The Anatomy Of An Anti-Clinton Lie

There is no big Trump conspiracy here, but the media is nonetheless helping Donald Trump by repeatedly lying to their readers in an effort to pin something, anything on Hillary Clinton.

Do they have it out for Clinton? Are they Trump shills? Probably not. There failings are far more human. They just got a bunch of juicy emails from Wikileaks, were promised that there was something there (October surprise!) and now need to deliver. The results are desperate.

Lets take a look at NBC investigative journalist Tom Winter’s latest stab at producing a Hillary scandal out of thin air.

He blasts out this pretty bombastic claim using his verified Twitter account — an NBC logo photoshopped into his headshot just to let people know he’s legit.

“Appear to show”

Sounds pretty damning. So damning, in fact, that Donald Trump — a man who consistently accuses NBC of being out to get him — tweeted it out to his millions of followers in victory.

Unbelievable is right. Because the claim Tom Winter made is ludicrous. The screenshot he pulled from the Wikileaks dump is one Clinton staffer, Brian Fallon, messaging another Clinton staffer, Huma Abedin, about the upcoming filing in Clinton’s DOJ investigation.

Only Winter, through arcane and mysterious ways of interpreting these tea leaves, managed to take that non-story and turn it into a “Clinton was coordinating with the DOJ” barn burner. Never is it mentioned that by Fallon that he obtained this information by some inside source as Winter suggests.

But don’t take my word for it. Just ask Tom Winter and his NBC logo. Minutes after giving Trump the ammunition he needed to preach to his choir, Winter tweeted two clarifications that undermine the salaciousness of the entire story.

But in those few minutes before he noted that his BIG SCANDAL BREAKING TKTK tweet was bullshit, Trump helped spread it and the tweet has thousands of “favorites” and “retweets.” The damage, as they say, is already done. It will undoubtedly be used endlessly as further proof of Clinton’s “corruption.” And it is based on one reporter being unethical in one tweet. That’s all it took.

And this is exactly the kind of crap that drives journalism into unpopularity levels approaching Vladimir Putin. Both Winter and Putin have a shaky grasp on the truth, but only Winter is supposedly paid to stick to it.