The Barr Letter and Useful Idiots of the Jaded Left

As everyone knows by now, President Trump has been totally “exonerated” for everything, ever, by a four-page letter from William Barr, the Attorney General whom he appointed expressly to “exonerate” him. With regard to potential obstruction-of-justice, on page three of his letter, Barr cited Special Counsel Mueller’s statement that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Understandably, Trump’s allies and surrogates are ecstatic that Trump has been so unequivocally and unconditionally exonerated by a letter about a report that “does not exonerate him.” But the gloating does not stop there. A contingent of “left” journalists and self-styled pundits are jumping in the self-congratulatory bandwagon.

The “leftist” critique of the Russia collusion story follows a certain “dialectical” logic: first, the lesser of two evils is the greater danger and therefore my foe and second, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Alleged journalist Glenn Greenwald presents an inarticulate version of this critique when he sputters hyperbole on Democracy Now. Greenwald magically transforms not establishing an actionable criminal case into not a shred of evidence.

Matt Taibbi gives a more nuanced performance in comparing Russiagate to the Bush administration’s lies about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Taibbi qualifies his hyperbole by noting the hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars wasted as a result of the latter. “Unless Russiagate leads to a nuclear conflict, we’re unlikely to ever see that level of consequence.” But in terms of journalism?

As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it’s led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We’ve become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.

What a load of bollocks. Are we now supposed to believe that up until the time of the Steele dossier, the corporate news media was “an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction”? Fox? Breitbart? Daily Caller? Not to mention non-stop CNN and NYT coverage of Trump rallies, diners in rural Pennsylvania, personable neo-Nazis, Clinton emails and climate change…

In his comprehensive critique of journalistic failure, Taibbi mentioned Fox once and the Daily Caller twice — to note their coverage of Michael Cohen’s denial of having ever been in Prague. Throughout the whole affair, the vast right-wing propaganda Wurlitzer was presumably acting as “an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.” Thank you, Matt Taibbi for your bold refusal to choose sides!

Not that it matters, but the mainstream media framing of the Russia collusion story was orchestrated by the “victim” of the “witch hunt.” The Mueller investigation was initiated by the Trump-appointed Deputy Attorney General who wrote the memo to give Trump cover for firing James Comey. The soi-disant “left” critics of Russiagate have bought that framing and are now gloating that “their side” has won.