows this, I think, with the exception of people on the far left.
00:15:19.980 I even heard, I mean, I heard James Clapper on CNN yesterday saying the Mueller report shows
00:15:24.280 that the social media outreach from the Russians reached 123 million people.
00:15:29.360 Like, with this idea that you're supposed to say, wow, really, they've reached 123 million people.
00:15:36.940 That's incredible.
00:15:38.160 That shows that they swung the election.
00:15:39.940 That is not what it shows at all.
00:15:42.520 Every, every, I mean, come on.
00:15:44.380 We all know this.
00:15:45.240 People, people with picture, with photographic evidence, with nonstop scientific studies over
00:15:54.700 multiple decades don't change their mind on social media.
00:15:57.720 You think Russian propaganda changed anybody's mind on social media of who to vote for?
00:16:02.260 And it had nothing to do with whether they changed anybody's mind.
00:16:05.240 It has to do with whether they changed the mind of about 80,000 people in three states.
00:16:08.500 And the answer to this is obvious.
00:16:11.440 You're never going to know for sure.
00:16:12.860 You're never going to be able to interview every single person and see all their, all
00:16:16.700 of their social media interactions and go back and retrace their mind, mindset.
00:16:22.640 But the bottom line is, it is very difficult to change people's mind on an election like
00:16:27.680 Trump versus Clinton.
00:16:29.520 There weren't a lot of undecideds there.
00:16:31.340 It wasn't like, oh, well, you know what?
00:16:32.600 I really believed in socialized medicine, but wow, this Russian bot just said, I mean,
00:16:38.700 that doesn't happen.
00:16:40.120 These are not things that occur.
00:16:42.340 Later on in the New York Times story, it's amazing.
00:16:48.220 Immediately after learning that the special counsel had been appointed to lead the Russia
00:16:51.960 investigation, the report said Mr. Trump became distraught and slumped in his chair.
00:16:57.140 This is the most prominent piece of the Mueller report.
00:17:01.160 I'm about to read you both the most prominent piece, the most widely distributed line in
00:17:07.620 the entire report, and also the most misleading line in the entire report.
00:17:13.320 Trump said, quote, oh my God, this is terrible.
00:17:17.120 This is the end of my presidency.
00:17:18.900 I'm effed.
00:17:20.380 How many times did you see that yesterday?
00:17:22.180 It was the headline, and I can all but guarantee you when you read it, if you read it in the
00:17:26.880 mainstream media, it stopped right there.
00:17:28.640 Right after the big F-bomb, I'm effed.
00:17:32.840 This is the president admitting he did something wrong.
00:17:36.000 He's caught.
00:17:38.500 But that's not the context of it at all.
00:17:40.740 If you read three or four sentences later in the Mueller report, it says this, the president
00:17:46.120 returned to the consequences of the appointment and said, everyone tells me if you get one
00:17:51.100 of these independent councils, it ruins your presidency.
00:17:53.960 It takes years and years, and I won't be able to do anything.
00:17:57.660 This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
00:17:59.840 Now, you may have heard that last line.
00:18:01.060 This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
00:18:02.420 But did you hear the lines in between?
00:18:03.900 Because they're pretty important.
00:18:05.360 He wasn't saying he was effed because he was caught in this Russian scandal or that he
00:18:11.080 did, committed all these crimes.
00:18:12.820 He was saying it was going to derail his presidency because it was going to be the only thing
00:18:18.060 he was going to be able to deal with the entire time.
00:18:20.980 He says, I won't be able to do anything.
00:18:23.340 He's not going to be able to get his agenda passed.
00:18:24.880 He's not going to be able to get anything done because he's going to be constantly talking
00:18:27.800 about Russia all the time and dealing with that.
00:18:30.120 It had nothing to do with him admitting guilt, but that's the way the media portrayed it.
00:18:34.420 We know groupthink is a thing in the media.
00:18:55.860 We know that that's true.
00:18:58.280 But how does the Mueller report actually affect the political situation that we're looking
00:19:03.480 at right now?
00:19:04.520 Because we can all sit here and look at this and say, well, I think he's guilty and I think
00:19:09.300 he's innocent.
00:19:10.320 But the bigger question is, how does this play on a wider scale?
00:19:16.000 There's basically three groups of people here.
00:19:18.020 You've got people who love Donald Trump and aren't going to change their mind no matter
00:19:22.700 what.
00:19:23.140 I mean, the Mueller report could say, we interviewed Melania Trump.
00:19:27.000 Melania said that Trump and Putin held puppy clubbing parties on alternate Thursdays for
00:19:32.780 the past three years.
00:19:34.400 She actually was there at them.
00:19:36.160 She saw them.
00:19:36.820 She witnessed them and she videoed them.
00:19:39.020 So here's the video.
00:19:39.860 And you could see Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump clubbing puppies over and over again.
00:19:44.320 We have it right there.
00:19:45.060 In fact, Melania said in the middle of the interview, she interrupted and she said, you know what?
00:19:49.320 One's going on right now in the Oval Office.
00:19:52.180 And she walked the interviewer down the hall into the Oval Office and Donald Trump and Vladimir
00:19:57.780 Putin were wearing diapers and clubbing puppies.
00:20:01.060 I don't know where the diapers thing came in.
00:20:02.900 It just seemed like that was going to be part of it.
00:20:05.080 If that was in there and Melania then went on TV and said, yes, I said those things.
00:20:09.140 And here's the video I'm showing you right now.
00:20:11.180 There is a percentage of the population that would be like, you know what?
00:20:13.920 I think Trump didn't do that.
00:20:14.900 I don't think there's any evidence.
00:20:16.720 And it's a hoax, right?
00:20:18.520 There is that part of the population.
00:20:19.980 I doubt that's you as a listener.
00:20:23.800 But there's the other side of this.
00:20:25.240 And you know that this is true as well.
00:20:27.700 If the Mueller report said that we found there was absolutely no collusion whatsoever.
00:20:32.800 In fact, there was no contact between the Trump administration and the Russians.
00:20:38.500 And by the way, Trump has no knowledge of the country of Russia.
00:20:43.340 He's never heard of it.
00:20:44.780 We quizzed him over and over again.
00:20:46.500 And we're able to get into the genetics of his mind.
00:20:49.440 And we were able to see the electrical pulses and realize through an MRI that he has no knowledge of the country in Russia.
00:20:57.240 In fact, incredibly, Donald Trump has never seen Rocky IV.
00:21:02.380 He has no knowledge of Ivan Drago.
00:21:04.880 He has no knowledge of the entire plot line.
00:21:08.280 In fact, he was personally responsible.
00:21:10.860 And we did not know this until the Mueller report.
00:21:12.780 He was personally responsible for tearing down the Berlin Wall.
00:21:17.200 That's how against the Soviet Union and Russia that Donald Trump is.
00:21:21.840 There is a percentage of this population that would still say, you know what?
00:21:25.860 He's guilty.
00:21:26.600 I know he's guilty of collusion.
00:21:28.000 I know it.
00:21:28.600 But there's plenty of people on Twitter you're going to find that have blue check marks next to that name that fall into that category.
00:21:35.080 And then there's this other category.
00:21:36.400 And I feel like a lot of times we think that these people don't exist.
00:21:39.040 They are widely represented in this audience, which are people who actually wanted to see what the truth was on something like this.
00:21:48.500 They certainly, as I do, suspect that there are political sort of motivations behind a lot of this to try to get out a Republican president.
00:21:57.980 But if Donald Trump really did do something wrong, I would want to know about it.
00:22:02.560 And I know the audience would want to know about it.
00:22:04.460 I know you'd want to know about it.
00:22:05.620 You're driving to your car.
00:22:06.480 You're trying to do your job.
00:22:07.540 You're trying to make a living.
00:22:09.280 The economy's good.
00:22:10.180 You like a lot of things that are going on right now.
00:22:11.960 But if the president of the United States really was engaging in this sort of behavior, you'd want to know about it.
00:22:17.220 And those people are not—they're the persuadables at some level.
00:22:21.260 Even if you have a leaning, you're at least persuadable.
00:22:23.220 You're open to hearing the facts.
00:22:24.380 You're open to call balls and strikes.
00:22:27.980 You know, there's a—right now, Donald Trump, 51% of the American people approve of Donald Trump's handling of the economy.
00:22:35.940 And you could say you think that should be higher.
00:22:37.760 You can say you think that should be lower.
00:22:39.980 But Donald Trump, if you look at the way he's portrayed on media, on the media, you'd say, no way he's got a positive portrayal there.
00:22:47.380 But people realize that the economy is good.
00:22:49.420 Those same people, when asked—because I think he's plus 8 on the economy.
00:22:54.660 He's minus 15 on tariffs.
00:22:56.520 The same people, the same questions, they ask them, hey, do you approve of him on the economy?
00:23:01.660 Yes.
00:23:01.940 Do you approve of the way he's handled tariffs and the trade war?
00:23:04.720 No.
00:23:05.700 There's a chunk there.
00:23:06.800 What is it?
00:23:07.100 10, 15, 20% in the middle.
00:23:08.880 Not in the middle politically, but in the middle of engaging, of engagement, right?
00:23:14.360 People who are there reading this stuff every day and actually care and can say their side does things wrong sometimes.
00:23:20.460 And the other side does things wrong sometimes.
00:23:22.560 And I want to know what the truth is.
00:23:23.760 And those people actually do exist.
00:23:26.640 And that is the question as to how this is going to be handled.
00:23:31.400 You look at this report, and of course the media is going to blow it out of proportion and be crazy.
00:23:35.760 We know that's going to happen, and they are doing that.
00:23:37.880 But when you look at the obstruction section, which is section two, if you're scoring at home, if you flip to page 147, one thing you'll notice is all of the problems that Trump could have out of this.
00:23:52.560 First of all, they're not criminal.
00:23:55.420 They're not.
00:23:57.060 There are some nuanced explanations as to why they're not.
00:24:01.500 There are things you'll hear in the media, people saying, well, he would have been convicted if, well, if didn't happen, if isn't reality.
00:24:09.500 We are in reality.
00:24:10.880 He's not convicted of these things.
00:24:12.600 He did not do anything that rose to the level of Mueller recommending, not even convicting him, but recommending that people go after him.
00:24:24.200 He didn't do that.
00:24:26.420 But not everything there is wonderful.
00:24:28.860 And all the problems that Trump has there are largely self-created, and they all flow from the same issue.
00:24:34.880 The issues that have Trump's problems kind of associated with them, they constantly surround Trump's, I'd say, unfortunate and unnecessary view that the press issue of the day is his highest priority.
00:24:51.040 And there are more important things than that.
00:24:55.320 And I swear that if Trump was instead focusing on things he could get done and things that could actually improve his own standing when it comes to policy, rather than whatever the media is saying about him on a given day, things would not only be better for the country, but better for him.
00:25:16.540 In a way, it allows the media to control his narrative.
00:25:20.540 And one of the things we like about Trump, I think, as people who are friendly to conservatism generally, one of the things, one of the reasons he got elected was because he's fighting back.
00:25:29.660 People like that he's fighting back.
00:25:31.580 And that is, generally speaking, I think a good instinct.
00:25:34.340 You don't want someone who's going to sit there and get his teeth kicked in over and over and over again.
00:25:38.420 But there's a limit here to this.
00:25:40.200 And, you know, there's been so much fighting about the Mueller report all of this time.
00:25:43.880 It honestly could have been avoided all of this time until we actually got the information.
00:25:47.840 Well, now we have the report.
00:25:49.340 We can talk about it or whatever.
00:25:50.700 We can go down those roads if we must.
00:25:53.160 But Trump loves that.
00:25:54.800 He loves fighting with the press.
00:25:56.260 And he views it as a day-to-day sport.
00:25:59.420 It's the slog of summer baseball.
00:26:02.100 Every day there's a new game.
00:26:03.760 Every day you've got to worry about what the result of that game is.
00:26:06.100 And every day, Trump, I think, unfortunately, makes choices based on what wins that day instead of what long-term.
00:26:15.140 There are times in here where he is, I mean, blatantly caught saying things that are untrue.
00:26:23.240 However, over and over and over and over again, when asked to comply with investigators, he tells the truth.
00:26:30.080 He turns over the documents.
00:26:31.900 He acts accordingly as to how he should.
00:26:36.080 But he treats the media and the general narrative as a completely different animal.
00:26:41.420 He'll say whatever he has to do to get through the day to the media.
00:26:44.100 Yeah.
00:26:45.140 And that instinct at times works.
00:26:47.920 It serves him well.
00:26:49.480 I don't like it, but at times it does work.
00:26:51.980 At other times, this sort of stuff happens.
00:26:54.260 And so now you have situations where because he did things that helped him get through the day of media, it winds up burning him later.
00:27:05.820 And now he's got to deal with this because this is never going to end.
00:27:08.280 Again, in the Mueller report, it over and over says when faced with Congress, like as far as turning over to documents to Congress, he complied to those things.
00:27:18.120 He didn't use executive privilege in an excessive way.
00:27:21.560 They didn't redact too much of the report.
00:27:23.360 They didn't do all the things that were predicted that he was going to do.
00:27:26.100 But instead of just coming out, and he's advised over and over again by people close to him.
00:27:32.200 I'll give you a good example.
00:27:33.700 The statement from Donald Trump Jr. that Donald Trump kind of helped craft about the meeting in Trump Tower.
00:27:45.120 He was advised by people close to him, very smart people who come off great in these reports and still have very good relationships with Donald Trump.
00:27:52.060 You know, people very close to him like Hope Hicks and others.
00:27:56.520 Just get out in front of this.
00:27:58.640 Like this email is going to come out.
00:28:01.380 Release it.
00:28:02.240 Just release it.
00:28:03.380 You get out in front of it.
00:28:04.480 You control this.
00:28:05.720 Just come out and be honest about it.
00:28:06.980 Look, someone said they might have some things that might help us in the election.
00:28:10.340 We didn't know who they were.
00:28:11.240 They came into the office.
00:28:12.540 They didn't have anything.
00:28:13.300 It was over.
00:28:13.820 It was nothing.
00:28:14.740 Instead, they tried to manipulate it to make it sound like it was primarily, in fact, the initial wording was it was about adoption, which was only a small part of the meeting.
00:28:24.020 And then they wound up getting in trouble for it later.
00:28:26.340 And that trouble was unnecessary.
00:28:29.680 It didn't help them.
00:28:32.280 And in the long term, it winds up hurting.
00:28:34.460 And so I think that instinct is something that the president, because he loves that media battle so much, gets caught up in.
00:28:39.780 It's an emotional thing.
00:28:41.940 And it's honestly understandable.
00:28:43.260 I mean, Barr listed the sort of explanations for some of this behavior.
00:28:47.480 He said he was in the middle of an unprecedented situation.
00:28:50.100 He was under mass news media examination.
00:28:52.860 He was frustrated.
00:28:53.560 He was angry.
00:28:54.480 He was annoyed at the illegal leaks.
00:28:56.600 And he had non-corrupt motives in all of these things.
00:29:00.320 And I think all of those are completely true.
00:29:02.440 And I think all of us would be in the same situation.
00:29:05.100 All of those same emotions would hit us.
00:29:07.020 But, you know, there were people around him that stopped some of this.
00:29:10.240 And in other places, he stopped himself.
00:29:12.940 And in those circumstances, he's much better off.
00:29:15.660 The ones where he just let himself go with it and just fire away, at times, the problems were caused there.
00:29:22.900 This is the best of the Glenn Beck Program.
00:29:28.120 This is the Glenn Beck Program.
00:29:40.520 It's Good Friday.
00:29:42.460 Today, we're going on a journey.
00:29:45.460 Today, we're going on a journey.
00:30:15.460 Today's time and trace our way back.
00:30:19.620 First, maybe just a couple of years.
00:30:24.260 Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world.
00:30:27.900 The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda.
00:30:31.960 On my orders, the United States military has begun strike.
00:30:34.800 Against the al-Qaeda terrorist training camp.
00:30:36.540 The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
00:30:41.760 Now back, even further.
00:30:43.740 Princess Diana died around the world.
00:30:45.700 I did not have this vast right-wing conspiracy.
00:30:49.780 Now, he is O.J. Simpson.
00:30:51.580 He is armed with a gun.
00:30:52.500 Mr. Gorbachev tears down this.
00:30:55.840 Elvis Presley died today.
00:30:57.940 Well, I'm not a crook.
00:30:59.280 I've earned everything I've got.
00:31:01.340 Because of what has happened in Munich during the past 48 days, where nine terrified living
00:31:06.500 human beings are being held prisoner.
00:31:09.180 A second shot, the third total shot, hit the president's head.
00:31:13.220 Gentlemen, the Beatles.
00:31:14.760 Dr. Martin Luther King has been shot to death in Memphis.
00:31:18.300 A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima.
00:31:24.140 Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning
00:31:32.580 on the northern coast of France.
00:31:35.260 December 7th, 1941.
00:31:41.220 A state which will live in infamy.
00:31:44.220 Oh, the humanity.
00:31:47.220 Back farther still, even before Marconi, when the air was silent.
00:31:53.320 Back past the signing of the Declaration of Independence, past the Age of Enlightenment,
00:32:03.660 before Martin Luther hung his protest on the church doors, before Columbus rediscovered
00:32:09.080 the fact that the world was round.
00:32:11.540 We go past Newton, Galileo, the Dark Ages, the Crusades, back to a time before books, when
00:32:19.240 most of the world couldn't read nor write, and history was oral.
00:32:25.280 We leave this world now, where we can hear and see a lone protester standing in front of
00:32:31.260 a tank in a country on the other side of the planet, and we can see it live.
00:32:36.460 To a world seemingly simple, yet brutal beyond our understanding, where news was spread from
00:32:43.900 mouth to mouth.
00:32:44.720 We stop here, at approximately 29 of the Common Era.
00:32:53.060 We stop at a small, walled city in the Middle East.
00:32:57.200 It's around 10 o'clock at night, just a couple of days before Passover.
00:33:02.940 The meals are being prepared, the night's meal had already been eaten, and most in the city
00:33:08.660 are asleep.
00:33:09.860 One man, however, is not.
00:33:14.480 It's strange.
00:33:16.340 He's younger than I am.
00:33:18.680 He's about 30.
00:33:20.780 He's awake, and alone in a garden.
00:33:24.680 His friends, who have been with him for several years, are just a few yards away.
00:33:29.100 They slumber underneath the star-filled sky.
00:33:31.860 They still don't know that even though they sleep, the world is about to wake.
00:33:41.220 Eleven of twelve men sleep beside a hill.
00:33:45.820 One man, awake.
00:33:48.520 He couldn't sleep, for he knew.
00:33:52.040 He was in a garden, in prayer, praying so hard about what he knew was about to come, praying
00:34:00.620 so hard that blood actually dripped from his pores in a place of sweat.
00:34:05.860 Back at the hill, when he returned, he begged his friends to wake and pray with him.
00:34:13.420 They didn't know how serious his request really was.
00:34:17.160 They had no idea what was just to come.
00:34:21.820 He pleaded with his friends,
00:34:23.860 Why will you not rise and pray with me?
00:34:27.240 He asked this again before returning to the garden alone.
00:34:31.280 He knelt there on rocky soil, his hands clasped, his head bowed.
00:34:37.460 Twilight dew draped his neck, the horizon still in black.
00:34:42.140 He prayed, he prayed even harder, for the sky would eventually turn purple, then light blue.
00:34:50.520 And he knew what awaited him.
00:34:54.060 Back to the hill once more, his friends asleep.
00:34:58.260 He begged his friends,
00:34:59.800 Rise, rise and pray with me.
00:35:02.600 I need you now more than ever.
00:35:05.200 They said they would.
00:35:06.880 But shortly after he left, they fell asleep again.
00:35:10.220 The dawn was even closer, and he knew his time was running out.
00:35:18.620 Now over the hill, they marched like flowing lava burning in the night's solace.
00:35:25.280 The eleven are surely awake now.
00:35:28.500 They have sworn their faith to him.
00:35:30.720 But he knows.
00:35:32.180 He knew this wasn't true.
00:35:34.920 They'll weaken, and he'll be forsaken.
00:35:37.340 Forsaken by the same men who just swore their undying devotion.
00:35:43.000 The torchlights grow brighter.
00:35:45.000 The hourglass running low.
00:35:47.180 The clanging of the metal swords and spears.
00:35:50.120 The sound and the vibration of the march, deep down from their feet to their spine,
00:35:54.880 creating a shallow vibration, leaving them quivering.
00:35:59.040 The soldiers approach.
00:36:00.760 The one is grabbed and kissed.
00:36:07.420 Betrayed with a kiss.
00:36:09.780 A kiss wearing the mask of loyalty.
00:36:14.080 One of the men leap forward, draws his sword, cutting the ear off one of the soldiers.
00:36:19.660 He raises his hand.
00:36:21.660 No.
00:36:23.160 Peace.
00:36:23.700 Take me now in peace.
00:36:27.300 For this is my purpose.
00:36:30.020 This is my being.
00:36:32.440 This is the reason I came.
00:36:37.060 Now one of them, Peter, strays.
00:36:41.520 While his friend is being persecuted for crimes he didn't commit,
00:36:46.300 he stands by a fire, denying any relationship he has
00:36:50.380 as he tries to blend in with the common people.
00:36:53.980 A woman approaches.
00:36:55.940 Didn't I see you with him?
00:36:58.160 Peter says,
00:36:59.060 Surely I don't know him.
00:37:00.600 But you're from Galilee.
00:37:02.120 For the third time, Peter says,
00:37:04.300 I do not know this man.
00:37:06.780 Now Jesus is pulled back and forth between the two who will determine his fate.
00:37:12.060 They can't see any crime.
00:37:15.040 But they still question, scourge, and mock him.
00:37:20.380 Aren't you the king?
00:37:23.400 Silence.
00:37:25.000 Then here is your crown,
00:37:27.260 says one as they give him a crown of thorns and press it into his head.
00:37:32.560 He stands before the judge, who could condemn him for no crime.
00:37:37.940 But it is Passover.
00:37:40.220 He says to the crowd,
00:37:41.900 You, you can choose.
00:37:44.300 One I will release.
00:37:45.920 Him as the king of the Jews, or?
00:37:50.740 Jesus, standing silent, his eyes to the ground,
00:37:55.500 is condemned to death.
00:37:57.040 Jesus now carries his cross through the stone-clad streets
00:38:02.760 to the place known as the skull.
00:38:06.440 The place where he will soon die.
00:38:10.060 His back torn, his head bleeding beneath his thorny crown.
00:38:14.780 The women cry out loud as he passes.
00:38:17.920 He pauses for a moment and comforts them.
00:38:20.940 Do not weep for me.
00:38:24.380 Rather, weep for yourselves.
00:38:28.400 His mother looks on as huge nails are driven through his hands and his feet.
00:38:34.340 They raise the cross and slam it into the ground.
00:38:38.760 It is at this point that all four writers of the gospel
00:38:42.180 struggled with a description of the crucifixion, as I have.
00:38:46.900 They described with the only words that I could use.
00:38:54.040 And they crucified him.
00:38:58.500 He now hung on the cross as the soldiers bid lots on his clothing below.
00:39:05.220 Next to him, two criminals hang.
00:39:08.680 But they are simply tied to the cross.
00:39:12.020 One of them says,
00:39:13.540 You're the son of God.
00:39:15.040 Save us now.
00:39:15.860 Save all of us.
00:39:18.020 The man in the middle does nothing.
00:39:21.320 For he had a purpose.
00:39:25.240 The afternoon passes.
00:39:27.940 His skin stretched.
00:39:30.000 He wept.
00:39:31.300 He begged for water.
00:39:32.740 And they gave him a sponge on a reed filled with vinegar.
00:39:36.960 In a moment where he showed us that he was truly human,
00:39:41.840 he cried out and said,
00:39:43.660 My father.
00:39:45.300 My father, my father, why have you forsaken me?
00:39:50.920 The sky began to grow dark.
00:39:54.360 It was approaching three o'clock on a Friday afternoon
00:39:58.760 when Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth,
00:40:04.400 spoke once more and only once.
00:40:07.660 His last words,
00:40:10.400 His last words,
00:40:11.900 It
00:40:12.180 is finished.
00:40:16.400 So today,
00:40:18.300 people all over the world
00:40:20.460 do as I do now.
00:40:24.700 I thank that lone carpenter
00:40:27.180 for dying.
00:40:30.100 Dying on that Friday afternoon
00:40:32.720 so I
00:40:34.680 may live.
00:40:42.520 You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
00:40:45.240 Hi, it's Glenn.
00:40:56.800 If you're a subscriber to the podcast,
00:40:58.540 can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?
00:41:01.340 If you're not a subscriber,
00:41:02.620 become one today
00:41:03.400 and listen on your own time.
00:41:05.400 You can subscribe on iTunes.
00:41:07.040 Thanks.
00:41:07.440 All right.
00:41:07.620 Andy McCarthy joins us.
00:41:09.100 He's from National Review,
00:41:10.100 also writing for the New York Post
00:41:12.020 on a really interesting column.
00:41:14.460 Andy, welcome to the program.
00:41:16.360 Stu, great to be with you.
00:41:17.400 How are you?
00:41:17.860 Really well, really well.
00:41:19.100 You had an interesting perspective here
00:41:20.720 and I think it's different
00:41:21.560 than everyone else I've read
00:41:23.520 so far on this case.
00:41:25.280 So far,
00:41:25.920 let's kind of start at the beginning
00:41:27.020 before we get into
00:41:27.700 the specifics of the legal case here.
00:41:31.880 Right.
00:41:32.140 Kind of the two positions
00:41:33.440 you see thrown about
00:41:34.500 is basically
00:41:35.320 the Mueller report came out
00:41:36.440 and it proves
00:41:37.060 he did everything wrong
00:41:38.140 and the Mueller report came out
00:41:40.020 and it proves
00:41:40.620 that Trump did nothing wrong.
00:41:42.020 So right off the start,
00:41:45.000 where do you fall
00:41:45.900 in that little range?
00:41:48.920 Well, maybe it's because
00:41:50.440 I was a prosecutor
00:41:51.240 for a long time.
00:41:53.680 I think that it's always a mistake
00:41:57.300 when we read
00:41:59.980 either like a social phenomenon
00:42:03.460 or a political phenomenon
00:42:04.820 as a legal problem
00:42:06.980 to be resolved by a prosecutor
00:42:08.660 because
00:42:09.160 if that's what you're going
00:42:11.220 to impose on a prosecutor
00:42:12.640 has
00:42:13.120 basically
00:42:14.340 one of two decisions
00:42:16.180 to make.
00:42:16.680 There's either enough evidence
00:42:17.620 to charge
00:42:18.200 or there's not.
00:42:19.640 And
00:42:20.120 when you decide
00:42:21.720 that there's not,
00:42:22.560 that doesn't mean
00:42:23.140 that somebody's been exonerated.
00:42:24.840 It might.
00:42:25.880 You know,
00:42:26.120 sometimes you do an investigation
00:42:27.400 and you find
00:42:28.260 not only that
00:42:29.020 the person you were investigating
00:42:30.700 didn't do it,
00:42:32.120 but that
00:42:32.520 somebody else did.
00:42:33.900 So you know
00:42:34.360 to a certainty
00:42:34.960 that the person
00:42:35.600 is not guilty.
00:42:36.300 And then there's other times
00:42:38.140 when you don't charge
00:42:39.000 because you know
00:42:40.360 in your bones
00:42:41.000 that the guy did it,
00:42:42.620 but you just can't prove it.
00:42:44.220 You don't have enough evidence.
00:42:45.960 So you never,
00:42:46.760 prosecutors,
00:42:47.820 unlike Mueller's report,
00:42:49.760 which I regard
00:42:50.580 in this way
00:42:52.500 as more of a
00:42:53.960 spin document
00:42:56.380 than,
00:42:56.920 you know,
00:42:57.660 a prosecutor's document.
00:42:58.880 Prosecutors never say things
00:43:00.180 like we won't exonerate him
00:43:01.920 or we don't exonerate him.
00:43:03.760 You either charge
00:43:04.580 or you don't charge
00:43:05.260 and everything else
00:43:05.960 is gray area.
00:43:07.060 So I wouldn't run
00:43:08.980 with a prosecutor saying
00:43:10.380 I didn't find enough evidence
00:43:11.840 to indict.
00:43:13.520 I wouldn't run from that
00:43:14.640 and say I've been exonerated.
00:43:17.580 And when you look
00:43:18.660 at what's in the reports,
00:43:19.880 too,
00:43:20.000 I don't know,
00:43:20.640 you know,
00:43:20.960 a lot of that
00:43:21.520 is pretty unsavory behavior.
00:43:23.200 Now,
00:43:23.360 none of it's been proved
00:43:24.500 and it's really against
00:43:26.940 the normal protocols
00:43:29.140 of the Justice Department
00:43:31.120 and prosecutors' offices
00:43:32.500 at every level
00:43:33.480 to publish the information
00:43:35.580 about somebody
00:43:36.840 that you don't charge
00:43:38.280 because the rule of the road
00:43:40.600 is if the government's
00:43:41.420 going to charge someone
00:43:42.460 or the government's
00:43:43.560 going to accuse someone
00:43:44.440 of wrongdoing,
00:43:45.460 you have to do it formally
00:43:46.960 so that the person
00:43:48.320 then has the full array
00:43:49.600 of protections
00:43:50.200 that you get
00:43:50.800 under the Constitution
00:43:51.680 to defend yourself.
00:43:53.400 So when the prosecutor
00:43:54.440 goes out and says,
00:43:55.500 here's all the terrible things
00:43:56.940 I know that he did,
00:43:57.840 oh,
00:43:57.940 and by the way,
00:43:58.500 we're not going to charge him,
00:43:59.460 you've really smeared the person
00:44:01.780 and not given them
00:44:02.660 any opportunity
00:44:04.000 to defend themselves
00:44:05.680 and that's not normally
00:44:06.780 what's done.
00:44:07.380 It was done here.
00:44:08.940 I guess politically
00:44:09.760 this report had to come out
00:44:11.120 because there was no alternative,
00:44:13.860 but I don't think it,
00:44:14.940 you know,
00:44:15.200 I think if you're Trump,
00:44:17.560 you want to say thank you
00:44:18.600 and move on,
00:44:19.720 I wouldn't be running around
00:44:20.920 saying I've been exonerated
00:44:22.560 because there's some
00:44:23.340 icky stuff in there.
00:44:24.800 Yeah,
00:44:24.940 and you get into some of that
00:44:25.860 in your column
00:44:26.340 for the New York Post.
00:44:27.300 It's titled
00:44:27.780 Mueller Completely Dropped the Ball
00:44:29.140 with the Obstruction Punt
00:44:30.140 and I want to get into
00:44:30.860 how he dropped the ball.
00:44:32.880 You mentioned
00:44:33.780 his,
00:44:34.660 Trump's interactions,
00:44:36.480 first of all,
00:44:36.880 on the negative side
00:44:37.640 with things like
00:44:39.780 the McGahn situation
00:44:41.620 where he
00:44:42.300 tried to get him fired
00:44:44.500 and then even went
00:44:45.720 beyond that
00:44:46.460 to try to convince him
00:44:47.400 to lie about
00:44:48.500 that he had called him
00:44:49.660 to fire.
00:44:51.200 He tried to get
00:44:52.280 Mueller fired.
00:44:53.240 Yes.
00:44:54.160 You have that,
00:44:55.100 and you also have
00:44:56.080 some interesting
00:44:57.980 perspective
00:44:59.100 on the other side
00:45:00.520 of this
00:45:00.800 because,
00:45:02.040 and I think this
00:45:02.580 ties to the most
00:45:03.820 prominent thing
00:45:04.500 that's come out of this
00:45:05.360 as far as the media goes,
00:45:06.400 which is this statement
00:45:07.320 that Trump makes
00:45:08.040 at one point
00:45:08.520 where he says,
00:45:09.380 this is the end
00:45:09.840 of my presidency,
00:45:10.620 I'm effed
00:45:11.180 now that there's
00:45:11.780 a council.
00:45:12.780 And you point out
00:45:13.580 that the president's
00:45:14.200 frustration wasn't
00:45:14.960 over fear of guilt.
00:45:17.040 That is a really
00:45:18.120 important part of this
00:45:19.360 and I feel like
00:45:20.420 most people
00:45:21.300 have completely ignored it.
00:45:22.860 In fact,
00:45:23.080 cutting that out
00:45:23.840 of the quote
00:45:24.560 that has been
00:45:25.900 proliferated so widely.
00:45:28.460 Yeah,
00:45:28.960 well,
00:45:29.400 you know,
00:45:29.760 it's funny
00:45:30.420 with obstruction cases,
00:45:31.640 you hear a lot
00:45:32.580 in the commentary
00:45:35.460 that if you have
00:45:39.320 an obstruction,
00:45:40.420 that you can't have
00:45:41.980 an obstruction case
00:45:42.820 unless there's
00:45:43.300 an underlying crime,
00:45:44.680 right?
00:45:45.360 We've heard that
00:45:46.120 again and again
00:45:46.840 for the last few days.
00:45:48.660 And that's,
00:45:49.480 you know,
00:45:49.840 with due respect
00:45:50.560 to some of the people
00:45:51.420 peddling that
00:45:52.520 it's just wrong.
00:45:53.920 You know,
00:45:54.060 the classic example
00:45:55.060 is Bill Clinton,
00:45:58.140 right?
00:45:58.460 He didn't lie
00:46:00.100 about what went on
00:46:00.960 in the Oval Office
00:46:01.660 because it was a crime.
00:46:03.400 He lied about it
00:46:04.220 because it would have
00:46:05.080 been embarrassing
00:46:06.180 and politically devastating
00:46:07.880 for it to come out,
00:46:08.760 right?
00:46:09.080 So people lie
00:46:10.580 for all kinds
00:46:11.360 of reasons,
00:46:12.260 but in certain
00:46:13.740 factual contexts,
00:46:15.720 it is true
00:46:16.700 that if there's
00:46:17.840 no underlying crime,
00:46:19.080 then there doesn't
00:46:19.820 really make much sense
00:46:20.960 for why you would
00:46:21.720 want to obstruct
00:46:23.180 the investigation.
00:46:24.700 And this,
00:46:25.240 I think,
00:46:25.480 was one of those
00:46:26.180 situations.
00:46:27.080 And what Trump
00:46:27.860 was concerned
00:46:28.540 about here
00:46:29.240 was not
00:46:30.840 that he would
00:46:32.280 be found
00:46:32.800 to be involved
00:46:33.660 in an espionage
00:46:35.640 conspiracy
00:46:36.140 with Russia
00:46:37.140 involving hacking
00:46:38.640 of Democratic
00:46:39.380 email accounts.
00:46:40.820 I think he was
00:46:41.460 obviously pretty confident
00:46:43.040 that that hadn't
00:46:43.980 happened.
00:46:44.880 But he was concerned
00:46:46.460 about being portrayed
00:46:47.420 as an agent
00:46:49.940 of the Kremlin
00:46:50.580 and about the fact
00:46:52.180 that, you know,
00:46:53.420 when you have
00:46:54.300 a president
00:46:55.260 who's under
00:46:55.740 a cloud of suspicion,
00:46:57.480 it becomes very hard
00:46:58.520 to govern.
00:46:59.120 It becomes hard
00:46:59.820 to recruit
00:47:01.140 good people
00:47:01.780 into the government.
00:47:02.420 Who wants to go
00:47:03.100 work for an administration
00:47:04.060 if you're going to
00:47:04.480 have to lawyer up
00:47:05.480 the next week?
00:47:06.160 You know,
00:47:06.320 it's pretty expensive
00:47:07.300 stuff.
00:47:08.760 So he's compromised
00:47:10.200 in trying to assemble
00:47:11.380 administration.
00:47:12.380 He's compromised
00:47:13.060 in dealing with Congress,
00:47:14.420 foreign governments,
00:47:15.580 you know,
00:47:15.900 you name it.
00:47:17.320 And it's very frustrating.
00:47:18.820 And we all know,
00:47:19.680 I mean,
00:47:19.880 the Lawrence Walsh
00:47:20.720 investigation,
00:47:22.120 that thing went on
00:47:22.860 for about eight years,
00:47:24.080 you know,
00:47:24.360 so we didn't know
00:47:25.240 when this started
00:47:26.520 that Mueller,
00:47:27.220 I think to his credit,
00:47:28.140 was going to wrap it up
00:47:29.060 in 22 months.
00:47:31.860 And I don't know that,
00:47:33.340 because a lot of people,
00:47:34.060 first of all,
00:47:34.440 have been complaining
00:47:35.000 that it was too long.
00:47:36.060 I mean,
00:47:36.280 it's not long
00:47:37.640 for one of these
00:47:38.340 investigations,
00:47:39.040 is it?
00:47:39.280 I mean,
00:47:39.600 these special counsel,
00:47:41.360 special prosecutor
00:47:43.140 sort of investigations
00:47:43.980 go on a lot longer
00:47:45.240 than this sometimes.
00:47:46.940 Yeah,
00:47:47.100 you know what it is,
00:47:47.820 though,
00:47:48.020 Stu,
00:47:48.260 while it's going on,
00:47:49.640 it always seems longer.
00:47:50.960 And it's more vicious now
00:47:52.580 than it ever was before.
00:47:54.560 I mean,
00:47:54.820 you know,
00:47:55.440 the stuff that gets said,
00:47:57.320 you know,
00:47:57.840 I have to say,
00:47:59.200 I've been a prosecutor,
00:48:00.460 I was a prosecutor
00:48:01.500 for 20 years,
00:48:03.940 beginning in the 80s.
00:48:06.220 And,
00:48:06.840 you know,
00:48:07.400 the media was,
00:48:08.180 there was a certain tenor
00:48:09.280 in the media,
00:48:10.140 and there was a certain tenor
00:48:11.240 in public discourse,
00:48:12.120 and it can get,
00:48:12.840 it could get nasty,
00:48:14.160 but I,
00:48:14.700 you know,
00:48:15.480 I never have witnessed it
00:48:17.320 as sort of cavalierly vicious
00:48:20.040 as it is now.
00:48:22.420 And I think the result of that
00:48:24.080 is everything seems like
00:48:25.200 it takes longer
00:48:25.960 because you just want it
00:48:27.240 to be over.
00:48:28.040 Everything seems like
00:48:29.120 it takes longer
00:48:29.720 than it actually does.
00:48:31.460 So,
00:48:31.920 as you compare
00:48:33.320 Mueller's investigation
00:48:35.400 to other
00:48:36.820 independent counsel
00:48:38.000 investigations,
00:48:38.680 I think he wrapped it up
00:48:41.200 pretty quickly.
00:48:42.460 I still think
00:48:43.340 he should have,
00:48:45.240 since it was,
00:48:45.860 it had to have been
00:48:46.640 clear to him,
00:48:47.360 I think,
00:48:47.780 by probably autumn
00:48:49.480 of 2017
00:48:50.420 that there was
00:48:51.340 no collusion case.
00:48:52.480 And I think he would have
00:48:53.540 gotten a lot less
00:48:54.580 bad behavior
00:48:55.420 from Trump
00:48:56.200 if they had just
00:48:57.400 put out an interim report
00:48:58.800 at the end of 2017
00:49:00.700 and said,
00:49:01.440 you know,
00:49:01.700 look,
00:49:02.440 this Steele dossier,
00:49:03.580 we've looked at it,
00:49:04.220 we can't corroborate it,
00:49:05.800 we don't really have
00:49:06.640 anything else
00:49:07.300 that indicates
00:49:08.140 there's this dark
00:49:09.180 conspiracy.
00:49:10.440 So we're going to
00:49:11.340 let you know
00:49:12.000 that the president
00:49:12.800 is not a suspect
00:49:14.540 in a collusion
00:49:17.460 conspiracy case
00:49:18.640 with Russia,
00:49:19.180 but we're going to
00:49:19.720 continue to investigate
00:49:20.800 Russia's interference
00:49:22.020 in the election.
00:49:22.940 I think he would have
00:49:23.620 gotten a lot less
00:49:24.380 bad behavior
00:49:25.100 from Trump.
00:49:27.000 That's not to say
00:49:27.840 that Trump has any
00:49:28.640 excuse for behaving badly,
00:49:30.020 but,
00:49:30.960 you know,
00:49:31.760 I think you would have
00:49:33.380 given him
00:49:34.080 less of a motive
00:49:35.480 to be a jerk.
00:49:36.680 Yeah,
00:49:37.260 probably a lot more
00:49:38.060 goodwill from the
00:49:38.720 American people,
00:49:39.460 too.
00:49:39.620 I think that it
00:49:40.460 wound up gragging on
00:49:41.360 to most people
00:49:42.120 for so long
00:49:43.040 and it wound up,
00:49:44.500 I think,
00:49:45.000 just frustrating people.
00:49:46.140 I know that when
00:49:46.600 this thing came out,
00:49:47.240 I was like,
00:49:47.500 oh,
00:49:47.660 finally,
00:49:48.000 this is going to
00:49:48.360 be over
00:49:48.680 and you realize
00:49:49.200 it's not even
00:49:49.780 close to over.
00:49:50.720 This is going
00:49:51.000 to go on forever.
00:49:52.700 It is.
00:49:53.460 Yeah.
00:49:53.960 You know,
00:49:54.200 so let me take
00:49:55.000 a quick 60-second
00:49:55.840 break here,
00:49:56.560 Andy,
00:49:56.720 and come back with you.
00:49:57.340 I want to get
00:49:58.080 to the part where
00:49:58.760 the biggest way
00:50:00.500 that Mueller
00:50:01.000 dropped the ball
00:50:01.580 on this,
00:50:01.820 this is a fascinating
00:50:02.600 way of looking at
00:50:03.280 this and it
00:50:04.480 really is changing
00:50:05.280 something fundamental
00:50:06.060 that I think is
00:50:06.620 not only changing
00:50:07.460 in this particular
00:50:08.600 report,
00:50:09.080 but it's changing
00:50:09.540 across our society.
00:50:11.180 Speaking with Andy
00:50:11.740 McCarthy from
00:50:12.700 National Review
00:50:13.680 and New York Post,
00:50:14.760 he's got a great
00:50:15.160 column,
00:50:15.560 Mueller completely
00:50:16.500 dropped the ball
00:50:17.200 with the obstruction
00:50:17.840 punt and Andy,
00:50:19.600 if I understand
00:50:20.020 this right,
00:50:20.740 and I'm sure I don't,
00:50:22.240 there are three
00:50:23.180 hurdles essentially
00:50:24.200 you have to clear
00:50:25.140 to make an
00:50:26.220 obstruction claim
00:50:27.220 real,
00:50:28.060 which is an
00:50:29.060 obstructive act,
00:50:30.480 the nexus
00:50:31.300 to an official
00:50:32.260 proceeding,
00:50:33.280 and the intent.
00:50:35.100 Do you have to
00:50:35.600 clear all three
00:50:36.300 of those hurdles
00:50:36.920 for a claim
00:50:37.880 to qualify?
00:50:39.420 Yes,
00:50:39.720 those are what
00:50:41.180 you would call
00:50:42.000 in the prosecutor
00:50:42.940 essential elements
00:50:44.400 of the crime
00:50:45.040 and they're the
00:50:46.120 things that have
00:50:46.700 to be proved
00:50:47.260 beyond a reasonable
00:50:48.040 doubt to
00:50:48.560 convict someone.
00:50:49.680 So two of them
00:50:50.440 are pretty
00:50:50.700 self-explanatory,
00:50:52.080 obstructive act,
00:50:52.860 you've got to do
00:50:53.280 something that looks
00:50:53.840 like obstruction
00:50:54.320 and you've got to
00:50:55.140 have the intent
00:50:55.840 to do it
00:50:56.460 to obstruct
00:50:57.140 something.
00:50:57.920 Can you do a
00:50:58.660 quick minute
00:50:59.640 on what do they
00:51:00.940 mean by nexus
00:51:01.780 to an official
00:51:02.560 proceeding?
00:51:04.000 Yeah,
00:51:04.160 it's actually
00:51:04.640 pretty complicated.
00:51:05.940 In the law,
00:51:06.580 Stu,
00:51:07.580 an FBI investigation
00:51:10.360 is not an
00:51:11.160 official proceeding.
00:51:13.060 An official
00:51:14.040 proceeding is like
00:51:15.740 an adjudicative
00:51:16.800 matter.
00:51:18.300 The most common
00:51:19.800 one is a court
00:51:21.720 proceeding and
00:51:22.840 that's why we
00:51:23.380 always mention,
00:51:24.000 we talk about,
00:51:24.920 we don't just say
00:51:25.640 obstruction,
00:51:26.160 we say obstruction
00:51:26.860 of justice,
00:51:27.660 right?
00:51:27.860 The reason we
00:51:28.760 say that is
00:51:29.360 we're talking
00:51:29.740 about judicial
00:51:30.460 proceedings.
00:51:31.620 So the reason
00:51:32.360 that when you
00:51:33.940 obstruct an
00:51:34.680 FBI investigation,
00:51:36.540 it can be
00:51:37.420 obstruction of
00:51:38.180 justice is
00:51:39.300 because derivatively
00:51:40.700 you pervert the
00:51:41.880 judicial process
00:51:42.920 down the road.
00:51:43.640 you know,
00:51:43.940 if you pressure
00:51:46.360 a witness to
00:51:47.160 lie or you
00:51:48.400 destroy evidence
00:51:49.240 before the
00:51:49.760 bureau,
00:51:50.380 the FBI
00:51:50.840 can grab it.
00:51:53.920 It's not that
00:51:54.840 you're perverting
00:51:55.760 their proceeding.
00:51:57.360 That's not what's
00:51:58.860 cognizable under
00:51:59.740 the law.
00:52:00.240 It's that the
00:52:00.980 eventual judicial
00:52:02.000 proceeding can be
00:52:03.760 frustrated and that's
00:52:04.580 why it's obstruction
00:52:05.300 of justice.
00:52:05.880 And it seems like
00:52:06.560 throughout the
00:52:07.020 Mueller report,
00:52:07.500 they didn't get
00:52:08.140 there on all
00:52:08.780 three,
00:52:09.260 on most of
00:52:10.020 these instances.
00:52:10.660 There's a couple
00:52:11.240 they seem to
00:52:11.820 leave open.
00:52:12.960 But this doesn't
00:52:13.840 get to the real
00:52:14.720 fundamental biggest
00:52:16.040 problem here that
00:52:16.800 you point out in
00:52:17.260 the column.
00:52:18.220 And it has to
00:52:18.960 do with burden
00:52:20.260 of proof,
00:52:21.100 a real change
00:52:21.980 that I think is
00:52:22.680 not only happening
00:52:23.240 here but happening
00:52:23.860 all over the
00:52:24.380 place.
00:52:25.080 Can you walk us
00:52:25.760 through what you
00:52:26.980 found?
00:52:28.240 Yeah, you're
00:52:28.720 right about it's
00:52:29.500 happening all over
00:52:30.200 the place.
00:52:30.660 I mean, just
00:52:31.020 listening to Jerry
00:52:31.900 Nadler, the
00:52:33.280 chairman of the
00:52:34.600 House Judiciary
00:52:35.420 Committee,
00:52:36.240 yesterday, this
00:52:37.440 is what he
00:52:38.000 honed in on
00:52:38.640 too and in
00:52:42.100 a way that
00:52:42.880 suggested that
00:52:45.720 this was
00:52:46.080 proper, which
00:52:46.700 is that it
00:52:47.080 was somehow
00:52:47.780 the suspect's
00:52:51.640 burden to
00:52:52.240 prove that he
00:52:53.220 is innocent
00:52:54.760 rather than the
00:52:55.540 government's
00:52:56.020 burden to
00:52:56.440 prove that
00:52:56.860 you're guilty.
00:52:58.560 What Mueller
00:52:59.180 did was he
00:53:01.420 marshaled, what
00:53:02.740 he tells us
00:53:03.360 up front, which
00:53:04.820 I think was
00:53:05.280 really wormy
00:53:06.440 on his part,
00:53:08.000 is that he's
00:53:09.200 not going to
00:53:09.860 make what he
00:53:10.300 called the
00:53:10.700 traditional
00:53:11.280 prosecutorial
00:53:12.400 judgment, which
00:53:14.100 he's so quaint.
00:53:15.760 He says,
00:53:16.120 that's this
00:53:16.420 binary judgment
00:53:18.040 where you either
00:53:18.720 charge or you
00:53:19.360 don't charge.
00:53:20.300 So he's going
00:53:20.740 to do something
00:53:21.240 new and
00:53:21.840 innovative.
00:53:23.760 He's going to
00:53:24.520 lay out the
00:53:25.160 evidence on both
00:53:26.160 sides and then
00:53:28.120 dump the matter
00:53:28.840 in the Justice
00:53:30.340 Department's lap.
00:53:31.380 And I thought
00:53:33.300 that was really
00:53:34.900 a dereliction
00:53:37.780 on his part
00:53:38.980 because by the
00:53:42.840 time he came
00:53:43.420 into the case,
00:53:44.040 I think it was
00:53:44.420 already pretty
00:53:44.900 clear there was
00:53:45.400 no collusion
00:53:46.000 case.
00:53:46.820 I didn't think
00:53:47.460 we needed a
00:53:48.080 special counsel,
00:53:49.260 but you can only
00:53:49.840 have a special
00:53:50.400 counsel when the
00:53:51.240 Justice Department
00:53:51.960 is conflicted,
00:53:53.440 and obstruction
00:53:54.960 is the only thing
00:53:55.860 arguably you needed
00:53:56.920 him to resolve.
00:53:58.400 So what did he do?
00:53:59.180 He didn't resolve
00:54:00.040 the main question
00:54:00.820 he was brought
00:54:01.320 in to resolve,
00:54:02.060 and he dumps
00:54:02.480 it in the lap
00:54:02.940 of the Justice
00:54:03.400 Department,
00:54:04.020 which is supposed
00:54:04.500 to be too
00:54:05.060 conflicted to
00:54:05.740 decide it,
00:54:06.560 which is why
00:54:07.060 we have him
00:54:07.440 in the first
00:54:07.860 place, right?
00:54:08.460 The whole thing
00:54:09.280 is just wrong-headed.
00:54:12.680 But what he does
00:54:13.760 is he says,
00:54:14.360 I'm just going
00:54:14.740 to marshal
00:54:15.220 the evidence
00:54:15.800 on each side,
00:54:17.120 and then at
00:54:17.800 the very end,
00:54:18.760 what I think
00:54:19.740 is really,
00:54:21.160 I want to say
00:54:24.000 partisan,
00:54:25.420 but it's
00:54:26.320 certainly not
00:54:26.880 prosecutorial use
00:54:28.880 of language.
00:54:29.520 He says that
00:54:30.200 we're not confident
00:54:34.140 that there's
00:54:34.800 no crime here.
00:54:35.760 We're not going
00:54:36.140 to charge a crime,
00:54:37.440 but we're not
00:54:38.220 confident that
00:54:38.900 there's no crime,
00:54:39.760 and we're not
00:54:40.420 going to exonerate
00:54:41.440 the president.
00:54:42.580 Well, you know,
00:54:43.560 that's not what
00:54:44.040 prosecutors do.
00:54:45.160 Prosecutors either
00:54:45.880 tell you there
00:54:47.260 is enough evidence
00:54:48.120 to charge,
00:54:48.820 in which case you
00:54:49.480 charge,
00:54:50.340 or you at the
00:54:52.360 most say we're
00:54:53.060 not going to
00:54:53.700 charge,
00:54:54.120 or you say
00:54:54.640 nothing.
00:54:55.340 But if you've
00:54:56.480 basically made a
00:54:57.800 decision not
00:54:58.540 to charge,
00:54:59.980 then you have
00:55:01.740 no business
00:55:02.340 going on to
00:55:03.080 say, but that's
00:55:03.680 not an exoneration.
00:55:04.640 It's for the
00:55:05.320 public to decide
00:55:06.200 whether it's an
00:55:07.040 exoneration or
00:55:07.860 not.
00:55:08.060 That's not the
00:55:08.680 prosecutor's business.
00:55:10.320 But by doing
00:55:11.540 that, what he
00:55:12.180 does is he
00:55:13.520 says, we're
00:55:16.080 not confident
00:55:16.960 that there
00:55:17.480 wasn't a crime
00:55:18.360 here.
00:55:20.040 And it's his
00:55:21.640 job to prove
00:55:22.700 that there was
00:55:23.540 a crime.
00:55:24.580 It's not
00:55:24.980 President Trump's.
00:55:25.860 No matter
00:55:26.140 what you think
00:55:26.800 of President
00:55:27.260 Trump, it's
00:55:28.440 not his job
00:55:29.620 in a legal
00:55:30.860 context.
00:55:31.500 A political
00:55:31.980 context is
00:55:32.700 different, but
00:55:33.180 it's not his
00:55:33.840 job in a legal
00:55:34.680 context to
00:55:36.240 prove his
00:55:36.760 innocence.
00:55:37.640 And I think
00:55:38.240 you're quite
00:55:38.760 right to say
00:55:39.460 that this is
00:55:39.980 something that
00:55:40.460 we see
00:55:40.880 seeping into
00:55:41.940 the society
00:55:45.000 more broadly.
00:55:45.960 This is not
00:55:46.420 just about
00:55:46.920 President Trump.
00:55:48.280 There's kind
00:55:49.000 of a conceit
00:55:49.720 out there
00:55:50.240 that the
00:55:53.180 government can
00:55:53.840 now make
00:55:54.280 serious
00:55:54.940 allegations,
00:55:57.400 whether it's
00:55:58.000 in a regulatory
00:55:58.620 context or
00:55:59.560 whatever context
00:56:00.280 they decide to
00:56:00.920 make it in.
00:56:01.680 And then it's
00:56:02.240 somehow the
00:56:02.760 burden on the
00:56:03.380 citizen to
00:56:04.060 prove that
00:56:05.240 he's not
00:56:05.640 guilty of
00:56:06.140 wrongdoing.
00:56:06.860 And I think
00:56:07.320 that's a
00:56:07.720 dangerous road
00:56:08.500 to go down.
00:56:09.560 Yeah.
00:56:09.800 I mean,
00:56:10.360 certainly you
00:56:10.820 see it all
00:56:11.100 the time in
00:56:11.580 the court of
00:56:12.340 public opinion,
00:56:12.920 which I know
00:56:13.340 is different,
00:56:13.860 but it's sort
00:56:14.220 of this
00:56:14.440 Kavanaugh
00:56:14.900 standard where
00:56:15.720 it's like,
00:56:16.400 well, we
00:56:16.580 can't prove
00:56:17.280 he wasn't at
00:56:17.900 this party that
00:56:18.600 we can't name
00:56:19.220 where it was,
00:56:20.400 so therefore you
00:56:21.260 should probably
00:56:21.760 assume he's
00:56:22.420 guilty.
00:56:22.700 And Trump
00:56:23.980 here I think
00:56:24.420 really is the
00:56:25.240 victim of this
00:56:26.060 at some level.
00:56:27.060 I do kind of
00:56:28.320 wonder though,
00:56:29.060 Andy, how does
00:56:29.780 this work?
00:56:30.600 Let's just say
00:56:31.100 Mueller does
00:56:32.020 his job
00:56:32.420 correctly.
00:56:33.380 Did he do
00:56:33.800 his job
00:56:34.100 correctly,
00:56:34.520 let's say,
00:56:35.100 on part one,
00:56:36.260 which was the
00:56:37.060 actual collusion
00:56:37.920 where he pretty
00:56:38.820 much exonerates
00:56:39.940 him of any
00:56:40.620 criminal activity
00:56:41.380 there?
00:56:41.720 Is that what
00:56:42.100 he should have
00:56:42.660 done with
00:56:43.060 part two?
00:56:44.260 Leave all that
00:56:44.980 evidence in
00:56:45.480 there and then
00:56:46.000 at the end
00:56:46.400 just conclude
00:56:47.360 we did not
00:56:48.180 have enough to
00:56:48.700 charge him,
00:56:49.380 therefore he
00:56:50.920 is clear of
00:56:52.060 this particular
00:56:52.940 crime?
00:56:53.580 Or does he
00:56:54.420 just not
00:56:55.020 release all
00:56:55.580 of this detail
00:56:56.340 for everyone
00:56:56.800 to have their
00:56:57.340 political fun
00:56:57.980 with?
00:56:59.320 Yeah, see,
00:57:00.480 there's a limit
00:57:02.220 I think to
00:57:02.920 how much,
00:57:03.660 I'm not a
00:57:04.440 fan of the
00:57:05.320 investigation,
00:57:06.060 I'm not a
00:57:06.360 particular fan
00:57:07.180 of Mueller,
00:57:07.740 although I
00:57:08.100 think he's
00:57:08.420 a scrupulous
00:57:09.960 guy,
00:57:10.880 notwithstanding
00:57:11.420 what I've
00:57:12.100 said up to
00:57:12.660 this point.
00:57:13.560 Well, I
00:57:15.780 mean, I
00:57:16.120 think in
00:57:16.480 general he's
00:57:17.120 had an
00:57:17.380 admirable
00:57:17.800 career,
00:57:18.440 I don't
00:57:18.700 agree with
00:57:19.220 the way he
00:57:19.700 handled this,
00:57:20.380 but I don't
00:57:21.320 know that you
00:57:22.540 know,
00:57:22.680 the idea
00:57:24.680 still is you're
00:57:25.300 supposed to
00:57:25.640 give a
00:57:25.900 confidential
00:57:26.320 report to
00:57:27.020 the Justice
00:57:27.420 Department and
00:57:28.080 they decide
00:57:29.120 how much of
00:57:29.740 it to release,
00:57:30.740 but this
00:57:31.500 certainly reads
00:57:32.260 like it was
00:57:32.780 meant for
00:57:33.320 release and I
00:57:34.200 think it's
00:57:34.600 meant as a
00:57:35.300 road map for
00:57:36.000 Congress more
00:57:36.840 than for the
00:57:37.640 Justice
00:57:37.880 Department.
00:57:39.100 Andy McCarthy,
00:57:40.040 the column is in
00:57:40.680 the New York
00:57:40.920 Post, Mueller
00:57:41.340 completely dropped
00:57:42.000 the ball with
00:57:42.420 the obstruction
00:57:42.880 punt,
00:57:43.560 thanks so much
00:57:44.020 for coming
00:57:44.320 on Andy,
00:57:44.960 I appreciate
00:57:45.540 it.