Seth Meyers Goes Off on Fox News for Confusing Barr ‘Summary’ With Mueller Report
The ‘Late Night’ host pointed out that even AG Barr himself acknowledged his memo was not intended to summarize the special counsel’s report.
Seth Meyers returned from a week-long break on Monday to deliver his first response to everything that’s happened since Attorney General William Barr’s four-page memo on the Mueller report.
“Now, when Barr released this memo, everyone assumed it was just a summary of Mueller’s full report, a word Trump’s aides and the media have used over and over again,” the Late Night host said, cutting to clips of everyone from the Fox & Friends hosts to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) describing it that way. But as Meyers pointed out, even Barr himself has publicly bristled at the word “summary.”
“Wait, so it wasn’t supposed to be a summary?” Meyers asked. “To be clear, there is no reason to suspect that Barr’s memo is distorting Mueller’s report.” But “even if his initial memo was accurate and made in good faith,” the host said it would be hard to sum up a more than 300-page report in just four pages.
“It’s like when you try to cram for a test by reading the CliffsNotes for The Great Gatsby, and you end up writing, ‘Wealthy man enjoys consequence-free summer in the Hamptons,’” he said. “So we have no idea what’s in the report. Barr says it will be released sometime this month, and yet some Republicans are already threatening to block the release of a report they say exonerates the president.”
And even if Mueller couldn’t prove that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, Meyers said it “still exposed a whole world of normalized corruption by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country that was just accepted in Washington until now.”
Get the best of The Beast delivered right to your inbox
By clicking “SUBSCRIBE” you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
“It shouldn’t take a special counsel for us to find out that some of the most powerful people in the country are hoarding their wealth by committing serial fraud and illegally stashing their money in offshore tax havens,” the host said, pointing to Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who currently sits in prison. “The only way it could be worse is if Trump made Lori Loughlin his secretary of education.”
“And I of course am just kidding, Betsy DeVos is still worse,” he added. “I mean at least Lori Loughlin is trying to make it easier for people to get into college.”
See more of our coverage in your search results.
Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.
Register below to read this article for free or subscribe
to unlock unlimited access to The Daily Beast.
Monthly
$1
First month then $5.99/month
Annual
$35
First year then $59.99/year
Premium
$79
First year then $119.99/year
*Substack access provided by the next business day, using your subscription email. Choosing the Premium plan constitutes your permission to share your subscription email with Substack and your agreement to Substack’s Privacy Policy.
Already have an account? Sign In
Looks like you already have a subscription!
You're all set!
Thanks for subscribing.