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.

Fulton Sheen became a TV sensation preaching faith, morality and warnings Michael Knowles says still resonate

WATCH: Former Dem Lt Gov reveals why he resigned after sexual harassment probe rocked state

Breaking: SCOTUS Strikes Down GOP-Favored Map Revived Just 4 Days Ago

For This Dem Judge, a Gay Man’s Life Is Only Worth $765 and 30 Days in Jail When It’s Taken by a Black Woman

Woman Has Part of Her Face Bitten Off in Random ‘Zombie Bite’ Attack

Florida GOP nominee blasts 20-year Dem incumbent as a ‘socialist’ rubber-stamp with ‘precious little to show’

Pope Leo Issues Apocalyptic Warning About AI Creating a ‘Paradise of Machines’

WATCH: DHS issues stark warning after 300 ‘hostile’ cartel drones detected at southern border

Erika Kirk sounds off after long-awaited university report on husband’s assassination

Federal illegal voting arrest becomes latest flashpoint in Sherrill’s battles with Trump administration

BREAKING: Trump Handed Huge Election Win as Supreme Court Allows Voter Verification Database to Stand

Reporter’s Notebook: Democrats face an impeachment tractor beam that could derail their affordability message

Trump Gets China’s Xi Jinping to Belly Laugh While Showing Him Biden White House ‘Autopen’ Photo

Trump and Xi compare histories during National Archives visit

Xi assured Trump he would cease aid to Iran, US ambassador to China claims

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.