News media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC have been leading the charge in pushing a multilayered narrative predicated on unsubstantiated assertions in order to frame Donald Trump’s presidency as illegitimate.
Hillary Clinton, it is suggested or openly stated by Democrats and their news media allies, would be today’s president were it not for a campaign of political subterfuge directed against American democracy by the Russian government.
At its core, the narrative casts 2016’s presidential election as having been compromised by a political influence operation executed by the Russian state at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin; its purpose to defeat Clinton and elect Trump.
Putin, the narrative’s advocates allege, had developed a preference for Trump over Clinton. Breaking with a history of America’s adversaries preferring Democrat leadership, Democrats and their news media allies would have Americans believe that Clinton somehow represented a greater threat to Putin’s political designs than Trump.
View screenshots of CNN’s chyrons below.
Descriptive neologisms featured in headlines and on chyrons for the aforementioned narrative – coined in deliberately misleading and nebulous manners to deceive casual news media consumers – undermine the legitimacy of 2016’s presidential election. “Russian election hacking” has become a ubiquitous phrase for a storyline hyped by news media outlets such as The New York Times toward this end.
Without any evidence, the narrative’s advocates assert that the leaking of email records from the Democrat National Committee and Clinton loyalist John Podesta to WikiLeaks was carried out by the Russian state for the purpose of advantaging Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump is regularly arraigned as a stooge of Putin’s and affiliated Russian oligarchs by Democrats and their news media allies, wittingly or otherwise; either the president joined a conspiracy to subvert 2016’s presidential election with Putin, has significant conflicts of interest via the Trump Organization with respect to adversarial Russian interests, or has been “compromised” by said interests and is now vulnerable to blackmail.
Lack of any evidence for the narrative’s predicates is used by its proponents to justify ostensibly good faith calls for an investigation of connections between Trump’s political team and the Russian government. Democrats and their news media allies are creating an echo chamber of calls for a “special prosecutor” and “independent investigation” of the narratives evidence-free allegations.
On the cable news front, CNN and MSNBC have dedicated the majority of their coverage to advancing the aforementioned narrative across recent weeks.
Related parroted phrases widely circulated by Democrats and their news media allies include “crisis of credibility” and similar variants. Congressional Republicans are said to be too passive in pushing the Trump-Russia narrative by those trafficking in the storyline, with their patriotism being questioned should they not join the chase.
Despite presenting themselves as politically objective and non-partisan news media outlets, both CNN and MSNBC present an essentially identical narrative echoing the innuendo heard from Democrat politicians. The former brands itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
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