Uh Oh, Sunday Show Hosts Did Journalism This Week

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Three interviews with Republicans on the Sunday shows this week, three acts of journalism committed by the hosts. That might be a record!

Let’s dive in.

Uh Oh, Jake Tapper Did Journalism

We begin with Oklahoma Republican Senate dumbass, Markwayne Mullin.

Appearing on CNN’s “State Of The Union,” Mullin tried to blame former President Barack Obama for giving Donald Trump’s late friend/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein the infamous “sweetheart deal” that allowed him to avoid accountability for so long.

Unfortunately for Mullin, Jake Tapper put down his future Hunter Biden exposé notes long enough to fact check him in real time.

MULLIN: But remember there was a plea deal that was struck in 2009, way before I was in office, way before Trump was even considering it to be in office, way before Pam Bondi was office, way before Kash Patel was director. 2009, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was made underneath the Obama administration with Epstein...

TAPPER: No, that's not right. That's not...

MULLIN: And that sweetheart has not been exposed. It's not?

TAPPER: No, it was 200-

MULLIN: Well, when was the case heard?

TAPPER: It was 2008. It was — the US attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta. He was a Bush appointee. He went on to become President Trump's Secretary of Labor. It all took place in 2008.

MULLIN: Who was in office at the time?

TAPPER: 2008, George W. Bush was in...

MULLIN: Who was in office at the time?

TAPPER: George W. Bush.

MULLIN: No, 2009 is when the case came out, and it was — and Obama was in office at the time.

TAPPER: It's not true. It's not true.

It went on and on. Even after being corrected and trying to minimize questions about Trump possibly pardoning Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, Mullin tried once again to blame Obama. Tapper was again forced to recite the easily verifiable history.

MULLIN: I don't know enough about Maxwell or the — or the conversation to even weigh in on that. But I will go back to what you're saying about it wasn't true. The case was sealed in 2009. That's absolutely true. It was heard in 2008. It was sealed in 2009.

TAPPER: The point is that the sweetheart deal, which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration, US attorney Alex Acosta. That's why Alex Acosta resigned in the first Bush [correction: Tapper meant Trump — Ed.] administration, because the Miami Herald had written this story in 2018 about how Epstein got away with so much.

Mullin tried one last time to get the lie out, but Jake Tapper could only end the interview with an exasperated “people can look it up” resignation.

Uh Oh, Margaret Brennan Did Journalism

Dead-eyed OMB Director and Project 2025 sperm donor Russ Vought made two appearances on the Sunday shows. On CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Vought tried to claim ignorance when host Margaret Brennan noted the project he co-authored:

BRENNAN: You did work on Project 2025, and we went back and looked at what they said in there about the Fed. As people may know, that's a Heritage Foundation product that got a lot of scrutiny during the campaign. The chapter on the Fed called for Congress to overhaul the Fed's focus and powers. Is that what you're looking to do in 2026?

VOUGHT: I don't even know what that chapter says. All I know, in terms of the president, the president has run on an agenda. He's been very clear about that. All that we're doing is — in this administration is running on — is implementing his agenda.

He damn well know what that chapter says. It’s not some cosmic coincidence that the moves this administration has taken have been identical to the thing he wrote. The thing, by the way, that Trump lied about not being his agenda, which fuckers like this now pretend he ran on.

On CNN, Vought tried to compare National Institute Of Health’s cancer research cuts by comparing it to a private company.

VOUGHT: We're going through the same programmatic review of the NIH that we did on education funding. So NIH is a program that, if they were a company that went through the last pandemic, their stock prices would be in shambles.

Except that’s not true.

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just $47.1B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. Fully 99.7 percent of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010 to 2019 came at least in part from NIH-funded research. Anyone would be hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit in the private sector as our NIH did before they destroyed it.

Uh Oh, Kristen Welker Did Journalism

We conclude with political remora and South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” host Kristen Welker asked Graham about the Trump administration trying to claim that Russia’s election interference in 2016 was a hoax. But Welker was ready for him, playing numerous clips of Graham agreeing with the intelligence assessments over the years, all the times he affirmed that Russia interfered with the election and why they did it.

“Senator, are you now saying that you don’t believe Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election?” asked Welker. Graham kept insisting that Tulsi Gabbard had released ALL THIS NEW INFORMATION. (Nothing, she has released nothing, she’s just lying in new and exciting ways.)

The New Republic picks up the coverage:

“Hold on, Senator, as you know, former President Obama has weighed in through a spokesperson,” Welker interrupted. “He says that’s just patently false. I actually spoke to Susan Miller, who’s a former senior CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian interference. She says it’s completely false that Obama or anyone else asked them to change or sway their investigation. She says, and she’s a Republican, that they all would have quit if that happened.”

“Senator, are you trying to rewrite history to distract from the Epstein matter, Senator?”

“I’m trying to let you know, and the media know, that we found something we didn’t know before,” Graham insisted, continuing to defend Trump. “At the end of the day, I’m not calling for a prosecution against President Obama for treason, but I am calling for an investigation.

“The only people colluding with the Russians were the Hillary Clinton campaign,” Graham continued.

No no no no no. Welker was not putting up with it.

“Senator, you’re saying there’s something new,” Welker replied. “This report goes back to 2020. It’s five years old. There’s actually nothing new in this report and nothing that changes any conclusion.”

“Whatever,” Graham responded.

Whatever!

Have a week.

[The New Republic]

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