When "Disinformation" Is Truth

Like so many other Democrat/liberal/neocon activists, Maddow not only ignores the evidentiary gaps in the Russia-did-it conspiracy theory but she seems oblivious to the dangers of her opportunism. By stirring up this McCarthyistic frenzy, she and her "never-Trump" allies make a rational policy toward nuclear-armed Russia nearly impossible. Thus, she is contributing to the real risk of a hot war with Russia that could lead to the annihilation of life on the planet.

Thin-Skinned Trump

One of the bitter ironies here is that Trump's critics correctly noted that his thin-skinned temperament made him unfit to possess the nuclear button, but they are now egging him into a mano-a-mano confrontation with Putin. If Trump doesn't get the better of Putin in every situation, Trump will face renewed pummeling for "selling out" to the Russians.

Already, neocon Sen. Lindsey Graham has declared, "2017 is going to be a year of kicking Russia in the ass in Congress." If Trump doesn't go along, he will face battering from the likes of Maddow, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and pretty much every mainstream news outlet. So, Trump may have no political choice but to get tough. But what happens when Putin pushes back?

In the past when I've made this point about the recklessness of Russia-bashing, I've been told that I'm being alarmist, that "kicking Russia in the ass" and baiting Trump to join in the kicking won't lead to a nuclear war, that the Russians aren't that stupid.

While on the upside of this anti-Russia strategy, the anti-Trump activists insist it is the most promising route to get rid of Trump, which they view as justifying almost any action. It's not for them to prove that Trump did conspire with Putin to rig the U.S. presidential election; it's enough to raise the suspicion and use it to push for Trump's impeachment.

As someone who has covered national security scandals since the 1980s, I am familiar with the kind of evidence that should be required for making serious allegations. For instance, when Brian Barger and I wrote the first story about Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking in 1985 for The Associated Press, we had about two dozen sources, plus documents. Most of the sources were insiders -- i.e., inside the Contra movement and inside the Reagan administration -- who described how the operation was run. We had this evidence before we made any public accusation.

In the case of the Russia-Trump conspiracy theory, the U.S. intelligence community has presented almost no evidence of Russian "hacking" and admits that it has no evidence of Trump's collusion with the Russians. As far as we know, there is no insider who has described how this alleged conspiracy occurred.

That is not to say that some evidence might not eventually surface that confirms the Russia-Trump suspicions, but that is true of all conspiracy theories. Who knows, maybe Joe McCarthy was right about all those Communists inside the U.S. government secretly working for the Kremlin? Maybe he did have a real list of names. But that is what "witch hunts" are all about -- investigations designed to prove a point whether true or not.

In this current case, however, the downside is not "just" the destruction of people's careers and a few imprisonments. The downside of playing chicken with nuclear-armed Russia is the end of life as we know it. At such a moment, journalists and politicians should demand the highest standards of proof, not no proof at all.

Sometimes, I envision the argument that I would hear as the mushroom clouds begin rising over U.S. and Russian cities. If not incinerated in the first moments of the cataclysm, the "smart" people of the mainstream U.S. media (and their liberal and neocon allies) would be insisting that it wasn't their fault; it was someone else's fault; blame-shifting to the end.

So, as the Democrats and liberals join with the neocons in launching this New McCarthyism over Russia -- and with people like Rachel Maddow leading the charge -- what is arguably the most depressing fact is that there appears to be no Edward R. Murrow, a mainstream journalist with a conscience, anywhere on the horizon.

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