Young turks Cenk Uygur Ana Kasparian
© TYTCenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian
By the time I hit the button to cancel my TYT membership last year, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian's Russiagate coverage could only be described as Rachel Maddow lite.

Uygur aggressively pushed the Trump-Russia narrative, bought into insane conspiracy theories, parroted nothing-burger "bombshells" from mainstream reporting, and just generally did his fair share to ramp up Russia paranoia for two years.

"He did a deal with the Russians!" Cenk bellowed in March 2017, all but promising his huge viewership that Trump would be dragged out of the White House by cops before the end of that year.

Fast-forward to 2019.

When the Mueller report came out, Uygur initially decided to distance himself from the worst of the Russiagate hysteria by repeatedly claiming that he had never really believed collusion happened during the election, but that he believed it had happened after the election. Whatever the means, it's a weird pivot, considering the entire thrust of the Russiagate media conspiracy was that Trump's campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin to help him win the election, but whatever.

I did harbor some vague hope that there'd be a mea culpa from Uygur post-Mueller report, but then he opened the show on March 26 (two days after the Barr letter was released) by telling viewers to stay tuned so that he could prove he was "right about everything" all along and we were back to square one.

Since then, instead of chilling out and letting the disproven collusion narrative die as it should have done a long time ago, Cenk somehow seems to have gotten worse. In fact, amazingly, his most Louise Mensch-level moments have come after the Mueller report.

I re-started my TYT membership a few months ago (because despite everything, I do like the hosts, the Post Game and Old School shows can be funny light entertainment, and TYT is genuinely progressive on many other issues) - so I've gotten used to just trying to tune out Cenk's Trump-Russia conspiracy theorizing - but I was genuinely blown away when I read the title of a video he put up on Sunday: 'Trump Again Proves He's a Puppet of Putin.'

What?

First of all, I'm thinking, there's no way Trump has proved this "again" since nothing he has done so far in his presidency comes remotely close to "proof" that he is controlled by anyone other than John Bolton and the bevy of other lunatic neocons he hired - because bloodthirsty psychopaths are obviously the best people to have around when you're (supposedly) trying to stay out of pointless wars.

Anyway, Uygur's so-called evidence that Trump is "taking orders" from Putin is a throwaway comment he made about Russia not wanting to "get involved" in the Venezuela crisis after a phone call. To Cenk, this amounts to "direct evidence that [Trump] is literally taking orders from Putin."


Or as I wrote on Twitter, it's just more proof that Trump only remembers whatever he was told by the last person he spoke to - something I've heard Uygur himself acknowledge before.

I mean holy shit Cenk, this is Luke Harding level delusional.


But it gets worse.

After a Washington Post report claiming that Trump has become frustrated with Bolton's militaristic ways (surprise!) - Cenk, in lock-step with the worst of the liberal Russiagaters, tries to spin this as Putin telling Trump to change his Venezuela policy and puppet Trump immediately complying. In a new video (Told Ya! Trump Changes Venezuela Policy After Putin Call!), he claims Trump has "reversed" his entire Venezuela strategy because of this one phone call with Putin.

This would be nuts enough in itself, but as Caitlin Johnstone noted here, Cenk appears not to have even properly read the WaPo article he is citing to prove this change in policy - because the article itself explicitly states that the administration's Venezuela strategy remains unchanged, Bolton will remain in the job (he'll come in handy for regime change in Iran), and the Pentagon is actively exploring military options - any one of which would clearly intensify the situation.

Indeed, what a great win for Putin!

If you watch TYT often, as I do, you'll notice that Uygur always peppers his theories about Trump being "controlled" by Putin with weird offerings to the Russiagate skeptic side of the debate. It's almost like he doesn't want to be a complete outcast in the eyes of truly anti-establishment journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté and wants to keep his fingers in both pies, just in case.

So, when he says Trump's phone call with Putin is "evidence" for his favoured collusion narrative, he will then admit, for example, that Trump's Iran policy is counter to Russian interests and accept this as 'good evidence for the other side' - as though we should all be grateful that he's not quite as bad as Rachel Maddow.

Maybe he's trying to maintain TYT's image as more reasonable than mainstream media - and the effort to concede points to the other side does come off as sincere - to me, anyway. But that doesn't make his theories any less ridiculous or his arguments any less weak.

While prominent Russiagate skeptics (like Greenwald, Maté and former TYT employees Michael Tracey and Jimmy Dore), could consistently point to a slew of real-world Trump administration policies that have been entirely antithetical to Russian interests and geopolitical strategy, Uygur relies on scraps and extremely feeble non-evidence to prove and promote this cartoonish narrative that Trump is beholden to the Russian baddies.

If Cenk was your average, run of the mill pro-establishment host in the style of Maddow, this wouldn't be so jarring, but he's genuinely not quite that stupid and certainly no fan of the Democratic Party, so his massive Russiagate blindspot is really baffling.


Look, I wrote in a piece for Salon two years ago that I believed Trump was "too clueless, childish, thin-skinned and erratic to be part of an international conspiracy with the Russians. The chances are close to zero that he wouldn't have tweeted about it by now."

I stood by that the entire time because it's the most obvious fact in the world to me that Trump isn't remotely intelligent, trustworthy or loyal enough to be part of such an elaborate plot.

I also wrote, however, that those same qualities, "his overt childishness and erratic behavior, seem to lead him to say things that make him sound guiltier than he actually is."

Take the James Comey ordeal. When TYT (along with MSNBC, CNN etc.) was blathering on about Trump firing former FBI director James Comey partly over "this Russia thing" and using Trump's total and utter incompetence as proof that he was running an international conspiracy with Putin, plenty of other people, myself included, were calling bullshit.

Cenk as much as admitted this himself post-Mueller report, when he said of the Comey firing comments: "I guess a case could be made that [Trump] is so low IQ that he said that [about Comey] even though" it would look like obstruction of justice.

Yes, Cenk! Because, as you tell us non-stop, Trump is not a very intelligent man. He says stupid shit that gets him into trouble all the time - and no, it's not all because he's just cleverly playing to his base. Even while he was being investigated for alleged collusion with Russia, he still couldn't put two and two together to stop himself from word-vomiting nonsense that makes him sound guilty of things he hasn't even done.

So, please stop, Cenk. You're just embarrassing yourself.
Danielle Ryan is an independent journalist, columnist and media analyst.