What if a central figure in the Russian collusion scandal — a former U.S. senator, in fact — died? In his obituaries, would the alt-left media ignore not only the decedent’s role in the scandal, but the collusion itself, totally?

Yes, they would. In fact, yes they did, last week.

Because this was not the imaginary Trump collusion scandal, this was the real Russian collusion scandal, engineered by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy back in 1983.

Nothing to see here folks, move along!

The 83-year-old dead guy is John Tunney, former one-term U.S. senator from California, son of ex-heavyweight champion Gene Tunney and law-school classmate at UVa of Ted Kennedy.

Most significantly, Tunney was Kennedy’s D.C. drinking buddy — the original Chris Dodd, you might say. In his last campaign, in 1976, his Democrat primary opponent, Tom Hayden (aka Mr. Jane Fonda) described Tunney as “a Chappaquiddick waiting to happen.”

After he lost his seat in 1976 at age 42, Tunney still palled around with Teddy on those summerlong drinking binges down on the Cape. But in May 1983, Teddy had a bigger assignment for Tunney than the usual beer run to the packy at the ­Hyannis rotary.

Tunney was assigned to go to Moscow, and make the Evil Empire an offer it couldn’t refuse: The Soviets and the Democrats would join forces to deny President Ronald Reagan a second term in 1984. The Soviets would retain their slave empire, and the Democrats could resume destroying America.

How do we know this? Because when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the KGB’s secret files were opened to Western researchers. In the Kremlin, a British reporter discovered a 1983 memo from the head of the KGB to Yuri Andropov, then the Soviet dictator.

The KGB memo described Tunney as Teddy’s “close friend and trusted confidant … charged to convey the following message, through confidential contacts… ”

Comrade Tunney explained that Teddy controlled the media in the U.S., and that his fellow travelers would do whatever the hero of Chappaquiddick instructed them to do.

“Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews … The senator (Tunney) underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as coming from the American side.”

In other words, the Reds and their fellow travelers in the Democratic party had to make it seem like the “news” wasn’t Russian disinformation. You know, exactly like they tried to do with Hillary’s dirty dossier. And Tunney’s outreach was designed to accomplish the same outcome as Clinton’s dirty dossier — the election of a corrupt Democrat puppet the Russians could control.

“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,” the memo read. “Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight … .”

Does anyone doubt that even then the Democrats had utter control of the parlor pinks in the card-carrying mass media? A couple of years later, Teddy would succeed in spiking a devastating 27-minute ABC “News” documentary about RFK, JFK and the final hours of Marilyn Monroe’s life. Ask Geraldo Rivera sometime how he happened to lose his job at ABC.

And this was long before ABC “News” hired conniving Democrat hacks like George Stephanopoulos, Martha Raddatz and Brian Ross.

Nothing came of this first treasonous Democrat-Russian plot to subvert a U.S. presidential election. Andropov was dead eight months later, and Kennedy and Tunney resumed their lifelong happy hour, soon to be joined by Chris Dodd.

This 1983 memo is not some libelous Fusion GPS made-up oppo-research fiction. This is from official KGB files. It’s been reported in The Times of London, Forbes magazine and it’s between hard covers in a 2006 book. Ted Kennedy never denied it, nor did Tunney.

But in all the major obituaries for Tunney last week, there was not one single word about this original, real Russian collusion. All the national newspapers that have been printing one false story after another about Trump’s “collusion” for more than a year gave this real Russian collusion story a good leaving-alone.

Are you surprised that the alt-left media would again ignore the biggest Russian “collusion” story in American political history, while simultaneously promoting endless nonsense about a 2016 collusion that never occurred?

Me neither. They don’t call it fake news for nothing.

Order Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at howiecarrshow.com.