by Sean Hannity
The entire CNN network has incredibly thin skin. CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan denounced the Babylon Bee, a satirical publication, after a Bee story ridiculing the Democrats’ response to the killing of Soleimani drew as much attention on social media as top stories by the New York Times and CNN.74 The Bee struck back with a satirical piece titled, “CNN Attacks Babylon Bee: ‘The Internet Is Only Big Enough for One Fake News Site.’ ” The Bee offered up a fake quote from Humpty: “ ‘They’re obviously amateurs over there at The Bee,’ said Brian Stelter. ‘A lot of times, their reporting comes true. If you’re gonna do fake news, do it right—100% fake, guaranteed, 24/7. They really should learn from the pros over here at CNN.’ ‘Stay out of our territory,’ he growled.”75
And that’s how you fight the Fake News, folks. Call them out. Ridicule their bias. Don’t back down, and don’t let them intimidate you. There’s a reason why Fox News generates headlines like “FOX News Channel Dominates Basic Cable for 41 Consecutive Months in Total Day,”76 while CNN gets headlines like “Fox Wins Cable Battle—CNN Loses to Cartoon Network.”77 It’s because more and more Americans are deciding they’re not going to tolerate Fake News anymore.
THE RUSSIA HOAX: “ONE OF THE GREAT POLITICAL SMEARS OF ALL TIME”
My team of investigative reporters and I have consistently broken news that the Fake News outlets won’t cover. We have been on the cutting edge of reporting, exposing the lies of the Deep State and the mainstream media. Over the last three years, there was one story above all others that was pushed forward by the media with maximum hysteria, which we attacked as false from the very beginning, and for which we took the most abuse by the hate-Trump outlets we were questioning and contradicting. But in time we were vindicated, and now the real story is crystal clear to the American people: there was no Trump-Russia collusion.
It really wasn’t hard to figure out that Russian collusion was a hoax. Days before Trump was inaugurated, BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, supposed intelligence reports in which anonymous sources—mostly Russians—detailed a years-long collusion conspiracy between Trump and the Russians, including a plot to hack the 2016 presidential election. The allegations ranged from merely stupid to totally ridiculous, topped off by the asinine report that Trump, a notorious germophobe, had hired prostitutes to perform a “golden shower” urination show in a Moscow hotel room to defile a bed once used by Barack Obama. The story sounds like it’s straight out of an episode of South Park.
Even before Congressman Devin Nunes forced out the revelation that the dossier was bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, it was obvious the whole thing was an outrageous fraud. Even journalists directly involved in the initial reporting on the dossier could see the problems. BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith not only failed to corroborate the dossier, but in an internal memo he said there was “serious reason to doubt” the report’s claims.78 What’s more, hours before BuzzFeed published the dossier, CNN posted a story in which anonymous Deep State stooges revealed that President Obama and President-elect Trump had been briefed on dossier allegations. We later learned that Jake Tapper, a coauthor of the CNN story, emailed Ben Smith and blasted him for printing the dossier, claiming it made the CNN story “less serious and credible.”79 That’s right—Tapper feared if Americans could read the dossier themselves instead of relying on CNN’s characterization of it, they wouldn’t take it seriously. Amid all the hysteria and lies, ABC’s Brian Ross managed to utter a true statement on Good Morning America: “If true [the dossier allegations] are a grave national security issue. If false, one of the great political smears of all time.”80
Despite all the dossier’s credibility problems, the entire mainstream media recklessly promoted its claims. In just a five-day period, CNN mentioned “the pee tapes” seventy-seven times.81 However, although the entire Washington press corps seems to have tried to confirm the dossier’s collusion allegations, no evidence turned up anywhere. The Washington Post sent investigators to every hotel in Prague to vindicate the dossier’s claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had gone there for a secret meeting with Russian conspirators—and the Post came up empty.82
But the media had no restraint, dropping “bombshell” after “bombshell” of new allegations of Trump campaign members colluding with Russians. Adam Schiff and other Democrat miscreants became constant fixtures on TV news shows, giving credence to the dossier and to whatever happened to be the most recent collusion fabrication.
The media ignored all the indications that the entire story was false, and they spit venom at those of us who pointed out that the dossier was a joke and that the rest of the case was built on unverifiable lies from anonymous Deep State idiots. They wouldn’t even listen to their fellow Trump hater, FBI director James Comey, who testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017 that “there’ve been many, many stories purportedly based on classified information, about—well, about lots of stuff, but especially about Russia that are just dead wrong.”83 Comey described as “almost entirely wrong” a key New York Times story reporting that phone records and intercepted calls showed Trump associates had “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence.” Not only did the Times refuse to retract that story, but in a stunning sign of the total corruption of the mainstream media, the article was among twelve stories on Trump-Russia collusion for which the Times won a prestigious George Polk Award.84
Unsurprisingly, the Russia collusion reporting of the Times and the Washington Post—which together were the primary drivers of the biggest Fake News story of our lifetime—were jointly awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Just look at the award citation: “For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”85 The news just doesn’t get any more fake than that.
The media’s obsessive coverage of the Russia hoax crowded out almost all other news. In the first five weeks after Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to head up the witch hunt, the broadcast networks spent 55 percent of their coverage of the Trump administration on the investigation, of which one-third was anonymously sourced. There was barely any room left for reporting on Trump’s governing agenda—withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty and the Iran nuclear deal, negotiating better trade agreements, kick-starting energy production, deregulation, expanding pipeline projects, promoting religious liberty, reforming veterans’ care, and nominating constitutionalist federal appellate judges, to name a few.86
How important was the Russia hoax to the mainstream media? Speaking with his staff about the Russia collusion investigation shortly after Robert Mueller’s disastrous public testimony to Congress, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet admitted, “We built our newsroom to cover one story.”87 Think about that. The nation’s most prestigious newspaper organized its entire reporting operation to cover a single story—and it was a hoax!
As you would expect, the Times was put in a tough spot when Mueller found no evidence to vindicate its reporting on the dominant story of the previous two years. Here’s what Baquet told his demoralized employees: “The day Bob Mueller walked off that witness stand, two things happened. Our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, ‘Holy sh*t, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.’ And Donald Trump got a little emboldened politically, I think. Because, you know, for obvious reasons. And I think that the story changed. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago. We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed. I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?”88
You have to love Baquet’s choice of words here. Let me translate:
“Our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, ‘Holy sh*t, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.�
� ”—Our rabid Trump-hating subscribers were shocked that Mueller was not going to overthrow our duly elected president.
“And Donald Trump got a little emboldened politically, I think. Because, you know, for obvious reasons.”—Unfortunately, Donald Trump benefited when the coup attempt against him failed.
“And I think that the story changed.”—Our reporting was exposed as a hoax.
“A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago. We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed.”—Our leakers on the Mueller team told us six or seven weeks ago that Mueller had no evidence of collusion. We’re the biggest frauds in American journalism.
“I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?”—I mean, that’s what happens when you wildly distort a story for two years. Right?
The media mob met with more humiliation in this saga due to its coverage of Congressman Devin Nunes’s memo revealing that the FBI used unverified allegations from the Steele dossier to get FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. First they and their Deep State allies warned that releasing the memo would endanger national security. “People must understand what is at stake by release of the bogus, contrived Nunes memo,” said disgraced Obama attorney general Eric Holder. “It uses normally protected material and puts at risk our intel capabilities in order to derail a legitimate criminal investigation. This is unheard of—it is dangerous and it is irresponsible.”89 Not to be outdone, CNN political analyst Brain Karem warned that Nunes was a threat to the republic, claiming that publishing the memo “is a tipping point for our democracy. Are we going to be a democracy after today, or is this going to be demagoguery and despotism?”90
Once the memo was released, the American people could see for themselves that there was no threat to democracy in revealing how the FBI faked evidence to spy on Carter Page. So the hate-Trump media moved to their next storyline: the memo was a dud. We were supposed to believe that it was just no big deal that the Obama administration perpetrated a fraud on the FISA court and used fake information to get warrants to spy on its political opponents. And you almost have to admire the media’s messaging discipline while making this insane argument. Just look at the headlines:
New York Times: “Devin Nunes’s Nothingburger”91
Salon: “ ‘Worse Than a Nothing Burger’: The Nunes Memo Lands With a Thud”92
Washington Monthly: “Devin Nunes and the Nothing Burger Memo”93
Esquire: “ ‘Nothingburger’ Doesn’t Do This Memo Justice”94
The Hill: “Press: The GOP’S Giant Nothing Burger”95
Finally, the Fake News outlets rallied around the counter-memo put out a few weeks later by Congressman Adam Schiff, a congenital liar, leaker, and hoax artist. Filled with slimy insinuations that Carter Page is a Russian agent, the Schiff memo denied there were any abuses at all in the Page FISA warrants. Schiff claimed the Department of Justice made only “narrow use” of the Steele dossier in the warrant applications; that the FBI had “undertaken a rigorous process” to vet Steele’s allegations; that there were no omissions in the applications; and that the FISA contained “additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting.”96 The media triumphantly announced that the Schiff memo was “the nail in the coffin” for the Nunes memo.97
But Schiff and his Fake News mouthpieces were catastrophically wrong. The report by DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz showed that the FBI had perpetrated a premeditated fraud on the FISA court by misrepresenting bogus dossier information, just as Nunes had said. The report shredded every aspect of the Schiff memo that the media had championed, finding seventeen major problems in the FISA warrants.98 When asked if he’d admit he was wrong, Schiff claimed he simply didn’t have the evidence that the inspector general found and he didn’t know about the abuses.99 That’s hard to believe, considering Nunes told everyone. As for the media, nearly all of them reported Horowitz’s findings without noting how it brutally murdered the Schiff memo and vindicated the Nunes memo, which they had universally denounced as a fraud, a dud, and a threat to our national security.
“THE CAMPAIGN TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS BEGUN”
The media have tried to get President Trump impeached since his first day in office. I’m not exaggerating—a Washington Post report on January 20, 2017, Trump’s inauguration day, had the blaring headline “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.” Trump had done nothing at that point but swear the oath of office, but the Post wanted Americans to know about a campaign to build public support to impeach him launched by two liberal activist groups using the website ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org. The story also quoted the American Civil Liberties Union, which it said “plans to wield public-records requests and lawsuits as part of an aggressive action plan aimed at protecting immigrants and pushing for government transparency, among other issues.”100
So the left was planning an all-out campaign of harassment to stop Trump even before he took office. The truth is, the left’s mad crusade to impeach Trump never had anything to do with his conduct. The unforgivable crime he committed was beating Hillary Clinton, and that’s why the campaign to impeach him began on his first day in office. The fact that he was elected on vows to implement a strong, conservative agenda made it even more urgent for the left to get rid of him. As the Washington Post story noted, the impeachment push “comes as Democrats and liberal activists are mounting broad opposition to stymie Trump’s agenda.”101
From the beginning the Democrats have been in hot pursuit of any conceivable pretext to impeach Trump, and every bogus impeachment effort they’ve launched has reflected their bad faith. Just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won the election and Republicans carried out a nonstop effort to frame her and impeach her for imaginary crimes beginning on her inauguration day. We all know the media would cast Republicans as hate-filled, partisan sexists. Yet they not only supported the impeachment drive against Trump, but with their daily production of “bombshell” leaks featuring anonymous sources describing some phony Trump misconduct, it’d be perfectly accurate to say they led it. The media, who hold themselves out as stewards of our democracy, actively conspired with Democrats to remove a duly elected president and thereby dismantle the republic they pretend to be saving.
In truth, the media was fantasizing about impeachment even before Trump’s inauguration. Two days after the election—November 10, 2016—Good Morning America ran through a whole series of supposed Trump outrages that have since formed the basis of impeachment demands. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos discussed various civil suits pending against Trump, insisting, “If he takes the risk of going to trial and he’s convicted, that could be seen as an impeachable offense.” Aside from Stephanopoulos’s embarrassing use of the criminal term “convicted” in discussing civil cases, he apparently was unaware that a president cannot be impeached for actions taken before he became president, as noted by the network’s legal analyst, Dan Abrams.
Stephanopoulos also interviewed correspondent Brian Ross, who reported on “dozens of cases” involving Trump that might get the president in trouble. One of the urgent matters Ross raised was—you guessed it—Russia! “Trump has extensive ties with several Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin,” said Ross. “He and his children have sought investments with controversial overseas figures.” And to round things out, Stephanopoulos and Ross invoked their go-to issue—vague allegations that Trump may have violated tax laws.102
Despite years of endless investigations of these issues in Congress and elsewhere—including the years-long Russia collusion hoax—the Democrats couldn’t find anything strong enough to use as a basis to impeach Trump. Finally, they jumped on the Ukraine whistle-blower issue contrived by Adam Schiff. In many ways, the Ukraine hoax was an even weaker pretext for impeachment than the parade of idiotic allegations that preceded it. That’s why media deceptions were crucial to impeachment from the ver
y beginning. The first report on the content of the whistle-blower complaint was a September 18, 2019, story in the Washington Post that revealed the complaint was related to a conversation between President Trump and a foreign leader. Exactly as we’ve come to expect, there was a giant lie at the beginning of the story, with two anonymous sources claiming the complaint related to a “promise” Trump made to Zelensky.103 Once the White House published the transcript of the call, everyone could see there was no promise at all, but by then impeachment hysteria was already unstoppable.
The media also stoked a frenzy surrounding the depositions given by witnesses behind closed doors at Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee. It became a daily ritual that shortly after a witness finished testifying, the media would publish a slew of Democrat leaks from anonymous sources designed to portray the testimony in the most incriminating light possible. As we all learned much later when the witness transcripts were made public, all the exculpatory testimony was left out of the leaks.
The media continued in this vein throughout the impeachment charade. They showed little interest in learning all the details of the secret coordination between Schiff’s staff and the whistle-blower, which no one knows to this day. They also denounced Republican concern about Ukrainian meddling in U.S. elections as a “conspiracy theory” despite Alexandra Chalupa’s admission to Politico that she cooperated with Ukrainian officials to smear the Trump campaign.104 Working with foreign officials to sabotage an opposing campaign, of course, is the exact false accusation that was made against Trump throughout the Russia collusion hoax. But for some reason when a Democrat admitted doing it, the media did not demand FBI investigations. In fact, they couldn’t seem to have cared less.
In the end Trump beat the coup attempt. The media’s best efforts to gin up support for impeachment failed miserably because they had already lost all credibility with tens of millions of Americans. The coverage was so biased that Devin Nunes dedicated an entire opening statement at one of the televised impeachment hearings to media malpractice. As Nunes said, “The media, of course, are free to act as Democrat puppets, and they’re free to lurch from the Russia hoax to the Ukraine hoax at the direction of their puppet masters. But they cannot reasonably expect to do so without alienating half the country who voted for the President they’re trying to expel. Americans have learned to recognize fake news when they see it, and if the mainstream press won’t give it to them straight, they’ll go elsewhere to find it—which is exactly what the American people are doing.”105