«The mainstream media has lost its credibility.»
President Trump left the White House on Saturday morning to travel to Dover Air Force Base to pay tribute to four fallen American heroes, the victims of a suicide bomb attack in Syria. He will be meeting with their families. As is his habit now, he stopped to answer questions from the press before boarding Marine One. He was asked about the Buzzfeed story and thanked Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel (OSC) for issuing a statement strongly pushing back on the credibility of the story.
‘It hurts me to say it but mainstream media has really hurt its credibility”, Trump said. He called the story – one that claimed President Trump instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a prospective business deal in Moscow a “total phony story” and a “disgrace to the country, to journalism. Media coverage was disgraceful.” Apparently, disgraceful is the word of the day. He’s not wrong.
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller.
A little less than 24 hours after Buzzfeed broke the story, Meuller’s office issued that statement. That alone is newsworthy because it is so rare for OSC, at least Mueller’s, to issue any statement at all. I’m guessing the need to issue the statement was due to the over the top coverage of the Buzzfeed story. With the exception of Fox News, all television networks seemed to take the story as the gospel and brought on politicians and pundits happy to declare that the highly anticipated impeachment of President Trump is on the horizon. The coverage was quite a sight to behold.
