Trump Vindicated: Media Elite Turn on “Russiagate” Coverage
(Excerpt)
The entire mad media Russia mess of the Trump presidency—the furious coverage of the salacious Steele Dossier, the Mueller special counsel probe, the presidential tweets and bombast, the FBI inquiries, Congressional inquiries, inspector general inquiries, the sinister suggestions of collusion and corruption, treason and betrayal, prostitutes and pay offs has faded from the news cycle. The circus has left town.
Years too late to have any real-time impact, it now appears that a reckoning has begun to arrive. Close observers of the media landscape have noticed a shift when Washington Post Bob Woodward began reminding readers that he called the Steele Dossier a “garbage document” on Fox News as far back as 2017.
Former New York Times investigative journalist Jeff Gerth wrote a monumental takedown of media coverage of Trump, “The Press Versus the President.” a 24,000 word, four part report that will remain a landmark study of media malfeasance for decades to come.
Gerth sets important context for understanding this war. He notes that it was Hillary Clinton, not Trump, who began the campaign “facing scrutiny over Russia ties.” He details the financing and evolution of the Steele Dossier as a product of Clinton allies and hired guns, and the media’s long love affair (with a few notable dissents) with the document. He reminds us that the Steele Dossier exploded on to the media scene after Trump won the election but before he was inaugurated—setting in motion a chain of events that embittered the new president toward the press and touching off dreams of a new Watergate among legions of ambitious reporters.
After the emergence of the Steele Dossier and a tsunami of Russia-related stories, the new president abandoned hope of getting along the media. “I realized early on I had two jobs,” Trump told Gerth in an interview after he left the presidency. “The first was to run the country, and the second was survival. I had to survive: the stories were unbelievably fake.”
Fake—but deadly serious. A special counsel probe, led by Robert Mueller, was quickly trigged and Congress began to investigate. The Mueller probe loomed over Trump for two years—a mortal threat to his presidency. The probe, Gerth notes, “issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, interviewed 500 witnesses, and generated enormous interest. There were 533,000 news articles published involving Russia and Trump or Mueller. The articles led to 245 million interactions on social media.
In the end, Trump was cleared of wrongdoing. In a lengthy report, Mueller wrote: “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government. ”No collusion. No conspiracy. Trump tweeted that the Mueller Report was a “complete and total exoneration.” But the media did not quit—or for the most part even pause for reflection.
“I’ll often sit down with hostile press,” Trump told Gerth, “just to see if it’s possible to get them to write the truth. It almost never works.”
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