Russiagate is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media

I won't accuse of you of trying to mislead people, but the judge apologized for making the treason claim against Flynn:

https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/judge-quickly-backtracks-apo...

“There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn’t prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters! There’s an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and…

Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse.”

This is actually factually wrong. It is persuasive but wrong because while Mueller isn’t pursuing more prosecutions, he has referred people on for more prosecutions and investigations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/politics/mueller-repor...

Also no one is actually saying that the mueller report doesn’t prove anything, because no one has read it yet. And that position is a rhetorical flourish that makes no sense given that all of the indictments, prosecutorial referrals etc were done by Mueller.

The next few sentences aren’t true either;

“The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That’s a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn’t so.“

First of all, he plead guilty to charges by the SDNY. AFAICT, The WSJ broke the story, Common Cause then filed a lawsuit followed by Stormy Daniels, and then the FBI raid happened. So this claim is actually inaccurate.

He has a point to make and he is willing to throw facts into the blender to make it. He is also a part of what’s wrong with the media and seems to be unable to recognize that.

Edit: given the downvoting here are some citations;

WSJ breaking the story - https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-lawyer-arranged-130-000-p...

Common Cause’s lawsuit - https://www.npr.org/2018/05/03/608291878/watchdog-questions-...

SDNY and Cohen - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5453401-SDNY-Cohen-s...

You know why impeachment is out? Because Republicans control the Senate, and because there are plenty of conservative Democrats too, so impeachment doesn't stand a chance.

If anti-Trump politicians controlled Congress, Trump would have been booted out long ago.

The only reason Trump is still in office is because plenty of Congressmen still support Trump, and many of them don't care what the evidence says.

He's nominated the judges they want. He's given gigantic tax cuts to the wealthy. He's pushing hard against immigration and pissing off liberals. That's clearly more than enough to get the support of most conservatives. If he had to cheat or lie or get Russian help to get in to office, that doesn't matter to his supporters because all they care about is that their agenda gets pushed.

His supporters also know if they admit he's committed impeachable offenses, they'll be politically stained along with him, and it'll be a gift to the anti-Trump camp. So they'll never admit it.

1) Fast and Furious: Continued program that caused a border agent to be murdered with one of the many guns the US sold to the cartels.

2) Benghazi: We all know this disaster that killed 4 Americans. Severely understaffed embassy that should have never even been there. No support when requested. Blamed the whole thing on a video.

3) Iran Nuclear Deal: Pallets of unmarked Euros flown over to a sponsor of terrorism in the dead of night

4) Spied on conservative reporters

5) IRS Scandal: Targeted conservatives with the IRS

6) Private Email Server: Lied about knowledge of her server, turns out he had a pseudonym on it and received emails from it. He said he found out about it from the media, woops.

7) NSA Spying: Obama forever known as the spying President.

"Despite denying any contacts with Russia, we now know he'd been offered a deal to build the biggest tower in Europe, a payout worth $300 million, during the campaign. "

This is a misrepresentation of the facts - it's exactly an example of the very problem mentioned in the article.

1) Donald Trump builds buildings, that's his business. Much like selling coffee Schultz's job. Trump has been trying for decades to build in Moscow, much like Starbucks, Tesla, IKEA, Volkswagen, Zara, Google etc. try to do business there.

Donald Trump has no business in Russia - but Howard Schultz has over 100 Starbucks locations in Russia. [1]

Howard Schultz has been materially 'doing business' with Russians for decades.

Given the mafia-like nature of some business activities in Russia (IKEA has to pay a kind of extortion to be in Moscow), how is it possible we are not screaming in outrage over Schultz's 'deep Russian business connections'?

Because making coffee is a normal part of his business, just like Trump builds buildings.

He's allowed to do that, it's normal, even if 'we hate him'.

2) There were no material plans to do anything in Russia, literally just some conversations. No contracts, no agreements. Just talk.

3) "a payout worth $300 million" - this is a fabrication. Not only was there not even the start of a deal - the '$300M' figure is a totally invented number.

4) 'During the campaign'? It's widely reported that Donald Trump did not want to be president, and that he was surprised he got the nomination, and everyone was surprised that he won. It's reasonable for a candidate to continue their business during the initial part of a campaign, especially if in all likelihood he would lose. As it became clear that Trump would win the GOP nomination, talks were abandoned.

Summary: Doing business in foreign country is normal. In some foreign countries, at a large scale, you will deal with the government. This is normal. Trump did not have any material activity in Russia, and it ended as it became clear Trump would be taking on a political nomination anyhow.

I could take your other comments and contextualize them in the same way: most of this has been utterly misrepresented.

Just because we loathe Trump, and I wouldn't put it past him for one second to 'kiss up to Putin' in hopes of a sweet future deal in Russia ... does not make him guilty of anything, certainly not to the degree the press has admonished him.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/541629/number-of-starbuc...