Cable networks pounced on the news Friday that special counsel Robert Mueller had wrapped up his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump campaign collusion.
And hosts, analysts and personalities on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC interpreted Mueller’s delivery of the report to Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr in various ways. Barr will now decide how much of Mueller’s findings will be made public.
Fox News’ primetime hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson painted the fact that no new indictments were arising from the investigation as a resounding victory for President Donald Trump.
“The left’s favorite conspiracy theory is now dead, it is buried,” said Hannity, who also exclaimed that “the witch hunt is over.”
Their Fox News colleague Chris Wallace, however, took a more measured tone. “We don’t know what’s in the report; let’s be clear about that,” he noted. “We don’t know what Mueller found.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow acknowledged that “in terms of what that means and what Mueller has found, we know only the smallest little bits.”
“This is the start of something, not the end of something,” Maddow added.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper channeled Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill as he noted how Mueller’s work had until now been “kind of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma.”
Jim Acosta, the network’s chief White House correspondent, said Trump’s administration was “quietly celebrating” the conclusion of the investigation and the news that there would be no more indictments “with a fair amount of glee.”
And CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the fact that Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner were not going to be indicted by Mueller or his grand jury is “unambiguously good news for them.”
“Does that mean that Donald Trump is in the clear? Absolutely not, but I think the swirl of suspicion is not really justified,” Toobin added.
Check out the clips below and see how late night comedians responded here.