You know it’s bad when even the far-left MSNBC recognizes that it did something wrong.
Earlier this week, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell ran a story claiming that President Donald Trump used Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin as co-signers to secure a loan. During a promotion segment for his own program at the end of fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s show, O’Donnell said that the story explains every nice thing Trump has ever said about Russia or its president.
Obviously, this is a pretty fantastic claim. When the host ran with it, the phrase “if true” kept popping up over and over, indicating that he had not verified the information he had been given. The MSNBC host claims that the bombshell came from a source “close to Deutche Bank.”
Naturally, the Trump camp wasn’t going to sit back and let this go. The “#RussianCosigners” hashtag was already trending on Twitter when Trump’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter, which demanded a public apology — which they got.
That’s right — the “resistance” was happy to issue an apology to evil Cheeto Hitler, because even MSNBC understood that it crossed a serious line. Even though the host in question did in fact use the phrase “if true” to describe the claims, it was clear that he was running with it under the pretense that it probably is.
This story really isn’t much of an outlier for the mainstream media. In fact, we almost feel like MSNBC is being treated unfairly — the entire mainstream media should apologize for spending the better part of two years promoting other outrageous conspiracy theories. Seriously: how is this any different from a claim that Trump visited a Russian hotel, and hired two Russian prostitutes to urinate on what he was told was the same bed that Barack Obama used? It’s not.
To be clear: we’re not saying that the media owes Trump an apology — the president continuously makes it clear that he doesn’t really want their affection anyway. They owe an apology to the American people for radicalizing them and dividing them because they were upset about an election.
Here’s Mark Dice with more on the story.
