There’s a second wave of media reaction to John Durham’s latest filing on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. The first wave was silence, hoping somehow the whole story would vanish. Now the second wave is “Explainers,” which attempt to hem and haw defensively through the whole business.
The Associated Press “Explainer” was headlined “How the latest Trump-Russia filing generated buzz.” This article was sent to me on Twitter by a fellow who apparently hates Donald Trump with the energy of a thousand suns, so that illustrates the type of people who eagerly share these dismissive articles.
The AP reporter on this was Eric Tucker. He channeled all the rebuttals of Michael Sussman, the Hillary Clinton-connected lawyer who Durham had indicted for lying (omitting his ties to Hillary). Tucker helpfully tweeted the Democrat line: “Sussmann’s lawyers struck back at Durham team’s over its inclusion in the court filing of allegations they said were false and ‘intended to further politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.'”
Get out the laugh track.
This is the threat that Durham represents. He is exposing that everything the Clinton campaign did here was to politicize national security agencies, sharing their smears with the FBI and the CIA to spur spying on Trump advisers, to inflame media coverage, and then to taint the judicial process through the Mueller team, where 11 of 16 prosecutors were Democrat donors. Five of them were Clinton donors.
Tucker also had to pounce on the S-word. It’s not spying! They were “mining information” to establish an “inference” tying Trump to Russia. “The researchers were not ‘spying’ on the Trump campaign in 2016 but were instead working at the request of federal officials to investigate Russian malware attacks that had targeted the U.S. government and the White House.”
A similar spin came from taxpayer-subsidized NPR, under their internet headline “The John Durham filing that set off conservative media, explained.” Their online summary of the “All Things Considered” story blatantly editorialized, “The political right is making hay out of a recent filing in special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the Trump-Russia probe. We break down the truth behind their outlandish claims.”
Outlandish? Fill-in host Elissa Nadworny asserted, “Fox News even said Clinton had, quote, ‘infiltrated Trump Tower and the White House.’ But is that what Durham actually said?”
Reporter Ryan Lucas replied, “No. Durham never said in his filing that Clinton paid operatives to spy on Trump or his campaign. He never used the word ‘infiltrate.'” All this parsing sounds like saying Bill Clinton never had “sex” with Monica Lewinsky, since he claimed it was all oral sex.
Nadworny implied this was ancient history: “So all of this is tied up in events that happened five or six years ago. Why does it matter now?” Lucas explained, “Trump had hoped that Durham would deliver a report before the 2020 election that could help Trump’s campaign. That, of course, didn’t happen. But the battle over shaping perceptions is still very much raging.”
NPR is aggressively “shaping perceptions” that conservative media manufactures “outlandish” claims that mangle the truth.
This is also how The New York Times and The Washington Post climbed on the bandwagon, ranting about conservative “conspiracy theories watered with fresh misinformation.”
So the media that pushed a phony dossier with “pee tapes” and implied regularly that Trump was either happily colluding with the Russians or being blackmailed by the Russians is lecturing the rest of us about empty conspiracy theories. The largest fraud in everything now unfolding is that there’s a conservative media and then there’s a “reality-based press.”
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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We all know that 98% of the Lying news media is owned, operated, and/or servants to the Treasonous, dishonest Democrat Party.
Why would ANY rational sane person trust anything from these servants to the Treasonous, dishonest Democrat Party??
I have not ever met a rational Democrat Party supporter.
The Democrat dependency party is the party of damaged human beings, pathologically attempting to claim parity and equality with those who have the ability to self-govern. They who so crave equality, themselves are so lacking in human integrity or the ability to acquire and sustain it, must do any and all they can to undermine, smear, and degrade down to their own level all those who are so far above them, the very reason they hate self-governing successful men like Trump, whose very existence they cannot abide or when in their company must go insane. They really have no recourse to survive in this world individually or as a party because, as the Biden administration has proved, when given the power to prove themselves, all they do is reveal their own self-known inability to rise to the occasions of opportunity to be great with others who can be, so the only other option for equality is to force the self-governing into positions of failure like their own, then hide in the lost collective of social failures they create in their kingdom of the failed. This my friends is the world we now live in since Biden took office, and will continue to until we throw the bums out of power. Even the most humbled and mis-indoctrinated are awakening in their social inflicted, now personal pain. Next election you can stick a fork in them,,,they’re done when reality demands a life of its own, a life the Democrat deceivers just cannot seem to kill.
AND folks wonder, why if i had the power, i’d YANK THE LICENSE to air/print, for 90% or more, of the so-called lame stream media.. AND IF they think what was done, was ‘no big deal’, then i say LETS SPY ON THEM 24/7.. GIVE THEM NO PRIVACY period.
Of course nobody spied on President Trump. Just like the fauci flu wasn’t created on purpose, masks keep people safe, fauci vaccines do work and don’t maim or kill, inflation is good and the 2020 election was not a fraud. Yep. And America believes every word coming out of this corrupt government.
They’re not going to give it up and risk making total fools of themselves—having to admit to their voluntary participation in spreading blatant lies and false information. They are invested too heavily to pull out.
“risk making total fools of themselves—”
Too Late, All intelligent, rational people know that the fake news media industry employees are liars, Fools and self-righteous!
(“All intelligent, rational people”) This illuminates the Democrat Party supporters.
>> This illuminates the Democrat Party supporters. <<
Perhaps you meant "eliminates."
AND that’s the main reason.. THEY ARE LOATH TO EVER admit they were wrong, and would have to accept not just PART OF THE BLAME for the false info they spread, BUT CULPABILITY FOR what resulted FROM IT.
The MSM or propaganda personified for the benefit of liberalism / the devil!!!!
Outlandish? Fill-in host Elissa Nadworny asserted, “Fox News even said Clinton had, quote, ‘infiltrated Trump Tower and the White House.’ But is that what Durham actually said?”
“Well, that depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” – Honest Bill Clinton (Slick Willy)
AND since the left, LOVEs re-defining words, OF COURSE they will twist things to suit their needs.