The Trump "tell-all" books never end, and the anti-Trump media will promote every one of them. Believe it or not, former British spy Christopher Steele -- one of the original gangsters spreading unproven dirt on alleged Russian collusion with Trump -- has a new book coming out, and The Washington Post promoted it on the front page of Monday's Style section. October surprise!
The large headline under a large color photo of Steele was simple and neutral: "The author of the Steele dossier has more to say." Above the photo in much smaller type was this: "The ex-intelligence officer promises more dirt on Trump in 'Unredacted.' But will people believe him?'
We can all guess who is willing to believe him: Amazon's page for his book says people who bought this also bought Hillary Clinton's latest memoir. All of these books are catnip for Democrat partisans, and we know who the typical Washington Post reader is!
Reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia described his work as Steele's "famous -- or infamous, depending on where you sit -- dossier." The Democrats think "famous." The headline on page C-2 was again neutral: "In new book, Steele unveils the fruits of fresh sleuthing."
Manuel insisted Steele "tired mightily, and with only minimal success, to get the news media to chase leads from the dossier" before the 2016 election. The real heyday for the dossier came in early 2017, but then, the reporter claimed, "The news media and eventually congressional investigators set about picking apart the dossier." That's not true, not when they pushed the spectre of Russian collusion until the Robert Mueller probe began.
The Post theory on the dossier here is that Steele got a little over his skis, that the dossier was an "intelligence report for a private client," not as reliable as something facing public scrutiny. But these people (including his funders in Hillary Clinton's campaign) forced it all into the public eye!
Steele's name became forever associated with an alleged sex tape, the dossier's most salacious allegation, which involved the Russians possibly holding blackmail video of Trump engaged in a kinky and less-than-sanitary sex act with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel." Trump "made great use of the never-proven allegation to undercut. the credibility of the entire dossier and to distract from its core theme — later widely accepted by the news media and the U.S. intelligence community — that the Russians interfered in the election in hopes of helping Trump win.
So the reporter asked Steele whether he would still put this unverified gunk in the dossier today.
“Call me a stick in the mud,” he said via Zoom from his London offices, “but probably, yes.”
Steele has always displayed a hostility that neatly matches the CNN/MSNBC vibe, with all the overtones that Trump is dangerous (and maybe someone should take a potshot at him).
In the book, Steele predicts a “new world disorder” if Trump wins back the presidency in November, and portrays him as more dangerous than U.S. adversaries such as China and Iran. He calls the Republican Party and the former president who dominates it “the gravest threat to Western democracy and the rule of law … increasingly the willing handmaidens for Putin.”
The appetite for "dirt on Trump" is never-ending, and the standard of proof is far below where it is for the Democrats that reporters support -- at work and at the ballot box.
