Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume has seen a lot on his career in media that spans five decades. He’s still a regular fixture on the network, serving as a senior political analyst, but he has cited one event that has been a total trainwreck for the industry: The Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
From the get-go, it started out as sour grapes from liberals. How could Hillary lose; Trump must’ve cheated? This circus began quickly. As we now know, former President Barack Obama held a key meeting on January 5, 2017—days before the Trump inauguration—to lay out his game plan for protecting the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Russian collusion. Preferably, it would be nice if the Trump team never found out about it. And so, the deluge of targeted leaks, which was part of executing Barry’s last-minute order was initiated.
How many bombshells did we endure? How many fell apart within 36-48 hours? Too many to count because there is no evidence of Russian collusion. It’s one of those fantastic lies the liberal media peddled and got the base of the Democratic Party rambunctious with impeachment lust. It took the special counsel investigation and an IG report from the Department of Justice to debunk this clown show. Both reports shot holes through the whole narrative and slicing away at the Trump dossier, a piece of Democrat opposition research funded by the party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was compiled by an ex-MI6 spook and it was mostly unverified gossip. And yet, it was used to secure a spy warrant against former Trump campaign official, Carter Page.
What else? Oh, there’s the total screw up from CNN, who reported that Donald Trump. Jr. and other top aides got a decryption key code from a donor that accessed troves of documents relating to the DNC and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. The problem: well, if CNN bothered to read the timestamp of the email, the Wikileaks Democratic document dump was already public.
Oh, and that anonymous source who said Donald Trump knew about his son’s meeting with some Russians in Trump Tower during the 2016 election, which turned out to be a colossal waste of time as the meeting was not what they thought would be the topic of discussion, blew up as well. The source was longtime Democratic lawyer Lanny Davis, who served as counsel to Trump defector Michael Cohen. Davis retracted the whole story and apologized for being “cute” about it. He admitted that it could not be corroborated and doubted if it was accurate. Then, there's Van Jones, CNN contributor and former Obama official, who said the collusion story is a nothing burger.
What about Brian Ross? The now-ex-ABC News reporter dropped a story that was fake and tanked the markets. He took to air saying that during the 2016 election candidate Trump ordered Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russians. Well, it didn’t take long for the timeline to reveal that this order was given after the 2016 election by President-elect Trump, as this was run-of-the-mill transition moves from a new incoming administration. Yeah, this is what killed the narrative that Trump’s tweeting was harmful, not nearly as bad as when Ross opens his mouth. Remember, this is the guy who said the Aurora shooter might be a Tea Party member. This was also taken to air without proper vetting. Ross is trash, but so are a lot of his colleagues. And these are just some of the bombshells that turned out to be baseless gossip.
It was considered tin foil hat talk to suggest that Michael Flynn was the victim of an FBI run amok. It’s not. New documents show that Flynn was the subject of an entrapment plot spearheaded by the bureau’s top brass, like James Comey and Andrew McCabe, both disgraced, who wanted to get Flynn no matter what. We have former Obama officials going on MSNBC and claiming they have evidence of collusion when they really have none. That was exposed in a document dump from acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell. So, you can see why Hume said this story was the “worst journalistic fiasco” he’s seen in his entire career (via Washington Examiner):
"It was the worst journalistic fiasco of now my more than 50 some years in journalism.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 13, 2020
It was a disaster."@BritHume called the media's coverage of @realDonaldTrump's alleged collusion with Russia the "worst journalistic fiasco" he's seen in his 50-year career. pic.twitter.com/lOOYSgtrDp
Longtime veteran journalist Brit Hume called the media's coverage of President Trump's alleged collusion with Russia the "worst journalistic fiasco" he's seen in his 50-year career.
Hume's criticism comes in light of a trending social media theme of #Obamagate after former President Barack Obama expressed his concern over the Justice Department dropping charges against Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn last Friday.
Flynn was fired in early 2017 for lying about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. Trump and his allies have accused Obama of being aware of a "deep state" ploy within the highest levels of federal law enforcement to deny Trump the presidency.
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"It was the worst journalistic fiasco of now my more than 50 some years in journalism," Hume said on Fox News's The Story with Martha MacCallum on Tuesday. "It was a disaster."
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"It was a terrible journalistic misjudgment, and it was rooted in their view, in my opinion, it was rooted in their view of Donald Trump that when this charge arose, they thought so little of him and that he was such a terrible person, that had to be true," Hume continued.
And they’re still doing it. The Trump-Russia collusion posse still hasn’t admitted that they were wrong. The bias against Trump, as Hume noted in his TV spot, also carries into other stories about the White House. But the media poured gasoline on a fake story that set forth the impeachment of a president. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow desperately wanted the Trump dossier to be fact. It wasn’t. None of this story was real. It was a hoax. And those who weaponized it to attack Trump are starting to get some blowback for their antics, as they should.
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