David Corn of Mother Jones makes an important point: The media is missing the story in how it reports the Trump-Russia scandal.
Much of the media framing of the Russia scandal has followed Trump’s lead and adopted his collusion-centric perspective. The debate, such as it is, has become whether Trump directly collaborated with Moscow’s covert operation—and whether Trump, as president, tried to thwart the investigation and obstruct justice. The story is not driven by the serious offenses already established: Trump and his associates encouraged and assisted an attack from a foreign foe.
In this ongoing fight, it is Trump and his bumper stickers versus a media presenting a wide variety of disparate disclosures that come and go quickly in a hyperchaotic information ecosystem, often absent full context. No wonder then that a recent poll found that 59 percent of Americans said Mueller has uncovered no crimes. In fact, he has secured 17 criminal indictments and obtained five guilty pleas. Accurate news reporting alone does not always carry the day.
This is not about whether the Mueller investigation will “save us” from Trump, as R.E. Vanella put it the other day. It’s about a foreign government having its hooks in the President of the United States after helping install him in the office. With all due respect to those who disagree, it doesn’t matter what the Democratic Party stands for if unlimited money donated secretly leads to rigged elections.
The Supreme Court invited this crisis with its Citizens United ruling. If money is speech, and anonymous speech is protected, there’s no effective barrier to foreign money finding its way into American elections.
But what Corn is writing about is the result of media behaving in its own interest. Giving prominent play to Trump’s “witch hunt” tweets serves his interests, but it also makes for a more competitive contest, and there’s nothing that ruins TV ratings like a one-sided sporting event. And if you go only on the factual evidence that’s been made public, Trump is a soccer team trailing 4-0 late in the second half.
Josh Marshall at TPM keeps making the same point: We know exactly what Trump’s team is accused of doing; whether Trump himself contacted Russians isn’t the issue. People with his campaign, as well as people in his business, were engaged with Russians and pro-Russia eastern Europeans throughout the campaign. They took meetings with Russian actors and did not report it to intelligence agencies at the time.
This is all crystal clear. Again, as Marshall points out, Trump’s motivations in all this are beside the point. Even if all he wanted was a Moscow tower, he still sold out his country trying to get it.
Yeah, I know Mike Pence is a horror. But is he more horrible than having someone destroy the post WW2 geopolitical order? I think not; ymmv.