Members of the press have whispered for weeks about a scheme by the White House to discredit media by leaking bad information.

On Friday, after a major misfire from the Associated Press, those whispers turned into shouts.

Here's what happened:

The AP published a supposed bombshell story Friday alleging President Trump is considering deploying 100,000 National Guard units to round up illegal immigrants.

"Trump weighs mobilizing Nat Guard for immigration roundups," the report's original headline read.

But the AP botched the story in a big way, as detailed here by the Washington Examiner.

From overselling the leaked Department of Homeland Security memo on which the entire report hinges, to failing to provide proof that Trump was even aware of draft proposal, readers would be wise to remain skeptical of the AP report.

To be clear, the draft memo mentioned in the story is definitely real, as confirmed by DHS officials. It's just that it doesn't say what the AP reported.

The global newswire claimed it contacted the White House repeatedly with requests for comment prior to publication, and that it gave administration officials at least 24 hours to respond. Those requests reportedly went ignored. Interestingly enough, when the AP's story came out, Trump's team wasted no time denouncing it.

This is where we get to the Trump misinformation conspiracy.

As the White House moved at lightning speed to discredit the dubious story Friday, many in the media noted the loud pushback came only after officials had reportedly ignored AP's requests for comment. For some in the press, this suggested a larger scheme by Trump's team.

"Leak an abhorrent policy under consideration. Refuse comment when queried. After publication, declare policy absurd, scold media. Repeat," the Washington Post's Radley Balko suggested. "Also, can't blame A.P. here. When a source with credible access floats/leaks a policy this bad, it would be irresponsible not to publish."

MTV News' Jamil Smith took a much more ham-handed approach to the misinformation theory, saying, "That National Guard story feels like a pure intimidation move. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter. Word is out. Mission accomplished."

The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro also wondered if the AP deportation story was a bit of " White House manipulation."

Others weighed in with similar theories as the AP's supposed bombshell continued to unravel in real-time.

"It's almost as if the [White House] is floating bad info so it can cry fake news," remarked Bloomberg's Mark Gongloff.

Esquire contributor Corey Atad offered this commentary, "evidence points to the White House deliberately misleading the press for sole purpose of labeling the press 'fake news.' Great."

It goes on and on like that for quite a bit, as commentators from both sides of the aisle were keen to suggest Friday that the AP may have been played by the White House.

The thing is: A grand misinformation scheme by the White House isn't that crazy. It's exactly the sort of mischief for which Breitbart News, whose former CEO serves now Trump's Chief Strategist, is famous.

"[By the way] the 'real-memo-not-actually-being-considered-but-leaked-to-media-to-mess-with-them' is a 100% Breitbartian move," the Daily Beast's Andrew Kirell noted Friday.

Stephen Bannon, whose tenure as Breitbart News CEO saw the site transformed into an unapologetically pro-Trump organization, has made it no secret he considers the national media to be the enemy. He has even referred to it as the " opposition party."

"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while," he said in a recent interview with the New York Times. "I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States."

Though a covert plot to undermine the so-called mainstream media's remaining credibility sounds like the sort of thing Bannon would spearhead, the conspiracy doesn't work when applied specifically to the AP's deportation story. To put it simply, the AP botched this story all on its own.

The DHS draft memo didn't specifically suggest nationalizing the National Guard, as suggested by AP's reporting. The draft memo also never used the 100,000 figure cited by the AP, though it's possible the news group got this number by tallying the National Guard units currently stationed in the 11 states where they would supposedly be used to crack down on illegal immigration. The report doesn't explain this.

Also, to be clear, the word "deportation" is never used in the draft memo. As far as National Guard troops are concerned, the memo only floats the idea of giving them the authority to assist in the "investigation, apprehension and detention" of criminal aliens.

Lastly, it's worth noting the AP didn't even contact DHS for comment until the morning of the story's publication.

The idea that someone in the Trump administration leaked the draft memo to AP reporters so the newsgroup could then oversell it doesn't make any sense. How would someone even go about doing that, convincing a reporter to bungle his own story? It'd be one thing if the White House leaked the memo and then denied its existence. But that didn't happen. Maybe that was the plan all along. Perhaps the AP badly overselling the story was an unintended bonus for Trump's team. If so, what luck!

The misinformation campaign theory is an interesting one, and it wouldn't hurt to give it further consideration. But it doesn't work in this case. The AP dropped the ball here when it made claims about the memo that weren't backed up by the document's language. It takes a major leap of faith to believe the AP's misfire is the product of some master plan by the White House to discredit the press.

It's far more likely this particular saga is nothing more than good old-fashioned sloppy journalism.