President Trump was set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, and the liberal media were in full campaign mode as they pushed speculation the President was a Russian agent meeting with his handler.

CNN’s Brian Stelter admitted as much during Sunday’s Reliable Sources, saying, “Trump opponents will speculate that he's really a Russian agent, having a meeting with his handler, betraying America.” While he did say that, Stelter also declared that no one could trust the President’s account of the meeting and gave those conspiracy theories room to grow.

Stelter kicked off the program by casting doubt over whether or not the President was trustworthy enough for us to believe his account of the one-on-one meeting Putin. “No aides, no note-takers. So, we'll never really know what is said because, really, can we trust either man? No. We can't,” he bitterly spat.

The CNN host bemoaned about how long-gone were the days of presidents who spoke only in truth and commanded power. “But not now. Not anymore,” he decried:

What President Trump says is so frequently false or nonsensical that his words don't have the same meaning, the same power, the same impact as past presidents. It's a shame but it's true. Trump simply cannot be trusted. He has proven this himself time and time again. It's his own lies and his own contradictions that have proven it.

Interestingly enough, if you swapped out the references to Trump and replaced them with references to the media, it still worked.

While Stelter proceeded to rail against the President and “Trump partisans who will proclaim him to be a strong leader, improving the U.S./Russia relationship” in the vacuum of trusted accounts, he leaned on those liberal conspiracy theorists to drive his message home.

First up was, CNN national security analyst Samantha Vinograd who asserted that Trump and Putin had a lot in common since they were both “propaganda machines”. “And Donald Trump has proven himself to be a tool, a Russian tool for spreading that misinformation and disinformation,” she declared. Stelter failed to mention she was a former Obama official, which meant her analysis was biased.

Appearing not at all bothered by the assertion and not one to miss a chance to attack Fox News, Stelter tried to slime Chris Wallace for being the one who managed to snag a Putin interview for the powerhouse network. “Exactly. He knows that Fox is the president's preferred outlet. And he knows how to play his asset. And Donald Trump, either wittingly or unwittingly, is an asset of the Russian government,” Vinograd agreed.

Stelter seized onto her accusation of Trump being a Russian spy asset and turned to fringe conspiracy theorist and New York magazine writer, Jonathan Chait to share his wild accusation that Trump had been helping Russia in the U.S. since the late 1980’s.

“Well, what I was trying to do in this story is to make the case that we've been behind the facts on the Russia story since the beginning,” he argued. “We keep catching up, we keep assuming the truth is just one or two steps ahead of us. And there's so much incriminating information. Much of it has been forgotten.” Chait appeared to hang his accusation on the claims of anti-Trump, former CIA-Director John Brennan. And he begged for people to believe him.

Clearly into the craziness, Stelter was fearful that “these conversations end up sounding like they’re conspiracy theories in the same way that, you know, I say Sean Hannity is engaging in that kind of behavior”.

Reliable Sources had become a place where media-televangelist Brian Stelter could sing the praises of the cult. It’s a place where hypocrisy could flourish. It’s a place where he could denounce the President for the lies he told while telling his own. Contrary to the network’s slogan, facts were not first there.

This is CNN.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: