
Fox News and the right wing have been doing their best to distract the public from the reality of the Russia investigation. But a GOP strategist didn't hold back from calling one of them out for their "total misdirection."

As the nation awaits details of the first indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, Donald Trump's personal propaganda network has been doing everything it can to try to change the subject.

Particularly, Fox News has repeatedly insisted that the "real Russia" story is not that Trump and multiple members of his campaign likely colluded with the foreign adversary to influence our election and secure Trump's Electoral College victory — but rather the fact that the "dossier" put together on Trump by a former British intelligence agent was partially funded by someone from Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC.

Brian Kilmeade, one of the hosts on Fox and Friends, was on ABC's This Week Sunday morning to continue to push that distraction, bringing up Clinton campaign manager John Podesta to insist that there's no way Podesta could not have known about the money being spent on the dossier even while Clinton lawyer Marc Elias was acknowledging it.


"So, you're the lawyer sitting next a client who's pretending he doesn't know?" Kilmeade bleated. "That's unbelievable!"

But GOP strategist Matthew Dowd — who noted that he is not exactly a Clinton fan — was having none of it.

"We need to give up the David Copperfield or Harry Houdini award for misdirection in this thing," Dowd said.

He noted the similarity to the Obama-era Uranium One deal, made while Clinton was secretary of state, and which the right wing has insisted, erroneously, was a major scandal because it involved people who had made large donations to the Clinton Foundation. Dowd noted that story has been "debunked all along the way."

"There is no similarity between what Robert Mueller's investigation on collusion and what the Russians wanted to do, and a dossier paid for in part by the Democrats," he declared.

"But Matt, why would you think that?" Kilmeade asked plaintively.

Dowd wasn't swayed by Kilmeade's incredulity, though, and pointed out the utter inanity involved in the right wing argument.

"Every single intelligence agency said: not only did the Russians interfere in our election — they were interfering on behalf, to get Donald Trump elected and Hillary Clinton defeated," Dowd stated.

"The argument that has to made on the dossier is that somehow Hillary Clinton and the Democrats contributed to her own defeat by what the Russians wanted by doing that," he added.

Kilmeade, like the good Fox shill that he is, wasn't ready to let it go, sarcastically telling Dowd that he's sorry if he's "frustrated."

"I'm not frustrated! The truth is important, Brian," Dowd declared.

It's no surprise that Fox personalities don't, in fact, care about the truth — especially when their "alternative facts" on the story allow them to continue to attack Clinton and to ignore the reality of their corruption-heavy president.

Even a Republican strategist can see through the lies and misdirection that Fox and others on the right are continually pushing.

And more importantly, so does Robert Mueller.