In the wake of the Friday indictments of Russians by special counsel Robert Mueller, several media outlets have found a highly disingenuous way to continue attacking President Donald Trump as claiming collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign is a "hoax" or "fake news." Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteini explicitly stated they presented no evidence of collusion in the indictment, but somehow, he made Trump's "hoax claim harder to sell."
An example of an MSM story ignoring the specifics of Trump's "hoax" charges appeared in the Friday New York Times in Indictment Makes Trump’s Hoax Claim Harder to Sell:
WASHINGTON — He brushed it off as a hoax. He mused that it might be China, or a guy from New Jersey, or “somebody sitting on their bed who weighs 400 pounds.” He said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had assured him it wasn’t true. And, he added, “I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.”
Think back, folks. What incident was Trump referring to during the first presidential debate in 2016? It was about who hacked the DNC server. Well, guess what was not mentioned by the New York Times nor pretty much the rest of the MSM that overlooked it? Well, it was that Mueller did NOT charge the Russians with hacking the DNC server which had been presented as perhaps the biggest example of Russian election interference yet no charges made by Mueller on this. Therefore Trump's hoax charge on this has not been disproven.
President Trump has never stopped belittling the charge that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election. But on Friday, with the indictment of 13 Russians for orchestrating a vast, well-funded operation to interfere in the election, those denials collided with a mountain of evidence arrayed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Just as with the charge of hoax in regards to the hacking source of the DNC server, Trump has been specific in his charges as we shall see. The "mountain of evidence" arrayed by Mueller does not contradict Trump on the hacking source of the DNC server nor on the collusion charge which also did not appear in the indictments. Remember, Rosenstein yesterday specifically stated that there was no evidence that the Russian impacted the election results at all....and the Times couldn't find that quote anywhere. They just skip that troubling statement entirely in this report.
By laying out a meticulous case for how Russia tried to tip the electoral scales toward Mr. Trump in 2016, Mr. Mueller has made it much harder for the president to dismiss the investigation as mere politics. He may also have made it harder for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller himself, since, as some Democratic lawmakers argued, that would look like an attempt to help Russia further undermine American democracy.
Do you see where reporters Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear are going with this fake news story to attempt to discredit Trump? They very conveniently avoid the specifics of Trump's charges which are available in the news archives that anybody can check for themselves. You have to wonder if Landler and Shear are even aware of the highly publicized perjury by a couple of officials correctly denounced by Trump:
Mr. Trump went so far as to suggest that the heads of the intelligence agencies at the time of the 2016 election — John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; and James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director — were less trustworthy than Mr. Putin.
Where could Trump have gotten that crazy notion that Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were less than trustworthy? Maybe it was from reading and watching the many news accounts of Clapper and Brennan lying to Congress and more recent news revelations about Comey exonerating Hillary Clinton months before delivering his report on her.
In May, Mr. Trump told Lester Holt, the NBC News anchor, “This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”
And Mueller's indictments contradicted this how? Did the indictments make any allegations of collusion between any Americans (including Trump) and the Russians?
Anybody out there can perform a simple task that the fake news New York Times reporters failed to do. Check for themselves what Trump actually said or tweeted on the subject of the elections during the period when charges of Trump-Russia collusion was at its peak last year from January 1 to September 15. You can narrow the Google search down to that time period but to save you the effort your humble correspondent has already performed that task and you can see the results here using the search terms "Trump Russia elections hoax."
Check the results and you will see that what Trump claimed as being a hoax or fake news was not disproven by Mueller's indictments. Be sure to read only what Trump himself said or tweeted, not what someone else claimed Trump said. An example is this June 22 Washington Post story whose headline blared Trump: Russian interference is ‘all a big Dem HOAX!’ Well, when you actually read down to the tweet referenced by the headline, you can see Trump very specifically was referring to to hack of the DNC server:
...Why did Democratic National Committee turn down the DHS offer to protect against hacks (long prior to election). It's all a big Dem HOAX!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017
Keep checking other search results and you will see the same pattern of Trump being specific in his attacks which are upon the charges of Trump-Russia collusion and the idea that the Russians hacked the DNC server. Yet now much of the MSM such as the New York Times is trying to make it seem as if Trump was primarily denying any attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election at all as a pathetic attempt to make it seem that Mueller proved the President wrong.
And finally a reminder that with all the reporting on the Mueller indictments yesterday, the MSM overlooked the "yuuuge" fact that there were no indictments for any Russian hacking of the DNC server.
