Last night’s episode of The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell was one of the best examples of television analysis/journalism that I’ve ever watched. Unfortunately it hasn’t been posted on YouTube as of yet so below I will post a link to the most salient segment at the show’s website.
This first segment of the show featured Game Change co-author John Heilemann, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks and ex Chief of Staff to V.P. Joe Biden, Ron Klain.
The discussion started with the import Rick Gate’s potential co-operation in the investigation but quickly turned to Steve Bannon’s twenty hours of secret testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller which Klain dubbed Bannon’s “long song”. When asked by O’Donnell about the possible ramifications of the testimony, Klain had the quote of the night at the 4:00 mark in the interview, which you can access by clicking on the link in this tweet...
Klain said:
“Yeah, there’s plenty of basis to ask Steve Bannon questions, and I have to say, Lawrence, it is Infrastructure Week (panel laughs), and if Steve Bannon spent twenty hours with Robert Mueller, my guess is he was paving a road to Jared Kushner’s front door.”
Eager to join Klain of the departing quotable quote’s bus, Heilemann shortly thereafter (5:30) said of Bannon’s “long song”…
”I will say two quick things about Bannon, first, Ron said he sang a long song. Steve does not know any short songs (Klain laughs) he’s not a Beatles guy, he does Stairway to Heaven almost every time he talks about anything, so that’s one thing, the second thing is Bannon’s view is very clear, he regards the Special Prosecutor the only game in town, Muller is the person who can put him in jail, the house intelligence committee cannot put him in jail. He thinks the house intelligence committee is a bunch of clowns, he’s not gonna play with them….”
Klain acknowledges the clownishness of the Intel committee later (8:55) but stresses, in response to Adam Schiff’s cute but rather clueless yet earnest statement that he would “go to leadership” to compel Bannon’s testimony before the committee that the reason Mueller and Bannon don’t want him talking to Nunes and his hapless crew is that anything said there about Kushner’s larceny or Don Jr.s treachery will end up within the day on the desks of drump’s lawyers.
So, Schiff should maybe slow his roll on that.
The rest of the episode was awesome also with an interview of with the Democratic would be governor of Florida who talked about Rick Scott’s policy of “shooting guns in the hands of small children” and a fifteen year old shooting survivor who made his first pitch to be a future Democratic star…
If you haven’t seen yet, enjoy!