An earworm, that little tune that swims around in your head and you can't shake it. Its close relative is what I would call a whimworm, a certain idea or notion that gets unshakably planted in your brain. And Andrew Sullivan has one. A big one. A really determined one.
His is the media's wrongful obsession with Trump's Russia collusion — "especially the Steele Dossier," he writes in "It Wasn't a hoax. It was Overkill: Parsing the truths in the 'collusion' narrative." That's a curious thing to headline, since right off he concedes there is "no question that [Trump] was absolutely willing to accept Russia’s — or any country’s — illicit support, and no doubt he actually asked for it.... But this was not what the MSM tried to sell us from the get-go. What they and the Democrats argued — with endless, breathless, high-drama reporting — was that there was some kind of plot between Trump and Russia to rig the election and it had succeeded.... This. Was. Bullshit."
I guess Sullivan is simply more promiscuous than I when evaluating a "rigged election." That Trump "was absolutely willing to accept Russia’s" help and "actually" asked for it denotes a plot, and that, in my and many others' book, is rigging. Its "success" will always be unknown, since Trump's election "was due to many, many factors," as Sullivan correctly observes. Still, plots and riggings add up to collusion. I would also posit that most anyone's initial denial of collusion would be convincingly persuaded otherwise by the following events and revelations.
For one, the Roger Stone trial of 2019 — not the media — which blew away Trump's assertions of "I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign." Deputy campaign manager Rick Gates' testimony revealed that Trump's written testimony to Special Counsel Bob Mueller was a lie. Trump was aware of such discussions, in which Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Jason Miller participated. Later, Brad Parscale, David Bossie, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump Jr. bragged about their having had a hand in the WikiLeaks dump. Trump himself had a conversation with Stone well before WikiLeaks first published its Russia-hacked material on Hillary Clinton. Collusion.
But Mueller — not the media — screwed up. He withheld what he already knew about the incriminating Trump-Wikileaks-Russia plot. He instead reported there was insufficient evidence for a criminal conspiracy charge. As Politico reported in Nov. 2019: "That was a mistake, said several legal experts. The decision to keep private such information left the public confused and more susceptible to the president’s 'no collusion, no obstruction' spin."
This, Sullivan ignores.
And then there was the Senate Intelligence Committee report — not the media — which, of course, Trump called "a hoax." Reuters wrote that the committee found that "Russia used Republican political operative Paul Manafort and the WikiLeaks website to try to help now-U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 election.... WikiLeaks played a key role in Russia’s effort to assist Republican Trump’s campaign.... The report found President Vladimir Putin personally directed the Russian efforts to hack computer networks and [Democratic] accounts.... As Russian military intelligence and WikiLeaks released the hacked documents, the report said Trump’s campaign sought advance notice, devised messaging strategies to amplify them 'and encouraged further theft of information and ... leaks.'"
Collusion by any other name — and by any other words — is still collusion.
Sullivan concedes that there’s "no doubt that Trump obstructed justice in trying to stymie the Russia investigation." Indeed, Mueller found 10 obstructions of justice. What would any reasonable person conclude from this? "No doubt," he or she would conclude that Trump & Assoc. had a lot to hide about their campaign connections with Russia. Collusion.
"Night after night after night," Sullivan complains, "cable news was obsessed with what they hoped would be their Watergate moment." There was a Watergate moment — in fact, there were three: the Stone revelations, the Senate Intel's published report, and Mueller's findings. The problem was that the "moment" was so bafflingly spread out.
As for the Steele dossier — "especially the Steele Dossier" — well, when compared to official findings, the dossier was little more than a sideshow. Now, as revisionist commentators like Sullivan mean to make it some sort of central event, it's more of a freak show. Nevertheless, was there media "overkill" on Steele? Yes. (Not on this site, though.) Have much of the media failed to acknowledge their erring overconfidence in the dossier? Yes. Does either at all diminish the Trump-Russia collusion documented elsewhere? Profoundly, no.
In my mind I keep coming back to what pretty much everyone knows and what Sullivan twice admits: "Of course [Trump] was going to deny everything, obstruct everything, and dig in.... Of course he was going to lie about everything." This, it seems to me, was Exhibit #1 in establishing Trumpian collusion, even more so than the Stone trial's revelations or Mueller's findings or the Senate committee's damning report. Innocent people don't obstruct justice. Also self-evident was that Trump's corrupt Justice Department would never have entertained a criminal-conspiracy charge recommended by Mueller. That, however, relieved no one of guilt.
Again, as for media overkill on the collusion story, as Sullivan charges, I'd say the media actually came up short — albeit through no fault of its own. Mostly because of Trump's obstruction, the complete, appalling and criminally inculpatory facts were always unreportable. I also suspect a certain amount of shoulder-shrugging within the media: What difference would the whole truth make? Bill Barr's DOJ and Senate Republicans would protect the sleazy vulgarian anyway.
I observe all this not out of any love for cable news, which Sullivan specifically fingers while not naming the most obvious name. In general, it's awful: repetitive, mostly void of international news, and unashamedly partisan as Fox. But there's a market for it, so that's that.
Virtually all the media, though, perforce underkilled the collusion story. And now, because of the Steele revelations, revisionists are out to kill it altogether.