Christian Schneider

We should all grant President-elect Donald Trump this point: Nobody is better at spotting a failing business than a guy who has steered four businesses into bankruptcy.

On Wednesday morning, Trump declared the website Buzzfeed "a failing piece of garbage" after its editors decided to run an unverified dossier of allegations believed to have originated with Russian agents. I cannot outline specifically what the lewd claims against Trump are, as I do not secretly work for Russian intelligence (or do I?), but let's just say that if your internet history contains a search for a specific fetish, you are in for a shock when pictures of a lumpy 70-year-old president-elect start appearing on your desktop.

The accusations against Trump thus far have not been verified, leading him to declare it "fake news" and wonder aloud whether we are living in "Nazi Germany." And Buzzfeed has likewise been excoriated by legitimate news outlets for publishing what appear to be bogus accusations.

This, of course, has not deterred Trump's critics from offering a steady stream of jokes at his expense. Yet if Twitter had existed in 1998, most of them certainly would have been fuming over the inappropriateness of Bill Clinton "cigar" jokes.

But here's the thing with Trump: Unlike other American presidents, any time there's a crazy accusation made against him — no matter how bizarre —you have to say to yourself, "Well…maybe."

Be honest. If word got out that Trump regularly hired hobos to come into his office to re-enact scenes from The Breakfast Club, you wouldn't immediately dismiss it as impossible. Would anyone be shocked if we found out Trump regularly flooded a floor of Trump Tower and filled it with dolphins for Ivanka to swim with as a child?

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But that's what America gets when it elevates an eccentric billionaire as its president. Trump has wrestled the nation's sense of shock into submission with every unpresidential utterance he has made over the past two years. When a nation elects a septuagenarian whom they've heard joke about molesting women, the Outrage-O-Meter is officially broken. And the GOP's acceptance of his intemperance has further normalized his nonsense.

By contrast, imagine if someone had accused George W. Bush or Barack Obama of secretly being agents for foreign governments. The idea would be rejected as absurd. Nobody would even believe it if Mitt Romney was exposed drinking a Diet Coke.

Yet for Trump, it seems nothing can be immediately ruled out. If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, Donald Trump will be the first chief executive covered in molasses.

Yet because such far-fetched accusations will likely stick to Trump, they'll keep coming. Especially if certain media outlets like Buzzfeed continue their policy of "We report, you investigate."

On Tuesday, the site released the full dossier, which multiple other news organizations had refused to publish without verification. The piece accompanying the dossier noted that it the "allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors." Earlier, Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith had sent a memo to his staff defending publishing the report, arguing "Americans can make up their own minds" about the allegations.

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But this isn't at all how reporting works. If you think reporters represent the public in the democratic process just as much as politicians do, it follows that journalists work for their readers, not the other way around. It's not up to news consumers to investigate the truthfulness of wild accusations — that job is up to reporters.

News organizations don't say to a mother, "Here are some rumors. Sometime between going grocery shopping and dropping your daughter off at ballet lessons, can you swing by the Kremlin and check their veracity?"

If merely transcribing lurid attacks is, as Smith believes, "the job of reporters in 2017," then this may be the beginning of a presidency with an unprecedented amount of turmoil. As long as news outlets who roundly condemned "fake news" before the election are forced to report about it after the election, Trump's angry press conferences will be must-see viewing.

That is, until Trump rejoins his clandestine race of mole people living several miles underground. (Trust me, I've heard some things.)

Christian Schneider is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow him on Twitter @schneider_cm

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