Chuck Todd of NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ Blames Russia for ‘Fake News’

Chuck Todd used his Meet the Press program Sunday on NBC to attack “fake news” — and blamed Russian disinformation, rather than shoddy journalism, for convincing Americans not to trust the mainstream media.

His show, featuring guests whom he described “top players in journalism, diplomacy and technology,” claimed that “Russian tactics” of “truth manipulation” have migrated right here to the United States.”

Todd’s primary culprit: the Trump administration, which he noted on day one pushed “an easily disprovable lie about his inaugural crowd size.”

He ignored the other “day one” lie: that Trump was colluding with Russia, a lie the media pushed relentlessly.

Todd’s first guest was New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, who admitted earlier this year that his newsroom had been built around the Russia story for two years.

Todd did not ask Banquet about that: instead, he asked Baquet about whether “the truth itself is on trial,” an idea with which Baquet enthusiastically agreed.

Vindman’s call to release Trump–MBS transcript reopens old questions in US–Saudi relationship

Heavily redacted voting records for school superintendent nabbed by ICE spark outrage

Hundreds of Christians Abducted in Largest Mass Kidnapping in Nigerian History Amid Country’s Anti-Christian Slaughter

Trans Cult Leader’s Attorney Scolds DOJ for Misgendering Him

Trump caps week of surprises — signing release of Epstein files, embracing unlikely allies at White House

Former Missouri substitute teacher gets 10 years for trading students money, drugs for sex

Trump, Kirk shootings expose online hate breeding lone-wolf assassins, experts warn

Trump administration expands efforts to stop Christian violence in Nigeria with aid threat

Watch Fox News’ Martha MacCallum Grill Dem Who Told Military to Defy Trump

Five Billion Dollars Off: California Officials Admit They Botched Deficit Estimate By Billions

Trump says Dems who told military to defy illegal orders committed ‘sedition at the highest level’

Texas National Guard to return from Illinois ahead of Thanksgiving, Gov Abbott says

Texas A&M committee finds professor’s firing over transgender-related lesson unjustified

Man fatally shot, woman and children in critical condition after Arizona shootout

President says Chicagoans are ‘chanting bring in Trump’ after violent downtown riot leaves 8 shot, 1 dead

Next, Todd turned to Martin Baron, the executive editor of the Washington Post — another paper that pushed the Russia collusion hoax, and which also led the way in trying to debunk Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)’s effort, recently vindicated, to expose the truth about the FBI’s abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts.

Baron complained: “We live in an environment where people are able to spread crazy conspiracy theories and absolute falsehoods and lies.” He blamed social media — not the conspiracy theories validated by his own paper.

Baron also griped that Americans had become “numb” to the supposedly “15,000 false or misleading claims” by the president that his paper has been tracking. Not only are many of those supposedly false “claims” actually true, or defensible differences of opinion, but the Post is seemingly numb to the major anti-Trump lies it has pushed.

Todd asked Baquet if journalists would have to “market” the idea that they are there to tell the truth — in the course of continuing to push the idea that Russian propaganda, not media malpractice, is to blame to public mistrust.

Baquet said that he and Baron needed to continue “very aggressively defending our institutions, defending the truth and defending our important role in democracy.”

Again, no mention of the corrosive effect that the Russia hoax has had on our democracy — or the role that the media has played in the ongoing impeachment debacle over Ukraine, including the Post‘s own misreporting of leaked testimony from closed-door hearings in the House Intelligence Committee.

Todd would not admit that the media’s leading institutions had failed by their own standards — only that they might be “culturally” out of touch with the rest of America.