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They tormented the functioning of American democracy with a fantasy conspiracy, and many of them worked with the frenzy of fanatics to convince their readers and viewers that their partisan-fired delusion was the truth. The mad Scheherazade of MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, trod paths of polemical projection against Trump that made Keith Olbermann — Maddow’s John the Baptist in the MSNBC fever-shop — resemble a normal human being. A similitude otherwise unavailable to him.

The great Russia collusion story that mesmerized the American press for more than two years, blistered the conduct of foreign relations, and ruined reputations (and inflated the salaries of its projectors) was one big, empty, useless, false bust.

The great Russia collusion story … was one big, empty, useless, false bust

The press Trump-despisers were wrong. And they were themselves contributors to the creation of an atmosphere in which a hollow story — founded as all now know on a Hillary Clinton-funded opposition dossier flooded with fiction and lurid fantasy and aided by anti-Trump, pro-Hillary functionaries in the CIA and DOJ — derailed public affairs in the U.S.

This is the second time the press has gone mad, and displayed reckless incompetence. They got the American election wrong, too.

A great majority of the professional press were so enthralled by (possibly clinical) hatred and contempt for Trump that they misread the American election itself. As I noted in a previous column, the sweep of the American press consensus that “Trump didn’t have a chance” and “Hillary was inevitable” was almost universal. Thirty minutes before the polls closed, The New York Times put Hillary’s odds of being president by night’s end at 92 per cent!

So, Trump has won twice. The press have failed twice

So, Trump has won twice. The press have failed twice. And, irony of ironies, what Mueller’s long longed-for, wildly anticipated report, actually established was an opposite bond of collusion: not Trump with Russia, but much of the American press colluding with last-ditch Hillary-ites, anti-Trump fanatics and fundamentalist Never Trumpers to find some means, tacky or cruel, to lie him out of office.

Hating Trump is a pathetic state of mind far more than the self-flattering notion that it is evidence of civic virtue. It should be an axiom: disgust at or for Donald Trump does not excuse, and should not motivate, deliberately sloppy partisan journalism.

Jussie Smollett now has more credibility than most anti-Trump pundits.