© Alexey Druzhinin/AFP via Getty Images
Then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (L) and then-US Vice President Joe Biden (2nd R) meet on March 10, 2011. Putin on March 10 proposed to Biden that Russia and the United States abolish visas in a "historic" step to seal a revival in ties.
That the Kremlin had taken over American political institutions through its blackmail control of former President Donald Trump was a media conspiracy theory as pervasive as it was deranged. This once-exciting script was excavated from the CIA's Cold War basement, dusted off by their operatives, and then kicked off by the intelligence community's purposeful dissemination of the now-debunked
Steele Dossier. And once this fairy tale was launched, there were seemingly no limits on the depths to which media figures would sink to
promote it.
Journalists published best-selling books and column after column hyping this melodrama of international intrigue. In what was just one of many low points,
MSNBC's host Chris Hayes earnestly
interviewed New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait about the latter's 2018
cover story speculating that Trump may have been groomed as a Russian intelligence asset since 1987. "Unlikely but possible" declared the on-screen cable graphic as Hayes spoke, summarizing the media's Trump-era renunciation of all standards of rationality and evidence for disseminating unhinged conspiracies to their audience, at great profit for themselves but great harm to everything and everyone else.
Comment: Bought and paid for? Penzone surely has motive to sidestep this investigation if his own election has elements related to sources of funding he would rather not reveal.