With The Washington Post publishing select excerpts of a letter Special Counsel Robert Mueller purportedly sent to Attorney General William Barr expressing some level of displeasure with the original four-page memo to Congress, CNN was off to the races on Tuesday night with all sorts of speculation and doom and gloom soothsaying at it pertained to the fate of the AG.

In the middle of Anderson Cooper 360, Watergate-era bloviators John Dean (via telephone) and Carl Bernstein popped on to give their best negative spin.

After Dean suggested the letter exposed a “rift” between the longtime Justice Department friends, and without evidence, Bernstein went on to claim is exposed something darker about Barr and his motivations (click “expand”):

So, there clearly is an attempt by the special prosecutor, who says very clearly as well, that this action by the Attorney General has undermined public confidence in the special prosecutor's investigation and, in fact, notes that Mueller does, that was the purpose of the investigation was to have public confidence. And he accuses even though the language may be polite later on in the letter, he seems to accuse Mr. Barr undermining that public confidence. So this is an extraordinary and stunning development, and the other aspect of it is that like those who saw the report when it was released in the press and said, “wait a minute here, this report has nothing to do that is consistent with the way that Barr characterized it four weeks earlier”. Mueller, now, seems to be saying the same thing.

But what went underreported on CNN was the part of The Washington Post report that contradicted their initial accusations. “When Barr pressed Mueller on whether he thought Barr’s memo to Congress was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not but felt that the media coverage of it was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said,” the paper said.

If Mueller told Barr over the phone that the memo to Congress wasn’t inaccurate, then what’s is the letter and the media talking about?

Continuing to push the ridiculous narrative that Barr was flushing his long career and reputation down the drain to protect President Trump, Cooper teed up Bernstein with this slanted pitch:

Isn't the public's perception of the report though already kind of baked in at this point? I mean, wasn't that the whole point of Barr releasing the information the way that he released the information, which was to – to shape the way most people will see this? Most people haven't read the 448 pages.

Though he started off by saying he couldn’t know what was going on in Barr’s head, Bernstein agreed with Cooper’s premise and suggested it “fit into that pattern of polarization” from the Trump administration.

“But what is clear is that in terms of what the facts are, that the special prosecutor has taken the unprecedented and extraordinary step of saying that the Attorney General of the United States misrepresented the nature and context of the most important investigation – federal investigation of the last 40, 45 years,” Bernstein continued, longwindedly.

Despite the AG and the White House already saying they were fine with Mueller testifying before Congress, Cooper fueled unfounded fears that someone would try to intervene in a question to Dean. “It’s clear that we need both men on the record under oath to flush out what’s going on. And I suspect that Mueller is on the high ground on this one and needs to be clarified that that’s the fact,” Dean proclaimed without evidence.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: