Chris Hayes Rips Barr Over NBC Interview: Saying Up Is Down, Embracing Trump’s ‘No Puppet, You’re the Puppet’ Strategy

After Attorney General Bill Barr’s interview with NBC News’ Pete Williams today, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes went off on the comments the AG made about the Trump-Russia investigation.

Hayes brought both up the Hillary Clinton email probe and the Trump-Russia probe to before noting the infamous pre-election James Comey letter on the former and saying it was “an action that multiple people who look at the data say was decisive in tipping the election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.”

“Today Attorney General William Barr is selling a story that literally the reverse happened,” Hayes said.

Barr said in the interview, “I think probably from a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system, is that the incumbent government used the apparatus of the state, principally the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time in history this has been to a presidential campaign, the use of these counter-intelligence techniques against a presidential campaign”

Hayes said Barr would be correct “in the abstract… but we know that is not what happened”:

“The Attorney General is doing the Donald Trump thing, which is ‘No puppet, you’re the puppet,’ to try to get his way out of the situation. And this is the man right now who in holds his hands over investigative power over American citizens, every one of you watching. It is chilling.”

“There is a kind of crazy-making quality to watching somebody in Barr’s position take up the kind of Trump TV, Donald Trump, ‘no puppet, you’re the puppet’ line of up is down, the reverse of what is true is true,” he added.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called Barr “every bit as much a liar and propagandist” as the president.

You can watch above, via MSNBC.