President Trump is back from his first foreign trip, and CBS "welcomed" him back by suggesting again that he can't possibly win a long fight with the media.
On May 28, CBS reporter Errol Barnett quizzed "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson, saying: "Trump is back to tweeting his unedited opinions this morning, telling people among other things, 'Many of the leaks coming from the White House are fabricated lies coming from the fake news media.' Are his supporters still buying that same excuse?" Every politicized story loaded up with anonymous Trump-trashing government officials must be the gospel truth. It doesn't matter that people leaking these stories are unquestionably driven by a political agenda. Time and again, these leaked stories have collapsed. None of that matters.
Dickerson replied in kind: "His supporters that buy that line is a shrinking group. A lot of the things he's calling and has called fake news are now things that have either been supported by officials and members of both parties. The things he said were fake and made up are now the subject of a special counsel investigation. It`s hard to make the case that this is a fake set of inquiries."
This is the kind of weird logic that suffices in Liberal Land. A story is not fake if it's still being investigated. If we tell you it is raining and you set out to investigate that claim and it is sunny, is our story not fake because you're still investigating it? It's not a question of evidence as much as a question of political power and momentum. Ends justify means. Character assassination in order to diminish and hopefully eradicate the adversary is a good thing.
Dickerson did not sound like this when the scandal involved Hillary Clinton. A year ago, he declared her private email server a "stupid issue," a deflection from important policy matters like raising the minimum wage.
The CBS host also wasn't going to pressed by his colleague on whether all of these leaked stories turned out to be true or false. As we've noted before, the Washington Post had two anonymously sourced stories about former FBI Director Jim Comey that were deemed false: one about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering to resign; and one about the FBI asking for additional resources for its search for Trump-Russia collusion. The acting FBI director testified under oath that the latter is not true.
Democrats from Sen. Dianne Feinstein to Rep. Maxine Waters have admitted there is zero evidence so far of the Trump campaign colluding with the Russian government in a nefarious plot to "hack the election."
But the unyielding spirit of the media was reflected in the ladies of ABC's "The View" begging former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to declare that Trump's impeachment is imminent. Rumsfeld said he hadn't seen any proof of collusion, and Joy Behar yelled back: "If! If! If! If!" Rumsfeld replied: "Why would I want to 'if' that?"
Despite their proclamations that they are the guardians of facts, the liberal elite wants to fast-forward beyond the evidence and see Trump's ruin as inevitable. Sentence first; verdict after. And after that, evidence ... if any.
Former Gov. John Sununu told CNN there was no collusion, and it has looked for months now. When anchor Alisyn Camerota noted that "We're at the beginning of the investigation" because special counsel Robert Mueller has just taken over, Sununu asked, "If Mueller comes out and says that my version is correct and yours isn't, how much crow are you going to eat?" The media refuse to envision that strong possibility.
The latest Washington Post story on senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner pushing the Russians for a secret back channel is falling apart. They'll be saying Donald Trump is making excuses again.