Ed Schultz and Max Blumenthal on how "egregious" it is that the media uses any "morsel" of information to "get Trump."



"Brian Ross, from ABC News, there just seems to be a culture in the media -- 'we've got to get Trump.' Any morsel of information that is out there, it's almost like it's freehand, we can go ahead and go with this. How egregious do you think this is?" Russia Today host Ed Schultz asked.



"Across the board we're seeing falsehood after falsehood appear in mainstream media and never, very rarely, get corrected. So this goes well beyond Brian Ross to an entire culture that is desperate for the hail mary pass to validate a Russiagate narrative that's consistently proven to be shabbier and shabbier with each step of the Mueller investigation," Blumenthal said Monday.













ED SCHULTZ: Brian Ross, from ABC News, there just seems to be a culture in the media -- 'we've got to get Trump.' Any morsel of information that is out there, it's almost like it's freehand, we can go ahead and go with this. How egregious do you think this is?



MAX BLUMENTHAL: Yeah, that's the right language to use. This is about a broader culture that goes well beyond Brian Ross. Brian Ross does have a record of blundering. But the record of blundering by the Washington press corps on Russiangate is much more extensive so it's ironic for me to see the Washington Post media critic accuse ABC of cowardice for merely clarifying Brian Ross' error instead of correcting it when the Washington Post has made so many errors from Russia hacking Vermont's electric grid to the supposed Russian hacking of 21 states' electoral systems which has been absolutely discredited in testimony by the Department of Homeland Security.



Across the board we're seeing falsehood after falsehood appear in mainstream media and never, very rarely, get corrected. So this goes well beyond Brian Ross to an entire culture that is desperate for the hail mary pass to validate a Russiagate narrative that's consistently proven to be shabbier and shabbier with each step of the Mueller investigation.



SCHULTZ: Ironically this underscores that General Flynn had no contact with the Russians before the election. Does it not? If he's so quick to report that that's not what we reported... and Trump didn't send him to talk to [Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak] before the election. I mean I think this is going down a path right now that someone out there could ask, where is the where there? Where is the crime there? Okay, he talked to people from another country which is not out of the norm in a transition.



BLUMENTHAL: Mike Flynn has been indicted for acts that the FBI has apparently known about since at least January. So there's nothing new here, that's number one. Number two, I don't know why he had to lie about activity that appears to be completely legal and in keeping with the diplomatic protocol of every administration. He was simply to Russia, number one, about cooperating in defeating ISIS and al Qaeda and activity that has really produced positive results on the ground in Syria through deconfliction zones, refugees are coming back. And the atmosphere in Washington, the anti-Russian atmosphere, has really stifled U.S. diplomacy on this point and left the U.S. as a passive bystander while Turkey, Iran, and Russia basically clean up the mess the West and its Gulf allies helped to create in Syria.



The second point in which the collusion narrative completely falls apart on the Flynn indictment is in the fact that Flynn was contacting Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., to lobby Kislyak not to take countermeasures against the U.S. for sanctions the U.S. imposed on Russia. So, basically, he was asking Russia for something, not the other way around. Russia was asking for nothing from the Trump administration. And these sanctions were imposed because of unproven allegations that Russia hacked the DNC. So none of the collusion narrative has been proven here.