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Sunday, June 11, 2017

Fake News Is Growing

For all the publicity about Fake News, the phenomenon does not seem to be subsiding.  Quite to the contrary, it is getting worse.

I mention this because this morning I happened to go to Yahoo News and was greeted with a headline about how calls for the impeachment of Donald Trump as President have grown to be very large in number.  That truly surprised me.  No, I was not surprised that Yahoo News of all place would just blatantly make things like this up.  I was surprised that Yahoo News would lie about something that is so clearly false as to be laughable.

Just to be fair about it, I then spent fifteen minutes looking for someone calling for the President's impeachment.  There are the uber-leftists who have been demanding impeachment since before Trump took office.  They're still there.  That, however, is not a change from previous conditions.  There are also the professional anti-Trump pundits who hint around at supposed wrongdoing by the President but never actually get to the point of mentioning an impeachable offense.  That too is no different than before. 

What actually has changed is the large number of people who, after hearing the Comey testimony as well as that of the DNI and the head of the NSA, now say that there is no proof yet of any collusion or cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia and no proof of obstruction of justice by the President.  One big boost to this view was Comey's testimony that the NY Times article that detailed supposed contacts between the Trump people and the Russians was nearly completely wrong.  There was scant "evidence" before Comey spoke of Trump/Russia contacts.  Now, there is no credible evidence of any sort of improper contacts of any sort.  As for obstruction, two things have happened.  First, Comey made clear that the President said nothing that directed him to stop any investigation.  Instead, according to Comey, Trump said that it would be good to know if any of his "satellites" had done anything wrong.  Trump supported the investigation.  Comey added that he "understood" the President to be asking for a stop into the investigation into General Flynn's contacts with the Russians, something which the FBI had already reviewed and found not troubling.  Second, it has also become clear that even had President Trump directed an end to the Flynn investigation, which he did not, it would still have not been obstruction of justice since the President has the right and the power to issue just such a direction.

So we have seen the destruction of any basis for a call of impeachment as a direct result of the Comey testimony, and what is the response from Yahoo News?  It writes a Fake News story describing an avalanche of new calls for impeachment.  But there aren't any.

It's just another day in Fake News in DC.

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