On Wednesday's The 11th Hour with Brian Williams on MSNBC, during a discussion of Fox News reaction to Attorney General Bill Barr's testimony on the Mueller report, John Heilemann derided FNC host Sean Hannity as a "steaming, hot pile of Hannity" who is as "happy as a pig in ****" as the MSNBC national affairs analyst seemed annoyed at having to react to the conservative Fox News host's commentary.
At 11:38 p.m. Eastern, host Williams turned to Heilemann and posed: "I have this for you. Here is how Sean Hannity started his broadcst tonight." Then came a clip of Hannity:
Let me give you a quick headline -- the details will follow, nobody else will report. The Mueller witch hunt is completely over. It is done. Nobody listened to the Attorney General, and, yeah, the Attorney General admitted today everything we've reported over rhe last two years, full criminal investigations are now just beginning.
The Fox News host added: "Imagine that -- a talk show host is right, and so many in the fake news industry are wrong."
Williams then asked: "John, have we gotten it wrong these past two plus years?"
Showing his disgust for Hannity, Heilemann closed his eyes, paused and then responded: "I'm just -- first of all, you bring me in here, and the first thing you serve me up is a big, fat, steaming plate of Hannity, so thanks for that."
After Williams injected, "on the house," Heilemann continued: "It's been a long day, and you just brought it out here to me. There's a phrase, people talk about a 'pig in,' you know. That's Sean right now -- he's happy as a pig in, you know."
Williams could be heard agreeing, "Mm-hmm." Heilemann continued:
Have we all got it wrong? I mean, many people would say that the news -- not so much the Barr news, the Barr performance today which is -- my friend Mr. Lemire says -- predictably was how Barr has been behaving for the last two months, certainly for the last since the events in question have really unfolded as a political apparatchik, for the President, so the President is happy.
He then added:
For once, a President who has now lied 10,000 times in office seems to be telling the truth in that he is saying he was pleased with performance, and, in fact, he actually seems to be pleased with performance and for good reason. But the news, really, over the last 24 hours, is nothing that happened in the hearing today.
The news is the Mueller letter we now know that Mueller wrote to Barr and we can fairly characterize the special counsel as having been furious, apoplectic, willing to write multple letters, you know, try to beat down the door of the Attorney General's office to say you're lying about my report. That's a pretty big piece of news, and it suggests that perhaps there's an alternative reading of reality here that's not what Sean Hannity wants us to think.
