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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.

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For over two years now, we have been inundated with “bombshells” regarding Trump and his alleged ties to Russia. According to the braintrust on the Left, the venerated Robert Mueller would get to the bottom of this whole sordid affair and prove once and for all that the election was decided through Russian influence and that- not the ineptitude of Hillary Clinton- is why Trump is president today.

Except Mueller’s report proved the opposite. And now that the truth is out, those who peddled this hoax for 29 months (and counting) stand red-faced with embarrassment. Unfortunately, they are so deranged in their hatred of Trump that they have, as others have noted, moved the goal posts and now speak with glee about “obstruction” (of what, they don’t say) or just that Trump is a big meanie. So, here are the top five losers in the Russiagate hoax.

Coming in at number 5 is The Palmer Report. Granted, not too many people know about this website. However, one former FP writer here at Redstate who shall remain nameless with the initials SW apparently read this rag as gospel and their rants sounded suspiciously like the dribble from those pages. Every day, there was the impending bombshell or missing link that required such a tremendous leap in logic that it bordered on insanity. The Palmer Report has since morphed into your garden variety anti-Trump drivel with writing and analysis worse than even DailyKos, if such was possible.

At number four is the Twitter brigade led by pundits like Louise Mensch. This former British Parliamentarian managed to link just about anyone and everyone to Vladimir Putin thus doing Putin a service undeserved. Her conspiracy theories rivaled those of Alex Jones who she must have studied intently. Along the way, she stated that not only Trump was a puppet of Putin, but also Bernie Sanders, Rudy Giuliani, and even the 15-year-old girl Anthony Weiner sexted. She achieved her purpose- elevating her Twitter profile as determined by retweets, likes, and views. In other words, Trump did Mensch a great service and she needs to extend a thank you to him for elevating her from innocuous nobody to having a large Twitter following and keeping her relevant in her own mind.

At number three, most of the print media, led by the Washington Post. The paper that declared “Democracy dies in the darkness” pulled the wool over the public’s eyes with discredited and false information. A more appropriate slogan would be “We never turn down a leak.” They ran a story- to prove just how bad Russia and Putin were- that they hacked the Vermont electricity grid. Really? Vermont? We learned from them that the Rand Paul Institute and the Drudge Report were actually Russian fronts. Unsurprisingly, they and other print media have failed to retract stories now proven false. For example, The Guardian reported that Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. McClatchy reported that Michael Cohen met with Russian agents in Prague. None of these stories are true, yet none of them were retracted either. And people wonder why the print media is a dying relic.

At number two is cable news, specifically CNN. For over two years, they peddled the line that Trump was a Manchurian candidate with his strings manipulated by the Kremlin. Well, it did keep the ratings afloat, but when the Mueller report absolved Trump, his campaign, his transition and his administration of any collusion, the rug was pulled out from under their feet- along with their ratings. Today, channels like HGTV and the Hallmark Channel have higher ratings. They stacked their panels with Trump haters and conspiracy theorists disguised as “experts.” They even brought in the ultimate expert- John Clapper- and James Brennan would sometimes appear. The alien-looking Max Boot is a mainstay on Don Lemon’s show to illustrate the veneer of a “conservative” voice. If a conservative like Max Boot can believe this nonsense, the theory goes, then it must be true.

And finally, the honor of being number one has to go to Rachel Maddow. The cutest little boy on television since Ricky Schroeder invested a lot of time and energy on the Russian collusion narrative. Maddox is no dummy; she was a Rhodes scholar. But that just shows how deep the derangement syndrome goes. When a Rhodes scholar abandons their critical thinking skills, Oxford University should demand their time back. There are numerous clips of Maddow’s derangement out there on the Internet. But nothing exemplifies her nonsensical silliness and derangement than the segment after the Mueller report was released stating no collusion. With tears welling in her eyes, the resistance’s last great hope- Robert Mueller- let them down, not because he found no collusion, but because, according to Maddow, Mueller was somehow silenced into not telling the real truth. Those were not tears over non-collusion; those were tears for Robert Mueller.