The media’s response to the release of the Nunes memo surpasses the level of Pravda covering a Soviet show trial. No sooner had the memo appeared than journalists immediately began throwing sand into their audience’s eyes. The story, according to the media, is not that Obama’s Justice Department/FBI snookered FISA court judges and used Hillary’s purchased Steele dossier to spy on Trumpworld. No, the scandal is that the evil Republicans exposed this outrage, and that Trump, the ultimate target of this espionage, has the gall to defend himself. How dare a defendant in our kangaroo trial defend himself with the truth — that’s the upshot of all the media’s bleating.

All you can do is laugh at the intensity of the gibbering propaganda and misdirection, which is nothing more than the rage of a ruling class nabbed in an audacious act of political espionage. Katy Tur of MSNBC summed up the bewilderment of the ruling class perfectly: “None of this is normal.” In other words, we expose Republicans; they don’t expose us.

“None of this is normal” is what monopolists say when it dawns on them that they are losing their monopoly. Naturally, the blatant abnormalities of Obamagate didn’t interest Tur, which the memo devastatingly captures:

(A) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

(B) The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier). The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.

Like prosecutors in a show trial who want to retain the testimony of an utterly discredited witness, anchors like Andrea Mitchell just kept praising Steele’s “highly regarded” credentials. The listeners were not to hear, of course, any actual contents from the memo, such as that Steele made his blatant dislike for Trump clear to a Justice Department official (whose wife worked for the same outfit as Steele) and that even the FBI lost confidence in Steele for lying:

Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations — an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn. Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September — before the Page application was submitted to the FISC in October — but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts.

Much of the post-release coverage consisted of trotting out this or that “professional” from the deep state to call the Nunes memo “trash” without challenge. The kangaroo court was back in session, endlessly appealing to its own authority to bless the political espionage.

You can almost hear the Jeff Zuckers talking into their puppet-propagandists’ ears: Shoot the messenger, change the subject, talk about the “motivations” behind the memo, the “consequences” of the memo, what “Putin” might think of the memo, any “resignations” that might follow the memo’s release, but whatever you do don’t talk about the information in the memo.

The media’s favorite tactic is to treat Trump’s self-defense, even if it is rooted in the truth, as an ongoing scandal. It is appalling to the kangaroo court that he would “discredit” the probe into his campaign by pointing to discreditable behavior. That is a no-no. That is “politics.” That is “selfish,” placing his own “personal interests” above the “interests of the country.” The media’s view is that victims of political rape, provided they are Republicans, should sit back and enjoy it. Anything less is “not normal.”

Read the full text of the Nunes Memo here.