Topic: Media Research Center
It's never a good sign when the first column you write following the publication of your new book contains a demonstrable falsehood. But the Media Research Center's Tim Graham and Brent Bozell do just that in their June 5 column, a day after their media-bashing book "Unmasked" dropped:
Color us surprised. The nightly news obsession over nonexistent Trump-Russia collusion isn't abating. It's actually growing! They cannot be shamed. They cannot be shaken by inconvenient facts. It's been established there was no collusion, no obstruction, no high crime that's impeachable, and so what? The media are hammering this collusion theme more than ever.
Color us surprised too -- that Graham and Bozell are sticking to the much-less-than-true pro-Trump narrative that the Mueller report found "no collusion, no obstruction, no high crime that's impeachable."
As the Mueller report pointed out, collusion is not a specific crime but conspiracy is, and Mueller himself said that "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so" -- which he did not, and which arguably opens a path to an impeachment inquiry. Even one of the MRC's friends at Fox News, Bret Baier, agreed by saying that "This was not, as the President says time and time again, no collusion, no obstruction. It was much more nuanced than that." Funny that Graham and Bozell made no note of that, even as they go on to falsely claim that "Mueller cleared Trump completely on the charge of collusion while stating there was not enough evidence to indict him on obstruction of justice."
As we've noted, Graham took a different viewpoint when the investigation target had a different last name and political affiliation, insisting that a lack of evidence to indict Hillary Clinton for perjury in the White House travel office probe of the 1990s didn't mean she was "cleared completely" and did nothing wrong, though "the Clintons always suggest that if they’re not indicted, then they have 'done nothing wrong.'"
But our dynamic right-wing duo have a narrative to advance. They accuse the media of "irrational behavior" in reporting on Mueller's nuance and whining, "What a waste of our time, this incessant speculation of doom from the press, repeated thousands of times ad nauseam."
