Mary Katharine Ham Only Person on CNN Panel Glad Trump Didn’t Commit Treason
On Thursday, CNN contributor Mary Katharine Ham seemed to be the lone voice on a CNN panel who believed the Attorney General is not himself colluding with Donald Trump and Russia in a cover-up, and the only one who expressed any relief in finding out that American elections weren’t subverted by treason resulting in a Russian agent sitting in the Oval Office.
After listening to her fellow CNN panelists like The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein express continuing distrust, and expectation that a full reading of the (as Brownstein pointedly emphasized) 300 page Mueller report may show that what Bill Barr said is completely untrue, Ham weighed in.
“Look, I’m on board for as much of the Mueller report coming out as humanly possible, partly because we paid for it,” she said. “I’m also happy to talk about this story because it’s good news. It’s very good news for America that he did not collude with a hostile foreign country to become the president. It’s very good news that he was not a foreign asset. That he is the duly elected President of the United States, whether you vote for him or not. That’s good news for our country and system of government.”
No other panelists chimed in to agree that it was good news, nor did the host.
“And I think, look, some people say you set the bar too low, Mary Katharine, you’re very excited that he didn’t collude. I didn’t set that bar,” said Ham. “I think those same people forget how dead certain they were last week that Robert Mueller, the gold standard investigator, after two years of exhaustive investigation was going to find these band and in fact treasonous things were true about the president. But he didn’t.”
“Those are the top lines and I look forward to learning more,” said Ham. “I supported this investigation throughout, and I’m excited to hear not only the top lines but the rest of it. But I think there were some who fervently hoped for a different end to this.”
“I say that based on, throughout this ride, the side-eye, occasional hostility– hey Twitter!– that I got for merely expressing uncertainty, or caution,” she said. She pointed out Trump opponents can now focus on beating him in an election, which is “more healthy”, and said she’ll continue to use caution in future stories, as it served her well in the two years of the Mueller investigation.
Host Brianna Keilar, who was filling in for Jake Tapper, replied at that point, going right back to implying it’s possible the Attorney General lied, and even suggesting that perhaps he made up a quote in his report.
“The top lines have to do with collusion and obstruction, and if you trust Bill Barr, and you trust that quote that he pulled, then you believe that the collusion is, that’s a shut case,” she said. “But when it comes to the obstruction piece, the Mueller report did not exonerate him.”
Keilar did not explain why Barr would lie about the report’s conclusions about collusion but not about it’s conclusions on obstruction. The remainder of the discussion was along those lines, including a columnist from The Intercept suggesting that Trump owes everyone else an apology over Russia.
Watch the clip above, courtesy of CNN. More on CNN’s coverage here.
[Featured image via screengrab]
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