Readers of this site, but mainly the old site on Medium before it got deleted, will know that I have rejected this Trump Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory since it began in late 2016.
I have constantly pushed back on everything: every leak, “bombshell,” and confident media declaration that the “Walls are closing in” every step of the way.
I haven’t written about the Russia probe much as of late because it has already been clear for months that there was no collusion or conspiracy with Russia. The whole thing had become boring, tedious. It stopped being fun to debunk the latest “bombshell” report on Trump and Russia because it became abundantly clear there never was any collusion.
But at long last, the day has come where Special Counsel Robert Mueller has concluded his investigation: there was no collusion.
The reason I have pushed back since the start is because the premise of the whole thing was on-its-face absurd: it required believing Russia can actually alter the outcome of a US presidential election in the first place.
Collusion Conspiracy Theorists could never convincingly explain how Russia altered the outcome of the election. But they were willing to believe the implausible scenario that Russia Made Hillary Lose because in 2016 they had come to believe that her victory in the election was a given, and that there was no way she could possibly lose.
When Trump shocked everyone and won, Uniparty Establishment figures and Democratic voters did not have a reckoning with reality or ask themselves why they didn’t see it coming, and what prevented them from doing so. They didn’t say, “Hey, maybe we’ve been living in a bubble. Maybe we need to expose ourselves to other ideas and news sources so our worlds aren’t shattered like this again.”
No, instead what they did was concoct an outlandish excuse for why their supposedly unstoppable candidate lost to the candidate who supposedly had no chance: “Trump only won because he colluded with Russia!”
The Russia Collusion Conspiracy served two important needs for despondent leftists in the wake of Trump’s victory: it delegitimized the result of the election, and provided a way to hopefully overturn the result of that illegitimate election.
They didn’t believe in the Conspiracy because it was compelling, they believed it because they needed it to be true. Their goal since the election was to get Trump impeached as soon as possible, and the Mueller probe was the most promising means to that end.
In this regard, it was never really about Russian Collusion at all: that was merely a means to an end. It has always been about impeachment, and they will cling for dear life to whatever story they feel can lead them there: Russia Collusion, obstruction, Stormy Daniels, 25th Amendment, whatever. It’s always been about finding a means to an end.
The second reason to have been skeptical of Trump Russia Collusion from the start was the sheer ridiculousness of idea that Trump would actually reach out to Russia and basically sell his soul in exchange for the Presidency.
How could people come to believe that a prominent American businessman and celebrity, who has never before had his allegiance to America questioned, and who was never said to be in bed with the Russians, suddenly became a Russian Pawn in 2016? Where was all the Trump Russia talk before 2016? Trump had been famous for decades prior to running for president and there was never any talk that he was actually a traitor for the Russians.
It was always ludicrous to believe Russia had acquired an American Presidential candidate. It requires a ridiculous belief that the Kremlin is so powerful and omnipotent that it could actually steal the American presidency.
But people didn’t step back and think about how absurd the whole thing was. They didn’t ask themselves if it was more likely that Russia manipulated 63+ million Americans into voting for a Kremlin Pawn, or that the people who voted for Trump did so because he actually, I don’t know, genuinely appealed to them.
The third reason the Russian Collusion Conspiracy was always unbelievable is that as time passed and Republicans in Congress (namely Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows) and in the media (namely Mollie Hemingway, Lee Smith, Andy McCarthy, Michael Doran and Victor Davis Hanson, among many others) began pushing back on the narrative, they found compelling evidence that the whole thing was actually a set-up by the deep state and the media.
In other words, the real conspiracy has been revealed: the Clinton campaign, the Obama intelligence community, and the “mainstream media” worked together to attempt to frame Trump for Russian collusion. The fabrication emerged from them, not from any suspicious activity on Trump’s part. This is a critical distinction because it demonstrates the malicious nature of the whole thing: those peddling the Russian Collusion theory did not simply get it wrong, they knowingly leveled false accusations against this President for the sole purpose of taking him down.
Fourth, Trump Russia Truthers also could never explain how, if it was Wikileaks’ email dumps about Clinton that made her lose, why the public should not have been allowed to learn those **true facts** about Hillary Clinton.
First, during the campaign, they insisted that there was nothing important revealed about Hillary in the Wikileaks emails. Then, when Hillary lost, they claimed it was the Wikileaks emails that made her lose. Obviously both cannot be true, but let’s take them at their word on the last one because it is their official position now.
How is it that revealing true facts about Hillary Clinton constitutes “manipulating” an election, while hiding those very same true facts about Hillary Clinton was not in any way manipulating an election?
This was all lost in the hysteria over Wikileaks: why, exactly, was it bad that the public got to learn more about Hillary? Why should those emails have been kept secret? Only because they reflected badly on her, and many others in the media, in a negative light? I thought transparency was a good thing.
If the emails were full of false information, Clinton Partisans should have said so. But they didn’t. They only claim that the Wikileaks emails hurt Hillary and should have never been released, leading us to the inevitable conclusion that they would have preferred we remain in the dark about Hillary Clinton.
Even if you accept the premise that Wikileaks is a Kremlin “cut out” or whatever the media/Deep State started calling it, and even if you accept the premise that Wikileaks’ actions were the means by which Russia boosted and supported Donald Trump’s campaign, then how exactly does Wikileaks exposing true facts about Hillary Clinton constitute manipulating or rigging an election?
It would seem to me that the concealment of True Facts constitutes rigging an election more than the release of them.
And this is a position taken by all of the hardcore Russia Conspiracy Theorists in the media as well, just not when it comes to Hillary Clinton. Consider that they’ve been saying Trump’s hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and other models he slept with constitutes “manipulating an election” because he prevented the public from knowing the truth about him.
So for those with the capacity for free and independent thought, as well as a distrust of the “media,” it was quite clear all along that the Trump-Russia Collusion conspiracy theory was a load of nonsense.
And this leads to the next major point about the Mueller conclusion: it will not change much.
On our side, it’s not as if Trump supporters can possibly think any lower of the media.
Best case scenario it might cause prominent Republican journalists and pundits, who for some reason still give the “mainstream media” the benefit of the doubt and the presumption of good faith and credibility, to slowly realize the truth.
But on the whole, this will not turn many people against the “media.” If you don’t realize by now that the “mainstream media” is pure Uniparty Propaganda, you never will.
Democrats will not stop believing Trump colluded with Russia. And even the few who do give up the Collusion angle will still not give up the impeachment mission: they will quickly move on to the next pretend scandal.
I can’t tell you how many “IT’S MUELLER TIME” memes I’ve seen in response to Trump’s tweets, or in response to pro-Trump statements on social media: liberals thought it was a given that Mueller would bring down Trump. It was only a matter of time. They were so certain of it and will not just accept that they were massively wrong.
Just look at how out-of-control the Mueller worship was:
And here’s my personal favorite:
You can buy “It’s Mueller Time” pint glasses, shirts, mugs, signs, buttons and more:
I hope it’s starting to sink in just how brainwashed these people are.
I mean, my goodness:
I don’t need the Mueller report to know Trump is a traitor. I have a TV. w/@RepSwalwell #SubpoenaMueller pic.twitter.com/gmaljGGBvn
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) March 23, 2019
Here we have Bill Maher admitting he’s been brainwashed by the media, and that whatever cable news says, he believes.
This is the leftist mindset in a nutshell: they will not–cannot–accept reality.
This will not cause any additional people to lose faith in the media, including the people for whom this Mueller probe was their reason to get out of bed in the morning. Again, this is because it was never truly about Russian Collusion, but rather impeachment. The impeachment dream is still there even if the Russian Collusion dream is dead.
This will not cause any Democrats to reflect and reckon with reality. They will not think to themselves, “Boy, maybe I’ve misinformed and lied to. Maybe I should start listening to the people who have been calling this Russia business a hoax for the past two years.”
They won’t do that because it was never about letting the facts guide them. They didn’t believe in the Russia Collusion Conspiracy because it seemed to be true, but rather because they needed it to be true. It was based on emotion.
Worst of all, the media will not be held accountable for this, or anything else, ever. The media was doing exactly what it was designed for: relentlessly pumping out Democratic Party propaganda.
If you think there will be consequences for the media after this, you are wrong. They will move on from this like it never happened. Like they didn’t spend the past two-plus years screaming about Russian Collusion and the Walls Closing In and predicting Trump and his family would be carried out of the White House in handcuffs.
The “media” will move right on to the next bogus impeachment pipe dream as if this whole Russia business never happened.
Look at this spin:
Joy Reid: Mueller Report Conclusion ‘Feels Like The Seeds Of A Cover-Up’ https://t.co/7s93xA5su7 pic.twitter.com/swucAEjak7
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 23, 2019
A “cover-up”!
Really? I thought Mueller was the most honorable man in America:
Now he’s part of the cover-up?
We don’t have a media. At least, the so-called “mainstream media” is not a media in any real sense: it is 100% a Uniparty propaganda factory.
To understand how bad things have gotten, recall that the New York Times and Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage of a made-up scandal. The Pulitzer Prize is, like the Academy Awards, now worthless and indicative of nothing but producing Uniparty propaganda.
If we actually had a media, this would ruin the careers of loads of prominent television personalities (they don’t deserve to be called journalists) and politicians, namely:
- CNN–the entire network.
- The Washington Post
- The New York Times
- Rachel Maddow
- Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski
- Rep. Adam Schiff
- Rep. Jerry Nadler
- Rep. Maxine Waters
- Rep. Ted Lieu
- Benjamin Wittes
But we don’t have a media. We have a Uniparty Propaganda Department. And so none of those people or outlets will be punished or held accountable, because they were simply doing their jobs.