CNN's Rick Santorum: Reporting on the redacted Mueller report is not “good journalism”

Joe Lockhart: “You can have all the talking points you want that say that this is all fine. Just what we know now, there's a case for abuse of power.”

From the April 17 edition of CNN's New Day with Alisyn Camerota and John Brennan:

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RICK SANTORUM (CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR): The beat goes on here. What we don’t know. And we’ve been hearing this for two years, what we don’t know, and that this is speculation, that all these horrible things that are out there that we’re not going to know because what you’re going to find tomorrow, as I believe, is going to be a nothing, a nothing burger.

ALISYN CAMEROTA (CO-HOST): How do you know? How do you know? I mean that’s just speculation on the other side.

SANTORUM: Because it’s been a nothing burger so far. As much as speculation as we’ve had, as much as all these horrible crimes and impeachment and all these things that were going to happen and spending huge amounts of media time covering this, we have nothing. And the reality is we still are going to say, well, you know, we’re not going to know tomorrow. To keep this story alive and to keep the pressure on the president, we’re going to continue to say that there’s something we might not know, and that’s just — I just don’t think that’s good journalism and I think that's just hyping the story for -- beyond the --

POPPY HARLOW (GUEST CO-HOST): You can absolutely disagree. Let me just make a point of fact here that we would know all if Barr would turn over to Congress and the American public the full —

SANTORUM: There are laws in place that don’t allow you to do that.

HARLOW: Senator Santorum, you very well know that he could join Nadler and go to court and ask for a 6E exemption to be able to show that grand jury material just like Joe Lockhart was included in Ken Starr’s report, which I understand was under a different law. 

JOE LOCKHART (CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR): Listen, the president went from let’s release the whole thing to -- back to it’s back to it’s a witch hunt. The important thing here is even what we know now is not a nothing burger. The president fired the head of the FBI because he wanted to stop the Russia investigation. The president fired his attorney general because he recused himself. The president has talked about pardons. This is not a nothing burger. You can have all the talking points you want that say that this is all fine. Just what we know now, there's a case for abuse of power and the House Democrats will get into this in more detail and you can call it whatever you want, but this isn’t over and the White House is playing into the Democrats' hands by trying to keep all this information from people. 

Previously:

CNN's Rick Santorum: The allegation that Trump committed a campaign finance violation is “an incredibly flimsy charge”

CNN's Rick Santorum says Trump lies consistently about a lot of things so it doesn’t matter if he lies about Russia

Flawed media coverage of Mueller’s findings underscores the importance of good headlines