Fox News Host Struggles with Her Opinion of Robert Mueller: ‘I Don’t Think He’s a Hack’

Melissa Francis of Fox News’ Outnumbered seemed to be struggling on Thursday with the possibility that maybe, despite everything the right-wing media complex has screamed for two years, Robert Mueller might not be a partisan hack hounding President Trump for no reason after all.

Francis was responding to a rant from co-host Lisa Boothe, who accused Mueller of fanning the impeachment flames with his press conference on Wednesday. Boothe was upset because she didn’t feel Mueller said anything that was not already in his report. But his saying it publicly in a way that seemed to draw a contrast with what Attorney General Bill Barr has said about the report’s conclusions for the last month gave Democrats ammunition in their drive to impeach the president for the crimes the report documented.

Therefore, in Boothe’s mind, any help Mueller gave to Democrats makes him a hack.

Francis was unconvinced, saying “Do you agree that after all that investigation and that whole report and 440 pages and how he’s conducted himself, you think Robert Mueller’s a hack? I don’t know that he’s a hack.”

Later, Francis also seemed to acknowledge that Mueller’s statement on Wednesday conflicted with what Barr had said both when the report was released and in his congressional testimony a month ago: “I was listening to both things, and with my ears, I’m not a lawyer, it did sound to me like it was different.”

Francis’ confusion has been one of the most interesting phenomena to observe on the right in general over the 24 hours after Mueller’s press conference. More than a few commentators and civilians who are deeply ensconced in the right-wing media bubble had been telling each other for a month that Mueller found no evidence of any crimes by the president.

Then Mueller said on Wednesday that if his office had confidence Trump had not committed a crime, he and his investigators would have definitively stated that. This is a restatement of what is written on page two of the report. But because people such as Francis have been fed the line that Trump was totally exonerated, they are now struggling with cognitive dissonance as they wrap their heads around the fact that Barr and others on the right flat-out lied.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.