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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Fake News: NYT Accuses, then Exonerates Trump Aides in Russia Claims

The New York Times published a story Tuesday evening claiming anonymous “aides” on President Donald Trump’s campaign had contact with Russian intelligence, citing classified information supplied by “four current and former American officials.”

Oddly, the Times reports that these officials concluded that there was “no evidence” they had seen that the “Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.” So there would seem to be no story.

However, the anonymous officials were reportedly alarmed by the “amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.” The Times does not report who initiated the contact.

The Times misreports at least one key piece of evidence. It claims: “At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.”

That is not true: the “campaign event” was a press conference, and Trump’s comment was clearly a joke, as Breitbart News reported at the time — though that did not stop the media and the Hillary Clinton campaign from trying to make it a campaign issue.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

NPR last night parroted that comment Trump made about the Russians finding more of Hillary's emails, again telling the listeners that it was a request from Trump to Putin. It goes to show that you can't say anything in jest around some of these people.