Glenn Greenwald, one of the few remaining classic liberals plying the trade of journalism – Matt Taibbi being the only other I can think of offhand – eviscerates the MSM for their lack of intellectual honesty. In a Substack article he notes how Biden, in a reversal of a Trump decision, has lifted sanctions hence allowing Putin to pursue one of his key goals: a new Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany. And he notes, in an endless replaying of the “What If Trump Had Done That” game that rather than praising the move the media would have ramped up the Trump-is-a-Russian-agent trope again.
That the Kremlin had taken over American political institutions through its blackmail control of former President Donald Trump was a media conspiracy theory as pervasive as it was deranged. This once-exciting script was excavated from the CIA’s Cold War basement, dusted off by their operatives, and then kicked off by the intelligence community’s purposeful dissemination of the now-debunked Steele Dossier. And once this fairy tale was launched, there were seemingly no limits on the depths to which media figures would sink to promote it.
Never mind that it was never more than a fabulist’s version of The Life Of Trump i.e. fake news. Greenwald notes that contrary to the Trump-as-Russian-Agent premise it was actually Obama, and now Biden, who have accommodated Moscow’s whims, not Trump.
And he wonders about a profession that has such a reckless disregard for facts and truth that they would run this sort of speculative garbage as “news” during an election year.
“Unlikely but possible” – the Media’s standard for news
MSNBC’s host Chris Hayes earnestly interviewed New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait about the latter’s 2018 cover story speculating that Trump may have been groomed as a Russian intelligence asset since 1987. “Unlikely but possible” declared the on-screen cable graphic as Hayes spoke, summarizing the media’s Trump-era renunciation of all standards of rationality and evidence for disseminating unhinged conspiracies to their audience, at great profit for themselves but great harm to everything and everyone else.
Good grief MSM, have you no shame? (Rhetorical) Greenwald goes on to explain a few facts to the reality impaired.
After detailing the ways the Trump foreign policy implicitly thwarted Russia in contrast to the ways the Obama, and now Biden, administrations catered to their desires, Greenwald concludes:In the world of reality, the exact opposite was happening. When it came to actual vital Russian interests — as opposed to the symbolic gestures hyped by the liberal cable and op-ed page circus — Trump and his administration were confronting and undermining the Kremlin in ways Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had…steadfastly refused to do.
Indeed, the foreign policy trait relentlessly attributed to Trump in support of the media’s Cold War conspiracy theory — namely, an aversion to confronting Putin — was, in reality, an overarching and explicit belief of President Obama’s foreign policy, not President Trump’s. During the 2012 presidential election, Obama and the Democratic Party famously and repeatedly mocked GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s warnings about the threat posed by Russia as a “relic of the Cold War.”
Just imagine what would be happening right now if it were Trump, rather than Biden, who just handed Putin his underwater natural gas pipeline just days after Russian hackers allegedly caused serious gas shortages in the U.S. Jingoistic op-eds would fill the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post warning of Kremlin control of the U.S.; CNN and MSNBC would convene panel after panel of their former FBI and CIA operatives to accuse Trump of treason for subordinating U.S. interests to Russian interests; Rachel Maddow would be on the verge of righteous and indignant tears as she devoted her 20-minute monologue to decrying the tragedy that we were all living under Putin’s rule; and Nancy Pelosi would be holding a press conference to spread more innuendo about Putin’s blackmail control over Trump while demanding a DOJ investigation.
For five years, the bulk of the U.S. media pushed and endorsed a demented, dangerous conspiracy theory about the world’s second-largest nuclear power that not only lacked evidence but was negated by every relevant event. As I documented in late 2016 and then again in 2018, there is a stronger basis for claiming that Obama was significantly more accommodating of Putin than Trump ever was. And after just four months in office, the same is true of Biden. But for a media devoted to an agenda rather than truth, the inexorable destruction of their conspiracy theory does not matter.
Welcome to the world of 2021, where a lot of things are quite unlikely but will continued to be touted as possible.
It’s unlikely that your cat will transmogrify into a marinated chicken, but it’s possible so remain vigilant.
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