It’s just a joke at this point… The New York Times has yet again dropped another “bombshell report” about Russian influence in the 2016 election. And once again it fails to live up to it’s own hype.
“Months before the election, U.S. spies learned that top Russians had discussed ways to use Donald Trump’s advisers to influence him,” reads the headline blasted by TheNYT in a breaking news email. The story is clearly meant to further the “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative the media has pushed for months, although it’s as yet totally unsubstantiated.
It’s a feeble attempt to create a sort of “idea” around the alleged corruption of Trump’s campaign, always insuring to use buzzwords.
As written for The Daily Caller by RACHEL STOLTZFOOS:
Credit: Gage SkidmoreBut the (few) readers who make it to the fifth paragraph and are paying attention will realize there’s not actually much meat to the report. That paragraph hedges on the information collected by the spies, and notes the reporter has no real clue whether Russian officials actually made any attempt to influence the Trump aides in question. Oh yeah and the Trump campaign as well as both aides have consistently denied the longstanding accusations of collusion with Russia.
“The information collected last summer was considered credible enough for intelligence agencies to pass to the F.B.I., which during that period opened a counterintelligence investigation that is ongoing,” the paragraph reads. “It is unclear, however, whether Russian officials actually tried to directly influence Mr. Manafort and Mr. Flynn. Both have denied any collusion with the Russian government on the campaign to disrupt the election.”
What this report really boils down to is the “revelation” that senior Russian officials are interested in influencing important U.S. actors, and that American spies are mostly sure they had a conversation about it. Maybe newsworthy, but hardly a bombshell.
The New York Times pumped out another “collusion” story Wednesday with another buried caveat, this time on “mounting concern” among U.S. officials “revealed” by former CIA director John Brennan in a big bad congressional hearing. Six paragraphs in: “Mr. Brennan acknowledged that he did not know whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives and said the contacts might have been benign.”
Go Straight To The Fifth Paragraph Of The Latest NYT ‘Bombshell’ On Russia Collusion