Buzzfeed Bombshell Dud

by Gary Fouse (hat tip: Daily Caller)

Anthony Cormier and Ben Smith on CNN’s Reliable Sources

This morning, Anthony Cormier, one of the two investigative reporters who broke the Buzzfeed story on President Trump Thursday night, appeared with Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith on CNN’s Reliable Sources, hosted by Brian Stelter. Daily Caller has a report with the entire interview.

Like anyone else, I do find it odd that the other reporter, Jason Leopold, was unavailable (“out on a story”). Also significant was Cormier’s “Can’t get into details” on the question of whether one or both reporters had seen the alleged documents involved. As we know, Cormier said previously that they themselves had not seen documents while Leopold claimed that he had seen documents. It is a confusing contradiction and Cormier failed to clear it up. He used the issue of protecting the confidentiality of his sources to avoid the central question: Did he and/or Leopold see documents and why are there two different answers?

Then there was Carl Bernstein, who appeared next. He added little to the central question of whether the Buzzfeed story was true or not. He preferred to go on a rant about Trump, his Russian interests, and his lies. “Lies, lies, lies”.

So where does this go? It is too soon to say there is no truth to the accusation that Trump instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the timing of when his Trump Tower project in Moscow was terminated. Do we care that Trump was negotiating to build a hotel in Moscow? Probably not though it would have been the proper thing to do to drop it as soon as he decided to run for president. The alleged crime is that he told Cohen to lie about it before Congress. Is that true? We don’t know.

We also don’t know about these two anonymous sources close to the Mueller investigation. Are they part of Mueller’s team, FBI, or what? Do they even exist? If they do, they are guilty of unprofessional conduct, or worse, in revealing sensitive material in a major on-going investigation.

And this question of whether any of these reporters actually saw documents really leaves this whole report very shaky, indeed. Are the reporters and Buzzfeed guilty of sloppy reporting? Did they simply get it wrong? Are they guilty of something much worse? In other words, did they make it up? Again, we don’t know, but we are living in an age where we have an agenda-driven media that is determined to destroy the Trump presidency. We also have people in the highest levels of federal government who also want to bring Trump down. We have already been shown the despicable actions of people like Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and others who have abused their power to try and submarine a presidential candidate and sway an election to Hillary Clinton.  

But back to the media. CNN, like others, gleefully ran with this story even while dutifully stating that they had not verified it themselves. The standard line was, “If this is true…” followed by speculation about the end of the Trump presidency. Stelter himself said that CNN ran with the story, other major outlets ran with the story, and even Fox “a little bit”.

Good for Fox.

CNN and the rest of the media desperately want this story to be true for two reasons. First, they hate Trump and want to see him removed from office. Second, their own industry and their own respective companies have put themselves on the line with this story. They claim they have given the proper disclaimers, but they know they had a field day with this until Mueller’s office disputed the story. Now they are in protective mode. Now they have to ask “hard questions” of Buzzfeed as Stelter did- “a little bit”.

If it turns out that this story is untrue or simply cannot be verified, it does additional damage to the credibility of not only Buzzfeed but our media in general-as if they need any more hits to their credibility. Who in this country still believes our media is fair and accurate? We need to have a free media, one that can criticize and question our government, even investigate it. What we have now is a media with a leftist, partisan agenda, a media that shills for the Democrat party and is determined to bring down President Trump. How many hours a day does CNN spend not talking about Trump?

Right now, we don’t know where this is going to lead. If it turns out everything these reporters say is true, shame on Trump. But shame also on the supposed sources who leaked details of an investigation to the media. If the report is just fake news, shame on our media. Either way, this episode is bad news for the nation. (No pun intended.)