In his column, Ignatius did raise the possibility that “the Trump team’s contacts helped discourage the Russians from a counter-retaliation” and therefore Flynn’s phone conversations might have been helpful—as indeed they were. Ignatius also noted the possibility that the dossier material included Russian disinformation—apparently without realizing the FBI had found evidence to that effect and would keep it hidden for years.
In an update to his column, Ignatius wrote that a Trump transition team official “confirmed that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak by phone, but said the calls were before sanctions were announced and didn’t cover that topic.”34 Just as Strzok planned to use the CNN report as a “pretext,” Strzok and his FBI colleagues would also use the Ignatius column to attempt to prosecute Flynn for the phone conversations that were illegally leaked.
The unfounded theory that Trump and his associates had betrayed the country animated media coverage for years, yet when Trump responded angrily—as anyone might—his reaction was portrayed as an ominous sign of potential authoritarianism or, more charitably, as an oafish reaction by a rookie politician who didn’t understand that you don’t mess with the press. A New York Times story by Glenn Thrush and Michael Grynbaum in February of 2018 said that Trump “has stumbled into the most conventional of Washington traps: believing he can master an entrenched political press corps with far deeper connections to the permanent government of federal law enforcement and executive department officials than he has.”35
Didn’t he know that the duly elected president is no match for the unelected Washington establishment? The Timesmen added that Trump “is being force-fed lessons all presidents eventually learn—that the iron triangle of the Washington press corps, West Wing staff, and federal bureaucracy is simply too powerful to bully.”36
The story also noted he was against the Washington practice of anonymous media attacks: “I’m against the people that make up stories and make up sources,” Mr. Trump said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there. Let their name be put out.”37
Trump was also excoriated for describing purveyors of false information as “enemies of the people.” News reports in the Times and elsewhere compared his use of the term to its use by murderous dictators like Stalin and Mao.38 We, too, oppose Trump’s use of the term. It also should be noted that many media outlets were busy falsely painting him as an enemy of the people.
It’s also clear that Trump was never really any threat to a free press, which has thrived as it has gleefully attacked him. CNN continued flogging the collusion story and found it was good for business. Network president Jeffrey A. Zucker said in 2017 that his employees wear insults from the president “as a badge of honor.” According to a New York Times report, “Once the down-the-middle nerd of the cable news playground, CNN—under the guidance of Mr. Zucker, a former sports and morning show producer with a yen for flood-the-zone programming—is now an elbows-out player in national politics.…”39
The “elbows-out” coverage would include a series of programs hosted by a non-doctor named Brian Stelter who would host panels of other non-doctors to issue long-distance diagnoses of the president’s mental health. It was as if CNN were trying to confirm the accuracy of Trump’s attacks on “fake news.”
But the collusion story continued to dominate publicly, even as FBI officials kept confidential the fact that the case had fallen apart. Throughout the early months of his presidency, Trump would grow increasingly frustrated that government officials like Comey had found no evidence of collusion but refused to say so in public. The president hosted Comey for dinner at the White House on January 28, 2017. Comey recounted the event in a memo the next day. According to the Justice Department’s inspector general:
A portion of [the memo written by Comey] summarizes a discussion between Trump and Comey concerning the “salacious” material and Trump’s wondering whether “he should ask [Comey] to investigate the whole thing to prove it was a lie.” According to [Comey’s memo], Comey replied that the decision about whether to initiate an investigation was up to Trump, but that Comey said he “wouldn’t want to create a narrative that [the FBI was] investigating him, because [the FBI was] not, and [Comey] worried such a thing would be misconstrued.”40
The truth was that the FBI had been investigating Trump, and while one can never prove a negative, the bureau already had plenty of material to conclude there were falsehoods in the dossier, some of them likely manufactured by Russian intelligence services in order to smear Trump. Comey was presenting himself as worried about a potential scenario that he had already created. His unfounded investigation was indeed being misconstrued by the press in order to suggest Trump was in league with the Russians.
“Already, Trump has flirted with treason,” declared Timothy Egan of the New York Times shortly before Trump took office.41 By July of that year Times columnist Maureen Dowd seems to have concluded that the Trump administration had gone fully medieval:
Wicked siblings willing to do anything for power. Secret deals with sworn enemies. The shock of a dead body. A Wall. Foreign bawds, guns for hire, and snakes. Back-stabbing, betrayal and charges of treason. Little birds spying and tattling. A maniacal mad king and his court of scheming, self-absorbed princesses and princelings, swathed in the finest silk and the most brazen immorality, ruling with total disregard for the good of their people.
The night in Washington is dark and full of terrors. The Game of Trump has brought a pagan lawlessness never before seen in the capital.42
Some readers were gratified to see a Times columnist go on record against pagan lawlessness, but the talk of treason continued. “When the President Isn’t a Patriot,” read one 2017 Times headline. The story now appears online under the headline: “Odds Are, Russia Owns Trump.”43 “The Real Coup Plot Is Trump’s” was another
