Schadenfreude overload as Andrea Mitchell attempts to correct Ted Cruz and reveals her ignorance

By Thomas Lifson

It is a foundational tenet of Trump-hatred that the 45th president and all who support him are stupid. With the Senate impeachment trial underway, anyone criticizing it must be an idiot, because everyone knows that Trump is evil incarnate, possibly even worse than Hitler.

That may explain why Andrea Mitchell of NBC News thought she could shame Ted Cruz as an ignoramus for criticizing the Senate impeachment trial yesterday.

.@SenTedCruz says #ImpeachmentTrial is like Shakespeare full of sound and fury signifying nothing. No, that’s Faulkner
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 10, 2021

Six minutes later, Jennifer Rubin, a former conservative who may epitomize Trump Derangement Syndrome, eagerly jumped on board the bandwagon, apparently believeing that Cruz's "false attribution" revealed that he lacked a soul.

and it says volumes about his lack of soul. That's Any Thinking Person.
— Jennifer 'America is Back' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) February 10, 2021

The problem is that Cruz was absolutely correct. William Faulkner borrowed the title of his book Sound and Fury from Macbeth, Act V: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Even I recognized the source, and I was not an English Lit major, unlike Andrea Mitchell, who graduated from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania in 1967 with that as her field of concentration. As Ace pointed out, this has got to be among the five most famous quotes from all of Shakespeare.

Twitter exploded in mockery within minutes. Twitchy has a good selection, including:

I normally wouldn't care that @mitchellreports doesn't know her Faulkner from her Shakespeare but the fact that she tweeted this in an effort to paint @SenTedCruz as stupid makes it just too delicious to resist!
— Adriana Stubbs (@adriana_s1970) February 11, 2021

Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain. You could have checked this in a few seconds. https://t.co/ulkBr1S0kZ pic.twitter.com/vOWfDfSRXy
— Erik Soderstrom (@soderstrom) February 11, 2021

It’s Macbeth. You’re trying too hard.

Twitter Pro Tip: Don’t go for the dunk if you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. https://t.co/u2K3TOI6yM
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 11, 2021

A beautiful microcosm if modern journalism's aversion to performing the simplest of fact checks.
— Wash your hands! (@CapalTunnel) February 11, 2021

Mitchell became aware of her mistake and tweeted out an apology that flattered herself:

I clearly studied too much American literature and not enough Macbeth. My apologies to Sen. Cruz.
— Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) February 11, 2021

And got called out on it:

I’m sorry that I work way too hard, that I’m generally way too erudite and analytically intense for my own good. Sorry, everybody! https://t.co/NWGmgw7Pe7
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) February 11, 2021

Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin, who apparently defined herself as having no soul because she doesn't know what Any Thinking Man does, has issued no mea culpa that I have been able to find. Sean Davis of The Federalist called her out:

And for all the dunking on Mitchell here, the real superstar of that thread is Jennifer Rubin, far and away the dumbest pundit in all of American politics, rolling in for the high five and immediately stepping on a rake. https://t.co/m5SUzQuCLk
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 11, 2021

But Ted Cruz gets the last word here: