Today the “Russian bounties” story - where Russia was supposedly paying to have US soldiers killed - quietly imploded.
For the last year, Dems, the media & others have pushed this conspiracy theory endlessly.
If you think that’s exaggerative, have a look⤵️
The worst offender was @nytimes, who broke the original story and went on to convince the families of soldiers who had been KIA that perhaps the Russians were to blame and President Trump didn’t care.
Will we get a follow up? Will the families?
But they were far from alone. @CNN pushed the conspiracy theory just as frequently as anyone did.
You’ll notice that, while some of the stories note the bounties are “alleged”, eventually CNN dropped that, despite the narrative being disputed (and having since fallen apart).
@CNN also made a habit of having elected Dems on to suggest a path forward on these unverified allegations, glossing over the fact that they may or may not even be true. Here’s @SenGillibrand and @SenDuckworth. (More on electeds later)
@brianstelter, I’m asking you earnestly: will you retract this story? Or at least amend it significantly, given the implications of your reporting?
If not, why not?
@washingtonpost gave Trump Four Pinocchios on a fact check when he said that the intel - which, again, was unverified and has since evaporated - was even disputed.
I mean, cmon!
But probably the most unhinged in their insistence was @MSNBC. They pushed this conspiracy theory time and time again across their platform as if the allegations were rock solid.
@MSNBC unsurprisingly got their chief Russian propagandist, @maddow/@MaddowBlog involved on this one, too.
You would think that the Russian collusion hoax imploding would chasten her. Apparently not.
But Maddow isn’t @MSNBC’s only conspiracy theorist.
@JoyAnnReid was one of the most outspoken proponents of the Russian bounties conspiracy theory (these are only a handful of her tweets - she could’ve had a thread to herself).
The rush among outlets to go from explosive but unconfirmed reports to gospel truth was contagious.
And the lower house wasn’t any better. @SpeakerPelosi was probably the worst offender.
In retrospect, it sure looks like Trump was right to call the story - forced out of terrorist detainees - a hoax.
But there were plenty of others in the House. Many of the names won’t shock you. Here’s: @RepSwalwell (go figure) @RepAdamSchiff (double go figure) @tedlieu (quickly becoming a 🧵favorite) and @sethmoulton (“treasonous behavior”)
Of course the trolls, grifters, child predators and the rest of the ghouls at @ProjectLincoln were pushing this one hard.
I try to have grace and charity on here. I can’t muster it with the Lincoln Project.
All of the internet loudmouths were on this one. I’ve only got so much space and so much patience but here we’ll see: @DanRather @tribelaw (go figure) @KevinMKruse and @Scaramucci (this might be libel?)
There hasn’t been a more widespread or pernicious conspiracy theory in recent memory than “Russian bounties.” It was always thinly sourced and disputed. Yet it was treated as the gospel truth because Orange Man Bad.
Where are the corrections? Where are the retractions?
I don’t think we’ll get any. I don’t think any heads will roll. I don’t think any lessons will be learned.
But you know what I do think? I do think this’ll happen again. And that’s embarrassing.
In many ways, this story was the Russian Collusion hoax in miniature: Trump is bad, so we’ll believe anything that’s said about him, especially if it involves Russia.
A truly shameful showing from those who are meant to tell the American people the truth.
For those who have asked, I don’t have anything to sell or subscribe to. But if you can, food banks are in desperate need because of the pandemic, and need your help.
The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.
Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.
Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.
You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.
Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate.
As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.
The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.
The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?
But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.
Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.
Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.
But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.
The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.
I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.
Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”
The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
It should go without saying, but the media cultivating this type of baseless hysteria about an admin for partisan reasons is much more of a threat to the underpinnings of our democracy than anything Trump has actually done.
Quick 🧵⤵️
A couple quotes:
“If you think that there’s this thing out there called America, and it’s exceptional, that means you don’t have to do anything” to stop fascism.
What? What does that even mean??
That if you, like millions of Americans!, believe in American exceptionalism…you’re a fascist?
Really?
“The powers that be can do whatever they want to you”
Trump can’t even deport people who have deportation orders against them without a federal judge stepping in.
Many in the media are trying to claim that the press was merely duped by Biden’s White House about the former president’s cognitive decline.
That simply isn’t true. The media actively took part in the coverup.
Don’t let them forget. I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I’ve done a number of threads on this but putting some of the most egregious stuff in one place.
Perhaps the most damming: Two weeks before the debate made Biden’s cognitive decline inescapable, @washingtonpost gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to allegedly edited videos showing Biden clearly displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype” while quoting the White House to say the videos were “cheap fakes” — all to defend Biden against criticisms about his age and well-being.
That story came four days after a previous effort from @washingtonpost to write off these videos as Republican efforts to mislead voters: proof, the Post claimed, that “the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the waters edge.”