articles from The Intercept. Sensible posts tend to be ignored on this forum. If you're interested, do a search on the Forum. To this day, Glen Greenwald thinks the Russia narrative is bullshit. And I agree with him and I stated such very early on. I've always held the position that Trump would crumble not because of collusion, rather, his participation in money laundering and other crimes he committed (over the past 40 years) once a Special Prosecutor was appointed. As I've said in the past, "Diaper Don is a Special Prosecutor's wet dream."
I also think that a special prosecutor should be a permanent appointment. A lot of criminal activity (financial crimes) in our government.
It's the offseason, so I make my return to the open. I'll probably regret it.
I've maintained the same theory throughout:. Team Trump didn't really want the presidency nor did they expect to win. It was a publicity stunt for Trump and the entourage was looking to enrich themselves. Unless I missed something, all of the Mueller indictments to date support this theory. "Collusion!!!" Is a media created farce designed to get a special prosecutor and delegitimize Trump's presidency. I can support the ends while maintaining reservations about the means.
But there is plenty in the public record that has nothing to do with the media or however they spun it. I think by the last count there were 17 people associated with the campaign who were talking to Russians, people connected to Russians, and they lied about all of it. The first line way back when was zero contact with Russians, at all. Now we are at the "so what if they did it" point of it.
The media didn't make them change the RNC platform. The media didn't make Trump hire Manafort. The media didn't make Trump go on TV and ask Russia to find Hillary's emails. They didn't make them take a meeting in Trump tower, and they didn't make them make up a story about adoptions when the story broke. The media didn't make Flynn tell Russia to stand down, and they didn't make him lie about it. They didn't make Trump fire Comey and they didn't make him go on TV and say it was because of Russia.
Maybe it was nothing, maybe they've been lying about all of this because they didn't want everyone to know they planned to put a Trump tower in Moscow. But, they met with them, they had Stone talk to Wikileaks to find out about the releases, and they lied about it. The narrative exists because of their actions. Complaining about the media is like whining about the refs throwing a bunch of flags when the plan is to hold on every play.
None of you just posted contradicts my theory.
But the OP was about the embarrassing media coverage. It stands on it's own, regardless of the topic. You want to give them a pass, fine.
Also, I am willing to wait for the conclusion of Mueller's investigation regarding "collusion". Are you? It seems not.
It gives voice to the people who doubt this is actually going anywhere, and it gives voice to the people who think it is. It also lays out the documented lies they've been telling the public, congress, and law enforcement over a 20 month period.
Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-advisers-lied-over-and-over-again-mueller-says-the-question-is-why/2019/01/26/e72454f6-20c5-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html?utm_term=.03d28312efc5
I acknowledged people can be dubious as to their actual guilt of criminal wrongdoing. A lot of smart people who know a heck of a lot more about it than us have been, so that's fine. I don't begrudge a theory.
I don't mind Greenwald railing against the media coverage, if they fuck up they fuck up. I don't "give them a pass", I just take news with a grain of salt. Some things get confirmed and are proven true, some things aren't. I'd say they've gotten a hell of a lot more right than they have wrong. In that entire article he cites 15-20 examples, with the honorable mentions? How many stories have been written on Trump/Russia? Hundreds? Thousands? (I'd also note that in every one of his instances, the truth was exposed by media entities. They do police each other. Anecdotally, when the buzzfeed story broke, there were a lot of mainstream reporters saying they could not confirm this and that they were skeptical.)
For me, just looking at the timeline of events, without analysis or commentary about what it means, and take what's in the public record, it's hard to take the position that this is all a media creation. But, again, I don't begrudge a theory. And the main reason for my comment of "still not convinced" was the last time I was over here, you held this position, and a lot more has come out since then (the Trump Tower Moscow story for example), so I was more or less checking in. This is one of those things where our positions don't matter, either they did it or they didn't and we'll find out soon enough.
The fabrications give the right cover to not believe any negative reporting on Trump. That is the bigger problem, the boy who cried wolf. What source can be trusted?