FILE – In this Nov. 29, 2016, file photo, Lawrence O’Donnell attends the 12th Annual UNICEF Snowflake Ball in New York. The MSNBC anchor apologized on Sept. 20, 2017, after clips surfaced of him profanely yelling at staffers in between segments of his prime-time program.(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

How bad was the Democratic debate and how much do Democrats realize they are up a creek without a paddle when it comes to their candidates?

They’ve tried to resurrect the already debunked Russia hoax, but they’ve updated it with a 2020 twist.

The New York Times ran a report that the House Intel Committee was told last week by intelligence officials that the Russians were trying to interfere in the 2020 election to help get President Donald Trump elected.

But that report was almost immediately called into question by both CNN’s Jake Tapper and CBS’ Catherine Herridge, both of whom had sources that debunked it. Tapper’s source said that the report mischaracterized the situation that there wasn’t even support for a preference for Trump over his opponents. Herridge’s source said that there was no intelligence collected to back up that claim.

So the IC and/or the media mischaracterized the situation. Trump disputed it and was concerned about Democrats “weaponizing” the claim which of course they and some media immediately did. This seems to have followed the Democrats to media and back again line that we have frequently seen in the past. Democrats see (or twist) anything they think is a negative for the GOP/Trump, leak to media, who then runs with it, maybe spinning it up another notch. Then Dems can react to it and say, “Look,” even though no one really even knows what’s being talked about.

This here is peak Schiff.

Wow, look at this story randomly coming across the transom. It's very troubling, if true. pic.twitter.com/A04HriRLWV — Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 21, 2020

Now MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell is taking the story, twisting it and amplifying it up several notches, into unhinged crazy land. He through Ric Grenell being named acting Director of National Intelligence into the mix too.

MSNBC’s @Lawrence says that Trump appointing Grenell came at Putin’s direction: “The president is a Russian operative. That sounds like the description of a bad Hollywood screenplay, but it is real, and it is Vladimir Putin’s greatest achievement.” pic.twitter.com/22uawDQ6dh — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 22, 2020

From Washington Examiner:

“The president is a Russian operative,” O’Donnell said on his show Thursday evening. “That sounds like the description of a bad Hollywood screenplay, but it is real, and it is Vladimir Putin’s greatest achievement, decades after America’s victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the president of the United States is now helping the president of Russia help the president of the United States to get reelected so that the president of Russia will have four more years of the president of the United States who he wants in the Oval Office.” O’Donnell called it a “shocking” revelation, one that led him to label the Trump administration as the “Trump-Putin regime.” He said the news Russia wants Trump to win reelection explains his decision to appoint Grenell to oversee the Intelligence Community.

O’Donnell claimed Grenell was “one of the most ridiculous incompetent stooges in the Trump administration” and that Trump appointed him to replace acting director Joseph Maguire when “Vladimir Putin showed Donald Trump that he needed an even more incompetent director of national intelligence because Vladimir Putin is working hard to reelect his favorite president of the United States in history.”

How do people get this twisted? This is pure conspiracy theory nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence that any of this is true in any way. This is pure disinformation which of course wouldn’t be called out by the media, to serve the Democratic narrative. The media is too busy calling out Bloomberg’s silly video about the debate.

What is true is that Democrats paid a foreign national for Russian information which was then fed to the FBI and the media to undermine the president. Where is O’Donnell calling that out?

Enough of the crazy. If Trump were a “Russian operative,” he’s a really bad one. Shall we count all the things that show that’s completely ridiculous, in addition to sanity?

Trump has rebuilt the military, supported the energy industry so that we are now virtually energy independent including being for pipelines, coal and fracking, dropped the Iran Deal and challenged Iran in Iraq, dropped bombs in Syria on a few hundred Russian, made NATO stronger by getting more contributions from partner countries, given lethal weapons to the Ukrainians,

All of these actions are contrary to Russias interests in the Middle East, desire to undermine NATO and asserting its energy dominance.

As is the appointment of Ric Grenell.

Richard Grenell is gay (which Putin hates) and spent his time in Germany pushing them to expand their NATO spending (which Putin hates), block Nordstream2 and stop buying Russian gas (which Putin hates), and support Crimea (which Putin hates). Other than that, makes sense you nut https://t.co/c0DbBDXFss — Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) February 22, 2020

Who would Russia rather have? People who are anti-Fracking, anti-oil, anti-military involvement? Sure sounds a lot more like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and a bunch of other Democrats.

HT: Twitchy