It was obvious before, but now there’s no doubt that the national media never cared about Russia “collusion” and that their breathless coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller is purely about taking an axe to President Trump.

Immediately following the convictions Tuesday of Paul Manafort, who served as one of Trump’s 2016 campaign managers, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, the media declared it a “win” for Mueller’s limitless probe.

The “win” amounts to multiple convictions of tax evasion and bank fraud by Manafort and a plea deal on the same things for Cohen, who also, supposedly most consequentially, claimed in his deal that Trump told him to pay off women to stay silent about their alleged affairs with him, a would-be violation of campaign finance laws.

None of it has to do with “collusion” or Russia, but it’s a win for the investigation that’s supposed to be looking at ... collusion and Russia.

“Everything that happened in a pair of courtrooms hundreds of miles apart strengthened the hand of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and weakened that of the president of the United States,” wrote Washington Post politics reporter Dan Balz.

CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers said Wednesday that the convictions are, “Definitely a win for team Mueller and not team Trump.”

The New York Times editorial board reacted to the convictions with a self-assured proclamation that “only a complete fantasist … could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a ‘hoax’ or ‘scam’ or ‘rigged witch hunt.’”

What about a “bait and switch”?

The New York Times in its own editorial inadvertently admitted that’s what the Mueller probe has so far turned out to be.

This “investigation of foreign subversion of an American election” has turned up the payoff of porn actresses (by an American) and tax evasion that has taken place for years, well before the election (also by an American).

When do those nefarious Russian emojis come into play? Or, as we were previously bored at length to care about, the emails?

Most of the media are willing to admit that the Manafort convictions have nothing to do with Trump or the election so they’re hanging their hopes on Cohen’s claim that he acted on behalf of Trump to hush up the Playmate Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels about the alleged affairs.

Point No. 1: If Trump violated campaign rules, he deserves a big welcome to the fun club of people who have been accused or convicted of doing the same, including Rosie O’Donnell, Dinesh D’Souza, former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., and former Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards was using donor money to hide a mistress (who eventually had his child) while his wife was battling cancer.

Jackson Jr. was using campaign funds to buy a bunch of celebrity memorabilia.

Trump? He’s accused of using his own money to reimburse Cohen for the money paid to Daniels and McDougal right before the 2016 election, which he may or may not have been required to publicly disclose.

And as Trump tweeted Wednesday, even former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for violating convoluted campaign rules.

Point No. 2: As the liberal Atlantic magazine pointed out in July, “The question for legal purposes is whether Trump would have made [these payments] even if he had not been a candidate.”

McDougal’s own public comments suggest it’s likely Trump would have done so, regardless of whether he had been running for president.

In February, the New Yorker published a note by McDougal, the veracity of which she confirmed, and in which she described her supposed relationship with Trump.

“Over the course of the affair, Trump flew McDougal to public events across the country but hid the fact that he paid for her travel,” wrote Ronan Farrow, who authored the New Yorker piece.

Farrow added, “McDougal describes their affair as entirely consensual. But her account provides a detailed look at how Trump and his allies used clandestine hotel-room meetings, payoffs, and complex legal agreements to keep affairs—sometimes multiple affairs he carried out simultaneously—out of the press.”

“No paper trails for him,” McDougal said of Trump in her note. “In fact, every time I flew to meet him, I booked/paid for flight + hotel + he reimbursed me.”’

So ahead of the election, Trump allegedly tried to hide an affair, just as he apparently would have tried to do more than a decade ago (and, as the New Yorker story suggests, in all the years since).

Media: Yup, put a W up on the board for Mueller’s Russia investigation; that one counts!

CNN and MSNBC are naturally eager to book Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, to do little teases about what Cohen knows about Russia and what he’s ready to tell Robert Mueller.

“Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel, and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows,” Davis said Tuesday on Rachel Maddow’s show. “Not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election … but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.”

If Cohen has anything of value, maybe Davis should be discussing that directly with Mueller and not on TV?

But that’s not the way the media and the anti-Trump lawyers are working.

In late March, Michael Avenatti, the TV celebrity who presumably still practices law and is still representing Stormy Daniels, tweeted a photo of a disc with the cryptic suggestion that it contained information about Trump.

Nothing came of that tape. But a lot more of Avenatti’s balding head ended up on your TV and now he’s pretending to run for president.

The convictions of Manafort and Cohen are only a “win” for Mueller if you’re no longer pretending to care about the Russia collusion thing that he’s supposed to be looking for.

Now we know that the media aren’t.