Media weren't fooled by Schiff's Russia 'hoax,' they were an 'essential part of it,' says author Lee Smith
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff played “magician” by claiming there was Russian collusion without clear evidence, and the media helped push the narrative for three years, journalist and author Lee Smith argued on Tuesday.
“The press played magician’s assistant, helping Schiff obscure what was going on for three years,” the author of "The Plot Against President Trump" told “Fox & Friends.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Smith said it was "sad" that Schiff’s Russia collusion narrative was pushed so heavily by the media. He also said that while a lot of “very important press institutions hold the same name, they no longer serve the purpose they had over a decade ago.”
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“What they are now again. These are operations to help sustain Democratic policies and that’s exactly the point of collusion. If you were wondering why for three years Adam Schiff kept talking about collusion, hiding in plain sight, and the media never called him out. The main purpose of collusion was to play to block President Trump’s agenda,” Smith said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Smith's comments came after he wrote a New York Post op-ed "Adam Schiff lied about the Trump investigation — and the media let him," arguing that the media backed Schiff's Russia collusion narrative without concrete evidence.
"As the grand impresario of collusion, Schiff has filled print and broadcast media since January 2017 claiming that he has seen 'more than circumstantial evidence' of a Trump-Putin conspiracy. Obviously there was none in the transcripts, or he’d have pulled back the curtain years ago. But Schiff didn’t want to hand control of the narrative to one of Trump’s most effective deputies, so on Thursday they finally went live," he wrote, adding that the "tragic fact is that once-prestigious press organizations, including CNN as well as MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, weren’t fooled by the collusion hoax. They were an essential part of it."
Last week, the DOJ announced it had dismissed its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was accused of lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia. It was a stunning development that came after internal memos were released raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to Flynn’s late 2017 guilty plea of lying to the FBI.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Smith said that the media pushed the Russia collusion narrative to damage Trump's presidency from the outset.
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“At the very least, to obstruct and block [Trump’s] agenda since a lot of that agenda had to do with reversing the different initiatives that Barack Obama proposed. Things like the Iran deal, open borders, things like this," he said. "The purpose of the collusion narrative was to hold down the administration.”