The Trump “era,” to the extent that it can be defined as an “era,” is going to be characterized by a constant lurching from crisis to crisis. Some of the crises will be purely fabricated — a result of the media’s unrelenting Trump-derived mania, which provides the foundation for the emergence of daily BREAKING NEWS MELTDOWN EMERGENCIES. Some of the crises will be legitimate, but these will probably get relatively lesser attention because of the media’s undying obsession with the trivial, mostly unimportant facets of Trump. The mantra going forward, I’ve postulated, can be thought of as this: “It’s only going to get worse.”

As expected, tonight it got worse.

So, here’s how this story is going to circulate. Journalists such as David Mack of BuzzFeed are going to take snippets of the so-called “Report” and tweet them out. Because Mack is a purported journalist and by dint of that presumably commands some measure of credibility, the fact that he promulgated the excerpt is going to be interpreted by many as a corroboration of the authenticity of the excerpt. Most news consumers aren’t terribly sophisticated. They’ll retweet something without verifying the source, especially when the Tweeter is a BuzzFeed Journalist who is regarded as a credible purveyor of info. Mack sources the excerpt simply to a “Report,” which sounds very Serious to the uninformed.

Lots of people out there are ready and eager to believe the worst possible stories about Trump. And for some good reason — Trump has done a bunch of bad things, which makes this eagerness understandable. But still, there’s an unremitting appetite in certain quarters for a constant supply of salacious anti-Trump material. People are primed for it and desperate to lap it up uncritically. It’s reminiscent of how an anti-Obama conspiracy underworld developed online, and a bunch of charlatans profited immensely from feeding a never-ending stream of ridiculous, bombastic stories into it — about Obama’s alleged communist sympathies, forged college records, stealth Jihadist affiliations, and related claptrap. The analog is developing around Trump, and the difference this time is far more reputable publications than World Net Daily will be indulging in it.

In addition to the salacious sex material, the “Report” made available in full by BuzzFeed alleges explicitly that Trump’s “operation” was “directed by” Putin, which would make Trump the textbook definition of a Manchurian Candidate — someone who is not just an unwitting stooge of a foreign power, or who by happenstance advances the interests of that power, but who is a direct agent of the power. If true, this could well be among the most blockbuster events in all U.S. history, potentially superseding 9/11, the JFK Assassination, and Pearl Harbor. It would mean that Trump is taking literal orders from a hostile foreign adversary intent on bringing down the U.S. government from within; again, not just that Trump’s agenda merely aligns with Putin, or that they have mutual goals, but that Trump is an actual agent of Putin. A puppet. Like in the most far-fetched, spy thriller movie sense.

That’s exactly what people are going to believe as a result of this report and the excerpts that have been selectively disseminated. Is it a false conclusion? Almost certainly. At the very least, it’s drastically unproven. But will the casual news consumer who sees titillating excerpts rocketing around the internet know it’s drastically unproven? Will they even care? Is this “fake news”? Is this… real life?

David Corn released what he breathlessly promoted as a big exciting EXCLUSIVE back on October 31, likely as a latch-ditch effort to dredge up some dirt on Trump before the election. The story was roundly mocked and scorned, and was obviously based on the flimsiest of information: Corn identified the source solely as a “former spy,” who we now know was the (still unnamed) corporate intelligence person funded by conservative anti-Trump groups during the GOP primary to compile oppo research.

Corn wanted you to believe that he had exclusive, insider info, but what he really had was a pile of wholly unsubstantiated hogwash that many other operatives and journalists had declined to promulgate because it was so on-its-face unreliable. Corn, however, took the bait. Correctly sensing that publishing a big scintillating story would result in lots of clicks for Mother Jones, he wrote up a summary which looked really damning when you just glanced at the headline or synopsis, but upon even cursory examination fell apart. Now he looks like a total dupe.

Are we really supposed to believe that the scores of anti-Trump journalists and operatives who were privy to this information declined to run with it prior to the election out of the goodness of their hearts? It would’ve been the story of a lifetime: the scoop that finally brought down Trump. The reason that no one ran with it was because it looked like obvious BS. And now this is being presented by the “Intelligence Community” — whose claims about “Russian Hacking” we’re all supposed to unreservedly trust — as credible? Really? What’s going on? I don’t know, but it’s getting worse. And it will keep getting worse.

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