President Donald Trump's nominee for Attorney General, William Barr, reportedly has been friends with special counsel Robert Mueller for over 20 years.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spoke to reporters on Wednesday about a meeting he had with Barr.
“I asked Mr. Barr directly, ‘Do you think Bob, Mr. Mueller’s, on a witch hunt?’ He said no. ‘Do you think he would be fair to the president and the country as a whole?’ He said yes,” Graham recalled, according to Bloomberg News.
Graham said that he learned that Mueller and Barr have been friends for decades.
"They’ve been personal friends for over 20 years,” Graham noted, explaining that the two had worked together at the Justice Department. “His opinion of Mr. Mueller is very, very high in terms of ethics and character and professionalism.”
Barr, however, stood behind a controversial memo he wrote last year suggesting that a president should not be accused of obstruction of justice for firing political appointees. Trump is reportedly being investigated for obstruction after he fired former FBI Director James Comey in order to bring an end to the Russia investigation, which is now headed by Mueller.
It wasn't immediately clear if Trump was aware of the Mueller/Barr friendship prior to the nomination.
Fox News hosts lashed out at the public education system on Sunday because a lecture at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill discussed "right-hand privilege."
A segment on the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends called out the lecture on inclusion after a photo was shared on Instagram. The photo highlighted some of the benefits of so-called right-handed privilege.
This appeared to outrage Fox News hosts Lawrence Jones, Rachel Campos-Duffy and Pete Hegseth.
"You're looking at the most privileged couch in America," Hegseth said, noting that the three hosts are right-handed. "You guys are so privileged, it's not even funny. You don't even know it."
"So you see that the solution to people believing that white people having more advantage is a reverse racism," Campos-Duffy opined. "So what should happen to those of us who are right-handed who have enjoyed for decades, you know, this kind of advantage over our left-handed minorities."
The hosts went on to argue that public schools should be defunded because of the lecture on right-handed privilege.
"Conservatives abandoned the college campuses for so long and they continue to reinforce sending their kids to these college campuses," Jones explained. "If you want this to change then you've got to support conservative universities or don't send them at all. Take that money, teach your child how to be a business owner and take that money that you were going to send them to school and invest into them."
"Stop sending them," Hegseth agreed.
"I will not fund those schools," Campos-Duffy insisted. "I will not give my hard-earned money for that kind of indoctrination and that kind of garbage and -- I'm not going to say the word but you know what it is."
Watch the video below from Fox News.
In a biting piece for the LA Times, longtime columnist Doyle McManus pointed out that Donald Trump has only one overriding reason to become president again and it has nothing to do with revenge or the trappings of power.
Re-election for Trump may be the only way he avoids jail time and forestalls a panoply of lawsuits he is currently facing.
While Trump has been accused of only hinting at running again as a scam to continue to bring in donations since his businesses are faltering and he is facing some major financial difficulties in the near future, McManus suggests staying out of courtrooms is at the front of the former president's mind.
Writing Trump, "...spent almost three years under investigation for what looked like collusion with Russia, only to walk away scot-free," the columnist stated the one-termer may not be so lucky now that he is out of office and not protected by being the leader of the free world.
"But Trump remains under the gun. He's still in search of escape routes. A House committee is examining his attempts to overturn last year's presidential election, including his actions when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6," he wrote. "A prosecutor in Georgia is investigating whether he violated state law against soliciting election fraud when he demanded that officials 'find 11,780 votes' — the number he needed to undo Joe Biden's victory in that state. And prosecutors in New York are looking into allegations that Trump, or at least the closely held family business he runs, committed tax and bank fraud."
As Trump impeachment attorney Norm Eisen put it, "His life has been a series of lessons showing that with aggressive lawyering and a lot of chutzpah, you can achieve almost total immunity."
According to McManus, not only are presidents shielded from most criminal investigations but, if Trump can keep stalling the Democrats from keeping his personal papers and re-tellings of his conversations with aides away from investigators, he can reassert the executive privilege protections President Joe Biden won't allow him.
"No matter how the legal wrangles turn out, lies the answer to a persistent question about Trump: What makes him run?" McManus asked. "Ego, surely, in part. A desire to take revenge on his adversaries, too. But two practical reasons, as well. One is money. Political contributions may be the most reliable revenue stream the Trump family enterprise has at the moment. The other, equally important, is to bolster his legal defense. As long as he's running (or even sort of running), Trump can denounce every inquest and subpoena as just another part of a political vendetta. It's a way to hold his troops together — and to make every prosecutor think twice."
"He's notching up another presidential first: He's running for reelection to stay out of jail," he concluded.
You can read the whole piece here -- subscription required.
According to another report from Florida Politics' Christine Jordan Sexton, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo was harshly criticized by Florida State Senate leader Wilton Simpson -- a Republican -- for putting the life of an immunocompromised Democratic state senator at risk by refusing to wear a mask when meeting with her.
On Saturday, Jordan Sexton reported that Ladapo and two aides refused to wear masks when meeting with Sen. Tina Polsky (D) even after she told them she is just starting radiation treatment for breast cancer. During the meeting, Ladapo made light of the situation before finally leaving as instructed.
Now, according to Jordan Sexton, Simpson has stepped into the controversy and upbraided Ladapo for his actions.
"Simpson sent a memo to all members and Senate staff calling the incident 'disappointing' and said that' it shouldn't take a cancer diagnosis for people to respect each other's level of comfort with social interactions during a pandemic," she wrote.
He continued, "What occurred in Senator Polksy's office was unprofessional and will not be tolerated in the Senate. While there is no mask mandate in the Senate, Senators and staff can request social distancing and masking within their own offices. If visitors to the Senate fail to respect these requests, they will be asked to leave."
Jordan Sexton noted that Simpson seemed to hint that Ladapo's nomination to be the new Florida surgeon general -- still to be voted upon -- now may be in jeopardy.
You can read more.
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