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Top 10 things the media got wrong about ‘collusion’ and ‘obstruction’
Posted by: Credibility Bomb ()
Date: April 20, 2019 01:59AM

Top 10 things the media got wrong about ‘collusion’
and ‘obstruction’

By Sohrab Ahmari
April 19, 2019 | 10:01pm | Updated



The prestige press has some explaining to do — for subjecting the nation to a long, cruel ordeal named “collusion” and “obstruction.”
Almost two years and millions of column inches later, special counsel Robert Mueller has revealed the theory that President Trump and his
campaign conspired with Russia has been just that.
All that remains of collusion and obstruction is the media’s shattered credibility.
The errant reporters and pundits — the ones who peddled the most outrageous falsehoods — want nothing more than to move on. But not
so fast: There has to be some accountability for the biggest foul-ups.
Here are the 10 worst, drawn from among many more:

10. CNN bungles Comey testimony

It took four bylines — including those of CNN stars Jake Tapper and Gloria Borger — to completely botch the most important aspect of
former FBI Director James Comey’s June 2017 congressional testimony. Comey, per CNN, would dispute Trump’s claim that Comey told him
that he (the president) isn’t under investigation. Oops! Turns out Comey didn’t, in fact, dispute Trump’s position, and Tapper & Co. had to run
a correction walking back their big scoop.

9. Times columnist shares fervid dreams

New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s column of Dec. 2, 2018, was silly even by his standards. “Members of Trump’s team were
extremely interested in and eager to accept any assistance that the Russians could provide,” wrote Blow. “That is clear.” Actually, it isn’t
clear. Mueller’s investigators “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian
government,” said the report. Expect Blow to fail upward.

8. Washington Post ‘fact checker’ needs a fact check

“All the Known Times the Trump Campaign Met With Russians” read the headline on a 2017 Fact Checker feature in The Washington Post.
But by fact-checking, the paper really means judging various claims against liberal orthodoxies. Case in point: The claim in question was
Trump’s protest that “Russia” is “fake news to try to make up for the loss of the Democrats.” The Washington Post judged that to be “false.”
The Mueller report suggests otherwise.

7. The MSNBC spy who should stay in the cold

No senior US official has done more damage to the credibility of the intelligence community than John Brennan. For months leading to the
Mueller report, the former CIA director offered a steady stream of collusion drivel on MSNBC. Last month, Brennan confidently predicted
that “Friday [March 8] is the day the grand-jury indictments come down” against Trump associates and family members over “criminal
conspiracy involving the Russians and US persons.” Nope.

6. The Guardian concocts a collusion meeting

Among foreign outlets, none covered itself in as much shame as The Guardian. The British paper in November 2018 published a story —
bylined to superstar writer Luke Harding and two others, one of whom later mysteriously disappeared from the paper’s Web site — about
secret talks between one Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange that took place at the Ecuadorian Embassy in
London. The sourcing was flimsy, to put it generously, and sure enough, as Glenn Greenwald notes at The Intercept, “Nothing in the
[Mueller] report even hints, let alone states, that [Manafort] ever visited Julian Assange.”

5. WaPo columnist’s false, undying Ukraine narrative

“The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes” ahead of the Republican National Convention “to make sure the new Republican platform
won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces.” So reported The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin. Soon the story —
of craven Trump campaign officials beholden to Moscow and determined to backstab Kiev — took on a life of its own. But it was false. As
Mueller’s report notes, the change to an amendment to the GOP platform wasn’t “undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia.”
(Side note: Trump authorized arms sales to Ukraine, something his predecessor refused to do.)

4. The Atlantic accuses Jeff Sessions!

In June 2017, the combustible young reporter Julia Ioffe wrote an article for The Atlantic, running to several thousand words, that cast doubt
on former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ claim that he didn’t meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as a Trump surrogate but
rather as a matter of routine in his role at the time as a US senator. The Sessions-Kislyak meeting, Ioffe suggested, amounted to yet more
shady Russian influence on the Trump camp. Chalk Ioffe’s reportorial credibility as another casualty of the Mueller report, which noted that
the meeting in question didn’t “include any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign.”

3. David Corn’s dossier debacle

It was the document that set off the whole shebang. In October 2016, days before the election, David Corn of Mother Jones wrote of an
unnamed “former senior intelligence officer for a Western country,” Christopher Steele (unnamed at the time), who claimed that the Russians
had dirt on Trump they could use to blackmail him. Thus were born the infamous “Steele dossier” and endless late-night jokes about a
Trump “pee-pee” tape. But the Mueller report barely touches on the dossier — and confirms none of its outlandish claims.

2. McClatchy catches Michael Cohen in Prague

Speaking of the dossier, remember when McClatchy’s Greg Gordon and Peter Stone reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump
consigliere Michael Cohen had “secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign,” supposedly to meet his
dastardly Russian handlers? If this one easily verifiable claim could be verified, the McClatchy reporters said (and perhaps secretly hoped), so could the rest of the dossier! Here’s Mueller’s report on that matter: “Cohen had never traveled to Prague.” What’s Czech for “egg on
your face”?

1. Buzzfeed knows who told Cohen to lie

Which brings us to the top foul-up of the whole sordid saga. That would be BuzzFeed’s report, by Jason Lepold and Anthony Cormier, in
January claiming that Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Well, here’s the Mueller
report on that count: “The president did not direct [Cohen] to provide false testimony. Cohen also said he did not tell the president about his
planned testimony.” Ouch.
So surely BuzzFeed has now offered a straightforward correction and apology, right? Think again. Instead, Editor in Chief Ben Smith
published a convoluted self-defense, only begrudgingly admitting that “Mueller has the last word.”


Toobin has a ‘Blonde’ moment

A dishonorable mention surely goes to New Yorker staff writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who instantly pivoted from Thursday’s
obsession — collusion — to today’s — obstruction of justice.
Toobin just knew President Trump was guilty of obstruction. Why? Well, because he’d long displayed frustration with the collusion probe, per
his attorney general, William Barr.
“Happy people don’t obstruct justice,” Toobin tweeted. “Trump’s frustration at leaks and investigation are evidence of guilt, not innocence.”
That line, of course, instantly recalled a similar effusion of legal wit and wisdom — from Elle Woods, the protagonist portrayed by actress
Reese Witherspoon in the movie “Legally Blonde.”
“Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands,” Woods at one point in the movie says in defense of her client.
Other Twitter users, however, drew darker parallels. @NeonTaster tweeted at Toobin: “ ‘Your angry proclamations of innocence are
themselves evidence of guilt.’ Are you analyzing the Mueller report or the trial of Josef K.” from Franz Kafka’s “The Trial”?
The lesson for readers: Don’t expect the collusion and obstruction obsessives to rethink the ideological mono-thought and
unprofessionalism that brought their outlets to this nadir.

Sohrab Ahmari is The Post’s op-ed editor.

https://nypost.com/2019/04/19/top-10-things-the-media-got-wrong-about-collusion-and-obstruction/
4/54/19/2019

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Top 10 things the media got wrong about ‘collusion’ and ‘obstruction’
Posted by: 3r2fgrfere ()
Date: April 20, 2019 09:16AM

gerrymanderer2 (OP) posts several lies on ffu daily - many\.10think he's a fx co gov worker who is getting paid to do it for false DNC democrat "advertising". he floods ffu with useless posts to bump down major news, posts fecal matter, mutilated bodies, child porn, foreign drug ads and sneaker ads, tells people to kill themselves and government should seize them and put them on psych pills in prison - decided by democrat gov of course, promotes kangaroo courthouse trials, gives anti-religious rants, gives satanic ritual rants, posts black males with large dicks on white young females, portends white low birth rate and fall of USA, food tampering/poisoning, and anything possible to DEMORALIZE white people on ffu. (perhaps a chinese prisoner or isis member - but definitely knowledgeable of fx co gov from the inside at times). the website operator has told him "not to post or return" which are still posted - not removed, by the sysop: not because of a political leaning but for continual illegal and gross spam along with messages that are only to demoralize if not kill others. he/she plays at financial terrorism as well: continuall reporting false financial data, and fake emergency please from (fake members of the community he makes up)



MUELLER CHARGES WERE A COMPLETE FAILURE. THERE IS NOTHING THEY GOT RIGHT.

THERE IS NO COLLUSION CHARGES THAT WERE 'RIGHT'


Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Top 10 things the media got wrong about ‘collusion’ and ‘obstruction’
Posted by: FRDSFS ()
Date: April 20, 2019 09:18AM

MUELLER WAS A COMPLETE FRAUD FROM THE BEGINNING.

DEMOCRATS COMPLAINTED BECAUSE GOP RAN LOIS LERNER (IRA) INVESTIGATION ABOUT DEMOCRATS USING IRS TO CHEAT REPUBLICANS (WHICH DID FIND REAL EVIDENCE IT HAD HAPPENED TO SOME EXTENT), THAT GOP 'OWED' DEMOCRATS TO RUN THEIR OWN INVESTIGATION OF THEIR OWN CHOICE.

THE INVESTIGATION WAS AN ADMITTED FRAUD BEFORE IT BEGAN.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Top 10 things the media got wrong about ‘collusion’ and ‘obstruction’
Posted by: lil something ()
Date: April 20, 2019 11:39AM

FRDSFS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> MUELLER WAS A COMPLETE FRAUD FROM THE BEGINNING.
>
> DEMOCRATS COMPLAINTED BECAUSE GOP RAN LOIS LERNER
> (IRA) INVESTIGATION ABOUT DEMOCRATS USING IRS TO
> CHEAT REPUBLICANS (WHICH DID FIND REAL EVIDENCE IT
> HAD HAPPENED TO SOME EXTENT), THAT GOP 'OWED'
> DEMOCRATS TO RUN THEIR OWN INVESTIGATION OF THEIR
> OWN CHOICE.
>
> THE INVESTIGATION WAS AN ADMITTED FRAUD BEFORE IT
> BEGAN.


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