volunteering to help him execute one of his big lies . david in your article you write in part, the steele dossier undertook to answer the question what the hell is going on with trump and russia. it was to silence that question that the outgoing trump administration appointed a special counsel of its own to investigate its investigators. there are three indictments, all for lying to the fbi about various aspects of the steele dossier. none of these indictments vindicate s trump s claims in any way. it remains fact that russian hackers and spies helped his campaign. it remains fact that the trump campaign welcomed the help. it remains fact that trump and those around him lied and lied and lied again about their connections to russia. anti-trump journalists want to
use the steele controversy to score points off politicians and media institutions that they dislike, but if you choose as a journalist or a consumer of journalism to focus on smaller issues, you need to retain your perspective about what is bigger and what is smaller. so by all means, follow the trail on steele, be alert to how the twists of the trail block your view of the surrounding landscape. otherwise, you may discover too late that you have also been misdirected and misled, and that in setting out to explore a small truth you have become a participant in the selling of a greater lie, and that, joe, also seems like how democracy dies. david, it s fascinating that everybody that is a trump
apologist, the anti anti-trumpers are using the steele to sayier to inflate everything involving russia, saying it was all a hoax. this is coming from people i read regularly and respect, like andrew sullivan who is suggesting it s all a hoax and stupid people run around saying the words russian hoax, russian hoax, as if it completely obliterates everything donald trump and his campaign did during the 2016 campaign, which by the way, the republican intel committee took apart bit by bit, and considered it a threat to america. part of the sickness of what the country has been through in the trump years was his ability to change our mind about what was wrong. so there are people, and as you say many of them are people who have done stalwart work in exposing many of donald trump s other attacks on democracy. it s now been sort of normalized. of course the russians spied on
and lied again about their connections to russia. anti-anti-trump journalists want to use the steele controversy to score points of politicians and media institutions that they dislike, but if you choose, as a journalist or a consumer of journalism, to focus on smaller issues, you need to retain your perspective about what it is. so by all means, follow the trail on steele, be alert to how the twists of the trail block your view of the surrounding landscape, otherwise you may discover too late you have been misdirected and mislead and you have become a participant in the selling of a greater lie, and that, joe, also seems the like how democracy dies. well, david, it s fascinating
at the atlantic, david frum. his latest article is entitled, it wasn t a hoax. people with scant illusions about trump are volunteering to help execute one of his big lies. david, in your arts kl you write in part, the steele dossier undertook to answer the question, what the hell is going on with with trump and russia? it was to silence that question that the ongoing trump administration appointed a special counsel of its own to investigate its investigators. john durham has now looked at it. it remains fact that russian hackers and spies helped his campaign. it remains fact that the trump campaign welcomed the help. it remains fact that trump and those around him lied and lied