Fox & Friends: Why Rush to Release Mueller Report When We Already Have ‘Monarch Notes’ Version

Brian Kilmeade has a new excuse for why people don’t need to read the full Mueller report. It can be summed up as, If only reading the Monarch Notes for The Odyssey in high school was good enough for me, reading William Barr’s summary of the report should be good enough for everyone.

That was the scene on Fox & Friends Friday morning as Kilmeade, along with co-hosts Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt, marveled that people don’t just automatically trust Trump’s hand-picked attorney general who questioned the legitimacy of the investigation before being hired to have accurately summarized the Mueller report in the four-page memo he released last Sunday.

In the segment, the hosts spends a minute or two complaining that Barr is not getting enough credit for working over a weekend to push out the summary in the first place. They also complain about the negativity of the headlines surrounding the summary, as if it is the press’s job to be laudatory towards the nation’s highest government officials. (To be fair, they do work for Fox News, so they might in fact think this.)

Kilmeade then goes through some headlines while complaining about how negative they are: “‘The Mueller Report Is Hundreds of Pages Long. Which Raises the Question: How Accurate Can a Four-Page Summary Be?’ You never heard of summarizing??”

Earhardt then breaks in: “Brian, like you said, the thing is, everyone is possibly thankful we don’t have to read 300 pages. We all will probably, but you at home are not going to sit down and read 300 pages. You want the summary.”

No, people who remember Barr’s role in covering up the Iran-contra affair and are aware that the Trump administration is spectacularly dishonest even by presidential administration standards might want the full 300 pages. At a minimum, they at least might want those pages summarized by someone who is not beholden to Donald Trump.

Kilmeade then goes in for his killer argument: “I have a confession. I never read The Odyssey. I only read the Monarch Notes. I still got a very good grade.”

Steve Doocy has one final observation, noting that the headlines “are pretty much what the Democrats are saying.” Because it shocks him that political reporters are writing about what the people they cover are talking about, apparently.

Watch the whole segment up top, via Fox News.