The indictments did not include any members of Trump's campaign team for "colluding" with the alleged Russian hacking effort, which has been a core allegation throughout the two years of the so-called Russia-gate scandal. Those allegations are routinely reported in U.S. media as established fact, though there is still no evidence of collusion.
Trump emphasised that point in the press conference. "There was no collusion at all," he said forcefully. "Everybody knows it."
On this point corporate media has been more deluded than normal as they clutch for straws to prove the collusion theory. As one example of many across the media with the same theme, a New York Times story on Friday, headlined, "Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton. Were They Listening?" said Russia may have absurdly responded to Trump's call at 10:30 a.m. on July 27, 2016 to hack Clinton's private email server because it was "on or about" that day that Russia allegedly first made an attempt to hack Clinton's personal emails, according to the indictment, which makes no connection between the two events.
If Russia is indeed guilty of remotely hacking the emails it would have had no evident need of assistance from anyone on the Trump team, let alone a public call from Trump on national TV to commence the operation.
More importantly, as Twitter handle "Representative Press" pointed out: "Trump's July 27, 2016 call to find the missing 30,000 emails could not be a 'call to hack Clinton's server' because at that point it was no longer online. Long before Trump's statement, Clinton had already turned over her email server to the U.S. Department of Justice." Either the indictment was talking about different servers or it is being intentionally misleading when it says "on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office."
This crucial fact alone, that Clinton had turned over the server in 2015 so that no hack was possible, makes it impossible that Trump's TV call could be seen as collusion. Only a desperate person would see it otherwise.
But there is a simple explanation why establishment journalists are in unison in their dominant Russian narrative: it is career suicide to question it.
As Samuel Johnson said as far back as 1745: "The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion ...since vanity and credulity cooperate in its favour."
Importance of US-Russia Relations
Trump said the unproven allegation of collusion "has had a negative impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. We have 90 percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous what's going on with the probe."
The American president said the U.S. has been "foolish" not to attempt dialogue with Russia before, to cooperate on a range of issues.
"As president, I cannot make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics or the media or Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct," Trump said. "Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world. I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics."
This main reason for summits between Russian and American leaders was also ignored: to use diplomacy to reduce dangerous tensions. "I really think the world wants to see us get along," Trump said. "We are the two great nuclear powers. We have 90 percent of the nuclear. And that's not a good thing, it's a bad thing."
Preventing good relations between the two countries appears to be the heart of the matter for U.S. intelligence and their media assets. So Trump was vilified for even trying.
Ignoring the Rest of the Story
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