The mainstream media earned the biggest black eye of all following the Robert Mueller report which showed that the 2016 Trump campaign did not collude with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
Though multiple media figures (CNN’s Brian Stelter most notably) will assert that they simply reported the facts for the past two years as Mueller conducted his investigation, a blistering montage making the rounds on social media strongly suggests otherwise. Take a look:
As the video shows, the media not only ran with the idea that President Trump colluded with the Kremlin, they were nearly unanimous in their style of reporting, often leading with phrases like “the beginning of the end,” “bombshell,” “turning point,” and most laughably, “impeachment.”
Furthermore, not only did members of mainstream media suggest that Trump colluded with Russia more than once, they were cocksure he would not serve out his first term as president and would leave either by way of resignation or impeachment.
Knowing fully well their bias has once again been laid bare, the media is now scrambling to justify their collusion drumbeat by suggesting that President Trump’s erratic behavior gave them no choice.
“Partisans on the right are already claiming the end of the Mueller probe vindicates all their prior positions, and they are saying the media, the evil media, was wrong all along,” Stelter said on Sunday, according to Mediaite.
“Mueller’s assignment was to get to the truth about Russian interference,” Stelter said. “Now, did many commentators and Democratic politicians allege collusion? Yes. Did many journalists ask about it? Yes. But there is a giant difference between asking and telling. The job of the nation’s news media is to ask, to question all sides and to scrutinize all sides and report on opposing points of view and only take the side of truth and decency.”
“Don’t be fooled by the partisans who cherry pick the worst mistakes of individual journalists or the craziest ideas from commentators and claim that’s the entire media,” Stelter continued. “It’s not.”
As noted by The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, the media will now run with several different narratives: 1.) That the Mueller report has more to it than meets the eye; 2.) Trump’s Attorney General participated in a cover-up; 3.) Trumpeting Russian collusion was simply an act of speculation.
Today, the media angle is simple: we didn’t do anything wrong. Instead, we’ve seen a couple of competing angles: Trump might still be involved in nefarious activity with the Russians (Blake Hounshell of Politico); perhaps obstruction did take place, and Barr covered it up (Joy Reid of MSNBC); speculation is good, guys (Brian Stelter, CNN). Those goalposts will continue to shift to avoid the obvious conclusion: the media are wildly biased against Trump, so they wanted the treason story to be true.
Whatever angle they choose to take, few deny that President Trump garnered a huge victory by the Mueller report. Even Tom Brokaw admitted this on MSNBC.
“I was thinking about people in Nebraska, for example, who are going through a terrible natural ordeal,” Brokaw said on “Morning Joe” Monday. “The ground is frozen, and it’s flooded, and they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do. As they look at the national news, they’re going to see one headline: ‘No Collusion.’ And they’re going to say, ‘OK, move on.’ So, I think there’s a huge difference between then and now. And this is a big victory for Donald Trump in terms of public perception about what we should expect between then and now.”