how do you feel about comparisons by some of your critics of this week s scandals to those that happened under the nixon administration? well, i ll let you guys engage in those comparisons and you can read history and draw your on conclusions. the president during a joint appearance along the prime minister of turkey. that line of questioning was bound to happen in this week of scandals because the mere mention of the word scandal in washington has a magical brain melting effect. once the beltway starts talking scandal, everyone collectively loses all ability to apply critical thinking and reasoning skills. suddenly no one can distinguish the facts and consequences and implications behind any particular scandal. all anyone cares about or is how scandalously scandalous the scald gate of scandals is.
they are being completely olittle bit rated and obscured right now by the word scandal. the grand irony is in this week of scandalous scandal overload the least attention is being paid to what is very likely the most scandalous thing to have happened, that s partly because of scandal gate fever and partly by the white house own design. i think it is high time we engaged in our own patented secret scandal encoder glasses to find out why. joining me, an nbc news political analyst. we fed ex d those. we got them to you. with me here at the table, jim walsh editor at large of salon and author of what s the matter with white people, which is a good people. and erin bowler. i want to work our way through this. i really think that there is this tornado blowing and no one is seeing or thinking clearly. that goes for democrats and republicans in many ways.
how do you feel about comparisons by some of your critics of this week s scandals to those that happened under the nixon administration? well, i ll let you guys engage in those comparisons and you can read history and draw your on conclusions. the president during a joint appearance along the prime minister of turkey. that line of questioning was bound to happen in this week of scandals because the mere mention of the word scandal in washington has a magical brain melting effect. once the beltway starts talking scandal, everyone collectively loses all ability to apply critical thinking and reasoning skills. suddenly no one can distinguish the facts and consequences and implications behind any particular scandal. all anyone cares about or is how scandalously scandalous the
the story about the department of justice having secretly subpoenaed the phone records of the associated press for two months, 20 different phone lines, include iing the homes o some reports, carl bernstein calling it outranlous and totally inexcusable. what we know so far is that the eric holder says he recused himself from this as part of the leak investigation about a story that appeared in may of 2012. eric holder accused himself but the actual conduct here i think is just profoundly chilling and troublesome and shows complete disregard for the department s own guidelines about how they re supposed to go about doing this. joan, you ve been on the same page. right. they had other options. they could have and should have gone to ap. this was not a secret investigation where they would be blowing their cover. this was a well known investigation. it was another scandal, the leak
scandal, and so they went farther than they had to go. they went more secretly an they are this comes in the context of them being incredibly tough on whistle blowers, prosecuting more whistle blowers than all presidencies combined. there is a pattern here. it is troubling that this is the scandal that s getting the least attention. yes, howard, it is getting the least attention which is so fascinating because it has the least partisan legs. ted cruz is like, you got to go after leakers. there is no delightful gains to be made by republicans beating them up over this. right. and i think perhaps the press corps is overthinking it by assuming that people out in the country don t really care that much. it is something involving politicians and the press and who cares. this is one where i think whatever the polls might say and whatever the level of interest among voters out in the country, it s a profound matter and profoundly disturbing.