Following former special counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Fox News anchor Shannon Bream challenged House Democrats to appear on her 11 P.M. show.
Bream issued a Twitter call-out after Fox News staffers unsuccessfully petitioned the offices of 70 Democrat lawmakers to try to get them to make an appearance on the network.
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“So, if you’re a House Dem and willing to talk about the Mueller hearing – let us know ASAP,” Bream said just a few hours before her scheduled show.
Our amazing @FoxNewsNight staff – including @BrigidMaryMcD – has reached out to roughly 70 Dem offices to get a Member to join our show tonight. Crickets. So, if you're a House Dem and willing to talk about the Mueller hearing – let us know ASAP. See the rest of y'all at 11p!
— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) July 25, 2019
Democrats had been hyping Mueller’s testimony in recent days, many hoping they’d get the “movie version” of his 400-page report on the Russia investigation’s findings. But pundits from both sides of the political aisle found the former FBI director’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee anticlimactic.
Speaking to a Fox News panel Wednesday, former Rep. Trey Gowdy called the hearing a failure for Democrats.
“They’re not closer to anything other than wishing this never happened,” the South Carolina Republican said in regards to Democratic hopes of being able to impeach Trump. “Bad facts make for bad witnesses. Bad witnesses make for bad hearings. This one was an abject, miserable failure.”
Democrats had high hopes for the testimony of Robert Mueller
Congressional Democrats have largely abandoned accusations that Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election and pivoted to Mueller’s refusal to “exonerate” the president on obstruction of justice charges. The sub-text of their remarks could be taken to mean that the Mueller report hasn’t exactly had the bombshell effect on the American people that they’d anticipated.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff expressed his hope over the weekend that Mueller’s on-camera testimony would succeed where his “pretty dry prosecutorial work product” had failed.
“Since most of our constituents in their busy lives haven’t had the opportunity to read that report — and it’s a pretty dry prosecutorial work product — we want Bob Mueller to bring it to life, to talk about what’s in that report,” said Sunday during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
For many on the opposite side of the aisle, Democrats’ insistence on re-litigating the Mueller report is partisan flailing born of frustration that the two-year buildup spawned by the Russia investigation failed to deliver enough dirt on Trump.
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Conservative commentator Eddie Scarry, writing in the Washington Examiner, predicted that Mueller’s hours-long testimony this week “won’t change a single thing.”
“The conclusion of his two-year long investigation will still be that there was no proof of a conspiracy between Russians and President Trump’s 2016 campaign,” he wrote. “Mueller will still abstain from determining whether Trump obstructed justice, though his boss, William Barr, has already made that call for him. And Democrats, regardless of what is said, will still push for impeachment, despite failing to point to any particular act that would justify it.”