Working in tandem (detailed here) to embarrass and undermine Donald Trump (just hours before his first press conference scheduled for 11am ET on Wednesday), CNN and BuzzFeed tossed out every known journalistic ethic in order to justify the public release of a pile of unverified documents that are politically and personally damaging to the President-elect.
Late Tuesday afternoon, CNN created cover fire with a breathless breaking news report alluding to the documents. BuzzFeed then dumped the actual documents on to the Internet.
Although the openly hostile American media has been aware of these documents for almost a year, despite their best efforts and limitless resources, no one has been able to verify the information contained in the 35 pages. These pages were reportedly generated as oppo-research by a single British intelligence source working on behalf of Trump’s establishment political enemies on both the left and right.
The smears boil down to the seemingly ludicrous claim that, going back five years, the Russians have been working a Machiavellian plot to make Trump their puppet president. Along the way, in order to control him, the Russians have gathered embarrassing information about the President-elect. Moreover, throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump operatives are said to have met secretly with the Russians to plot, scheme, and twist mustaches.
Already, according to the leftwing Atlantic, this portion of the story has collapsed.
One of the charges involves Trump attorney Michael Cohen. This unsubstantiated dossier claims that Cohen is supposed to have been Trump’s primary contact with the Russians. More specifically, the document claims Cohen met with Putin operatives in Prague on a specific date in August. Rosie Gray (a former BuzzFeed staffer who recently resigned — along with a number of others) reports in the Atlantic that, during the date in question, a source confirmed Cohen was with his son at USC in Los Angeles.
Cohen told Gray in no uncertain terms that the CNN/BuzzFeed smear is “fake news” and added, “I’m telling you emphatically that I’ve not been to Prague, I’ve never been to [The] Czech [Republic], I’ve not been to Russia. The story is completely inaccurate, it is fake news meant to malign Mr. Trump.”
Both CNN and BuzzFeed have been the loudest, most sanctimonious screamers about WikiLeaks and the spreading of “fake news,” and yet here they are….
Say what you want about WikiLeaks, it is an outlet with a spotless record when it comes to the veracity of the documents it publicly releases. Compare that record to a statement released by BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith (someone I’ve been sounding the alarm about for 10 years), who admits that he released the documents knowing they were unverified, unverifiable, and filled with obvious errors and mistakes. Smith even says outright, “there is serious reason to doubt the allegations[.]”
But without CNN’s leftwing Jake Tapper leading the charge, as poor as Smith’s rationale is, he would not have even been able to come up with even that.
So what we have here is a national media so devoted to destroying Trump they are now openly and proudly violating every basic ethic of their profession.
Truth be damned.
Facts be damned.
Confirmation be damned.
Credibility be damned.
Morality be damned.
The only rule the media is now operating under is “Get Trump.”
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC