Russia Isn’t Dividing Us — Our Leaders Are rollingstone.com/politics/polit… via @RollingStone @mtaibbi
“Russiagate will soon be four years old. For the first three years, it pushed parallel themes: that Russia had “interfered” in the 2016 election, and Trump conspired in the fraud.
The latter theme at times garnered literal around-the-clock coverage.
The latter theme at times garnered literal around-the-clock coverage.
CNN and MSNBC especially (but also the The New York Times, the The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, and other major outlets) preached to audiences that the fall of the Trump administration was imminent.
Robert Mueller, news audiences were told, would reveal the Trump-Russia conspiracy and save the world.
After this story died a violent death when Mueller’s probe ended with no new charges, conventional wisdom shifted to a new gospel: Russiagate was about foreign interference.
After this story died a violent death when Mueller’s probe ended with no new charges, conventional wisdom shifted to a new gospel: Russiagate was about foreign interference.
Russiagate from the start smelled funny, like bad food. Multiple developments worsened the odor. Stories kept coming up wrong. There were too many unnamed sources, too frequently contradicting one another and/or overstating facts. Every hoof print was a zebra’s.
Outlets stopped worrying about relaying unconfirmed rumors, which is how terms like “blackmail,” “Trump,” “Russia” and even “Golden Showers” kept appearing in headlines, without proof there ever had been blackmail.
The logic of Russiagate is now beyond absurd. Vladimir Putin, somehow in perfect sync with American voting trends, seeks to elevate both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders... in a desperate effort to suppress the terrifying political might of, say, Joe Biden.”
