CNN darling Brian Stelter told his viewers last week that the indictments that resulted from Special Counsel John Durham’s probe and the attention it received from conservative media outlets were “a total bust,” further modeling the complicity of outlets like CNN in the attempt to smear former President Donald Trump.
“Take the latest news about the Durham probe. That’s the investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe. In and around Fox News-land, the Durham probe is a very big deal. Guys like Sean Hannity have been hyping it for years, promising it would knock the socks off the deep state. But it’s basically been a total bust. Poor Sean,” Stelter said.
Stelter claimed that “the pro-Trump fan base was misled.” The host also indicted Fox News and other right-leaning media outlets for “calling the Russia collusion stuff a hoax.
“Lie, rinse, and repeat,” Stelter said.
“Lie, rinse, and repeat,” @brianstelter says that Fox News and other right-wing media outlets lie by omission to their audiences and it’s a pattern that occurs over and over. pic.twitter.com/kDYqSYxkRN
— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) September 19, 2021
Stelter’s rant comes shortly after Democrat attorney Michael Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI about his relationship with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. At the time in 2016, Sussman fed the U.S. intelligence agency information about alleged communications between former President Trump and a Russian bank.
CNN, and many other corporate media outlets such as the New York Times and MSNBC, were complicit in spreading and promoting false information about Trump and his ties to Russia. Instead of addressing their own mistakes, however, many like Stelter are spinning the narrative on its head to blame Fox News and conservative media for pointing out the flaws and lies in the corporate coverage of the Russia collusion hoax.
MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade hinted that the Durham probe was the true hoax.
“It may be that Durham is using this indictment as a vehicle to disseminate what he has found to the public so that Trump and his allies can paint a false equivalence between the conduct of the Trump and Clinton campaigns,” she wrote.
Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.