Matt Taibbi and Aaron Maté on How Russiagate Helped Trump
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow chases the "Russiagate" story in a January
broadcast. (YouTube)
The claim that President Trump engaged in collusion with Russia to win the
2016 presidential election was so pervasive and unquestioned that only a
handful of journalists demonstrated the healthy skepticism required by their
profession. Last week, special counsel Robert Mueller delivered his report
on the Trump-Russia investigation to the Justice Department, which then
released a four-page summary written by Attorney General William Barr. While
the full report is over 300 pages, and Mueller punted on the question of
obstruction, he found no evidence of collusion. Despite this, the
Russiagate truthers, if you will, are doubling down on the Russiagate
narrative, moving the goalposts to focus on the possibility of obstruction
of justice and conveniently ignoring that the collusion that was so central
to their theory has not been established.
A sad irony is that the Russiagate narrative, which so many people clung to
in an attempt to bring down Trump, only helped him. Actual occurrences that
could have undermined Trumps authority and damaged his reputation were
ignored as much of the media and political class focused almost exclusively
on a literal conspiracy theory that does not resonate with the voter base
that stayed home on Election Day or the Obama-to-Trump voters. Surely, Trump
has done awful things, coverage of which could get out the vote and
galvanize opposition. But the Russiagate obsession perpetuated Trumps
narrative about being picked-on by a media that peddles fake news and a
political elite that represents the status quo. Trump was able to come off,
once again, as the outsider who takes on the establishment, which in turn
persecutes him. And now that the Mueller report has said he didnt collude
with Russia, hes celebrating.
In a recent episode of my podcast, I spoke with two journalists who pushed
back on the Russiagate narrative: Aaron Maté, contributor to The Nation and
former host and producer for The Real News and Democracy Now!, and Matt
Taibbi, the award-winning Rolling Stone journalist and author of four New
York Times best-sellers. They weighed in on the way Russiagate benefited
Trump, undermined journalistic integrity and thwarted a real resistance.
Editors note: A transcript, lightly edited for clarity, follows the podcast
player embedded below.
Katie Halper: Congratulations, by the way, to both of you, on your
skepticism.
Matt Taibbi: Well, this is going to continue for years and years and years,
so its a little early to be doing a touchdown spike, I think.
Aaron Maté: The only actual victory here is Trumps. Because, as weve been
warning for two years, focusing on this conspiracy theory was only setting
up the resistance for failure, because the evidence wasnt there. And
eventually the facts had to come out. Mueller just did that with his
verdict, and now, of course, Trump is understandably, and as we predicted,
using this for his re-election campaign. So the only possible victory here
for politics and journalism is if theres accountability: on the journalism
front, if we learn how to follow the facts, not a narrative that benefits
ratings and gets us clicks; and in politics, it would be to actually learn
to start becoming a real resistance, mounting opposition to Trump based on
opposing his policies, not based on believing in this fairy tale.
KH: Where are we right now in the Russiagate investigation?
AM: Where we are is that the conspiracy theory has collapsed. For two years,
the dominant narrative has been that Trump is in cahoots with Russia,
engaged in a conspiracy with them, is compromised by them, and that Robert
Mueller was going to uncover it. He was going to uncover the smoking gun.
And Robert Mueller has just rendered his verdict, and he didnt. He found no
evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Thats no surprise to those of us who
looked at the available evidence, which is what journalism is supposed to
do. You go based not on where your imagination takes you but what the actual
facts tell you. And the facts from the beginning told us a very clear story:
that the case for this Trump-Russia collusion theory was just not there.
KH: What were your predictions about what happens next?
AM: This result was not a surprise at all, based on the available facts and
just the plausibility of the underlying theory to begin withthat this
reality-TV show host who didnt even look like he thought he was going to
win [the 2016 presidential election] engaged in a conspiracy with Russia or
that he was compromised by Russia. It just wasnt there. It didnt make
sense as an idea, and it didnt make sense based on the facts we knew. So my
prediction was always that there would be zero indictments for the claims of
a Trump-Russia conspiracy but that Mueller might throw those who were
hanging onto that idea a bone, especially because there was so much put on
his shoulders. He was turned into such a revered thing. And he does come
from the D.C. establishment, who does resent Trump, not for the reasons you
and I do, and listeners might, based on his actual harmful policies, but
because they think hes a crude representative of the establishment.
KH: Given that Mueller found no evidence of collusion, can we still even
revere him? Can we still even believe that he wears Brooks Brothers suits?
AM: That was part of the PR campaign to revere Mueller and paint him as this
saintly figure and talk about what clothes he wears and his background. And
that was at a time when everybody thought he was going to deliver a verdict
that Trump had committed treason. Now that Mueller has delivered the
opposite verdict, now that hes not being glorified in this way, theres
even an article in The New York Times saying that some Democrats are
reconsidering their act of putting him on a pedestal.
But my prediction was Mueller would throw them a bone. And I thinkthis is
my theory herethat thats what Muellers decision was when it comes to
obstruction, because he didnt make a decision on that. He basically left it
open, which then leaves it open to speculation. Its strange for a
prosecutor to defer like this after a two-year investigation. I think that
punting on obstruction was Muellers way of leaving something open that
people could hang on to while still not giving them anything. Because, of
course, if Mueller actually thought that Trump had committed obstruction, he
could have alleged it.
KH: Some people think that if you question the Russiagate narrative, youre
somehow helping Trump or are trying to cover for Trump or to downplay how
destructive he is.
MT: In March 2017, I wrote an article saying this story is a minefield for
the Democratic Party and particularly for journalists, because Trump had
made it such an important part of his message that journalists were out to
get him, that they were representatives of the elite who would stop at
nothing to undermine this presidency. And to me it seemed the only way we
could possibly lose with the public in a contest with someone like Trump is
if we completely abdicated the standards of the profession and did what he
accused us of doing, which would be politicizing our jobs and using
trumped-up evidence to try to make him look bad. That was the one option out
of an infinite number of ways we could have pursued covering his presidency.
That was the one thing that could have really helped him. And we did it. Not
only did we do it, but we did it, basically, to the exclusion of everything
else, for years.
KH: What were some of the important stories the public was deprived of?
AM: Literally everything. I remember watching Rachel Maddow the day that
Congress had taken a huge step forward toward taking away the health
insurance of millions of Americans. I think she gave it around 30 seconds
and then moved onto some element of the conspiracy theory that ended up
being debunked. MNSBC didnt mention Yemen for I think about a year.
KH: Where in Russia is Yemen?
AM: At a time when the U.S. was taking part in a genocide and killing tens
of thousands of people through the Saudi bombing campaign and the famine
that that campaign was causing. And one of the most crucial things it
ignored was the serious escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Russia
that Trump was overseeing through carrying out policies that were far more
hawkish than Obama, which we havent focused on, partly because theyre
supported by the bipartisan foreign consensus in Washington, which the media
generally goes along with, but also because to acknowledge those policies,
to look at them seriously, would undercut this idea that everybody bought
into that Trump was doing Putins bidding.
MT: There was a very telling story for me. Every year the Pentagon is
responsible, under each years National Defense Authorization, to submit a
memo thats usually not made public on which countries we have active combat
operations in. And I believe it was in early 2017 that they released one
that said we had active operations in seven countries. So I did a little
story basically saying, hey does anybody notice were at war in Niger and
Somalia and Yemen and Syria and Afghanistan? Just the idea that weve
started new military campaigns, and that this can fly completely under the
radar with the public because of the Russiagate story, just speaks to the
enormity of the story and how much oxygen it took up. It took up everything.
We didnt have time for anything else.
KH: There was a lot of goading and mocking of Trump by Democrats who claimed
he was in bed with Putin politically or even his boyfriend. How much did
this provide cover or even incentive for Trump to be more hawkish?
MT: One of the things I said in one of these pieces was that in terms of
activism in the next four years, the most important thing is to keep Donald
Trump away from any kind of decision that would involve nuclear combat. That
would be the number one consideration that anyone should make. Even though
Trump likes to think of himself as great at war, he does have this sort of
natural reluctance to get into military conflicts politically.
So, he talked about getting out of Syria, and we should have been
encouraging that. No matter what you think about Syria or what you think our
policies should be there, the reality is that the commander in chief that we
have is not the person you want to be sending troops into a combat zone
where there are Russians on the other side. The Russian-American troops are
sitting across the Euphrates River from each other, and a couple of bad
drunken incidents could trigger nuclear combat.
KH: You have people saying that Trump is a megalomaniac with dementia whos
erratic. And the same people say that Putin is a megalomaniac and evil. And
they both have their finger on the button. And these people want Trump to
ratchet things up with Putin. So what is the endgame that they imagine?
AM: They imagine no endgame. This whole thing is incoherent. They were
accusing Trump of doing Putins bidding while he consistently does the
opposite: tries to overthrow Putins ally in Venezuela; bombs Putins ally
in Syria twice; pulls out of the [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty,
basically setting off a whole new nuclear arms race. So basically, the
actual endgame in real life is existential peril, because we are risking
nuclear accidents and the threat of war based on these hawkish policies. But
that doesnt matter to those who profited off of the Russiagate narrative,
like the failed neoliberal, Democratic elites, who needed an excuse to cover
for the fact that they lost to Donald Trump; FBI intelligence officials who
opened up this investigation on very specious grounds and who suspected
Trump, in part, because he was saying nice things about Vladimir Putin. And
whether you agree with that or not, to lay that as a predicate for a
counterintelligence investigation is just extraordinary. Then there was the
media, which, of course, got a lot of ratings and clicks by spinning this
spy thriller.
MT: I think there was an element of Russiagate, and still is, that does have
a logic to it. its a very dark logic. If you saw what happened in 2016, the
political situation was that the ruling neoliberal consensus was under fire
from all sides, from radical right movements both in the United States and
in Europe; from leftist movements, both in the United States and Europe. The
overwhelming voter sentiment everywhere had to do with the rejection of the
international global consensus. You saw votes like Brexit, a complete
repudiation of a number of things. But Russiagate as a political solution,
as a response to that electoral phenomenon, has been extraordinarily
effective. Because what its done is its completely changed the attitude of
a huge portion of the population, which now sees the international security
services, the global consensus, as the only saviors who are going to rescue
them from the evil Trump. And therefore, we have to pursue this case and
celebrate authoritarianism and celebrate the FBI and CIA and their heroism,
and the European Union and NATO. This story has had some benefit from a
propaganda perspective as well.
KH: So, is the idea that the intelligence community will act as the adults
in the room and stop Trump from getting his finger on the button?
AM: Well, that was part of this narrativethat were supposed to revere and
trust in these intelligence officials, forgetting their actual record, which
includes giving us one of the biggest crimes in recent memorythe Iraq War.
Theyre the ones who spun the phony intel about [weapons of mass
destruction]. And also promoting this notion that fundamentally undermines
the idea of democratic government, where its the elected president, whether
you like that person or not, whos supposed to make the decision, not
unelected intelligence bureaucrats.
And to illustrate Matts point about how this diverted liberal energy, lets
look at one of the biggest protests of the Trump era. It was not over Trump
taking away health care, it was not over Trump and the GOP pushing through
this tax cut that was, I think, the biggest upwards transfer of wealth in
U.S. history. It was to protect Robert Mueller. We had marches in Times
Square and D.C. and all over the country about protecting Mueller.
Protecting Robert Mueller from this threat people perceived him to be under.
That, all of a sudden, was one of the biggest causes for a massive national
rally, instead of what Trump was actually doing?
Compare that to what we saw in the very first days of the Trump
administration. We saw the Muslim ban. That was before Russiagate totally
took over. We saw people going to airports, standing up to this very cruel
Trump policy and doing something about it. Where was the energy ever since
then? Theres a strong correlation between the rise of #RussiaGate
throughout the resistance and the decline of the activism we saw right
before Russiagate fully exploded.
KH: Who were the worst Russiagate players in the media?
AM: There are too many to name.
KH: We could have a 24-hour marathon where we go through all of them.
MT: The central figure is Rachel [Maddow], unfortunately. I knew Rachel
going back [to] the Air America days. We used to be friends. I always
thought she was smart, funny, skeptical. We had some things that we
disagreed about, especially on things affecting the military. Im more of a
pacifist that she is. But this transformation where she became this
character on televisionits like something out of this Andy Griffith movie,
A Face in the Crowd, like a modern-day Glenn Beck act. Its been shocking
to watch her embrace that role in the way that she has. Its been very scary
to me. I dont know what you think, Aaron.
AM: I wrote a piece two years ago at The Intercept about how she covered
Russiagate above everything else, in a way that was ignoring all the
countervailing evidence that undercut her conspiracy theory. I noted what a
tragedy it was, because Ive always thought shes a really gifted
journalist. She was dubbed the smartest person on TV, and I think there was
a time when I probably found that plausible. I used to be a fan of hers.
But you cant ignore the reality that shes become, which is just a
straight-up propagandist who has not interviewed a single dissenting voice
and not acknowledged any of the countervailing facts. I actually tuned into
her show Monday night, her first show since the summary of Muellers
findings were released, and after more than two years of promoting this idea
of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, she gave the Mueller finding that there was no
Trump-Russia conspiracy 30 seconds, and then she moved on to obstruction for
the rest of the hour. Now, of course, obstruction is a thing that Maddow and
everyone else who promoted the Russia conspiracy are going to cling to now
in an attempt to cover up the fact that their conspiracy theory failed.
MT: The cable stations have played a very particular role in this, which has
been to scare people. All propaganda works on multiple levels, but there has
to be an emotional component in order for it to really sell. You have to be
able to turn peoples minds off when it comes to this stuff. So the
combination at work here was the emotional devastation of liberal audiences.
People were crushed when Trump was elected. People likened it to 9/11 or
losing a family member. It was a combination of that plus being told over
and over again, We are under attack
there are Russians in our midst
you
may not even be aware of them
they may be working in your office
they
may turn off your heat in the middle of the winter. People on some level
register this stuff, and it turns their minds off to alternative
possibilities. And that is a particularly low form of media activity. And
they didnt just indulge in it; they turned it into an art form with this
story. And that was shocking to watch, too.
AM: Ill never forget Maddow did a segment where shes talking about some
alleged Russian trolls interfering on Bernie Sanders fan club page, and she
called it international warfare against our country, and so on. And Ill
never forget Rob Reiner, who helped set up this neocon Hollywood group
called the Committee to Investigate Russia. Rob Reiner on MSNBC said that
the Russians are in our bloodstream. So theres a huge psychological damage.
MT: The New York Times did an infographic online, and they expanded on that
theme and described the Russian threat as a virus that was literally taking
over your body at the cellular level and changing your body chemistry. Its
a very elaborate graphic. And even intelligent people will be moved by this
stuff.
AM: This didnt start in 2016. Russophobia is in the bloodstream of American
political culture. For decades, its been the Russians invading us and
manipulating us and turning our young people into dupes, planting propaganda
in our heads. Thats why this Russiagate thing could not have happened with
any other country. Theres a reason we dont hear about Israelgate or
Saudigate. It survives on this very entrenched Cold War mindset that way
predates 2016.
MT: Which is another reason why there was a lot of conscious conflation of
the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union that went on. You can still
today go on the Mother Jones website and see images of Vladimir Putin, but
it will have a hammer and sickle next to it. The Jonathan Chait story that
claims that hes been an agent since 1987, when it was a different country.
Donna Brazile talking about how the communists are dictating the debate.
They want us to forget the distinction, because they want us to remember
those archaic fears we had back in the days when the day after was the big
scare story.
KH: As if the problem is that Trump is being influenced by a communist, as
we can see from the redistribution of wealth.
AM: It was actually a Jonathan Chait-Chris Hayes story. Because after Chait
came out with his story about whether Trump wasa Russian military
intelligence agent, then Hayes put Chait on his program that night, and they
discussed it as if this was a serious prospect.
KH: Aaron, youve never been on MSNBC. Matt, whens the last time you were
on MSNBC?
MT: You know whats funny? The last time I was on MSNBC was with Malcolm
Nance to talk about this issue on Chris Hayes. I said something that I
thought was a completely anodyne conservative comment, but which was that
theres multiple versions of this story. Theres a scenario where theres
some kind of foreign interference that went on. Theres another scenario
where it went on and Donald Trump was involved with it. And I said those two
storiesand I didnt really get into the fact that it hadnt really been
established that the Russians had done it, but I said those two stories are
orders of magnitude different. And the media has to make an important
distinction between the twothat one doesnt prove the other. And I was
never invited on again after that.
AM: And when was that, Matt?
MT: That was in, I think, January of 2017.
AM: If thats the date, that means that January 2017, basically right as
Trump was taking office, was the last time someone who was skeptical of
Russiagate from the left was allowed on MSNBC, because in December of 2016,
I remember Ari Melber interviewed Glenn Greenwald. But that was the last
time for Glenn. And if that was the last time for Matt, then that means that
basically, throughout this entire affair, throughout Trumps presidency,
MSNBC has not allowed on a single dissenting voice. Thats extraordinary.
KH: That we know of. Because, since its in our blood, we could have had
some Manchurian candidates on without even knowing it.
MT: The group that has publicly talked about this is so small that you can
count us on basically two hands. We all know each other. Were in constant
contact with each other because we have to be. And nobodys going to invite
us on television.
AM: And what does that say about a political media culture, that its
somehow a fringe position to question the conspiracy between the president
and Russia, that that position is so fringe that you can count it on one or
two hands?
MT: The press is like wildebeests. If 51 percent of the wildebeests decide
to go one way, theyll all go that way. Thats why you see those seamless
transitions from thinking one thing one day, and then the next day, the new
point of emphasis is going to be we need to see the entire report from
Mueller. Then, once the reports in, the new point of emphasis will be, Why
is there no obstruction charge, despite the fact that Mueller says there was
no underlying crime? And then there are going to be calls for a new
investigation. Theyre not going to let this go. Its going to continue in
perpetuity.
AM: Yeah. These people have invested so much into it that theyre forced to
double down, and theyre already doing it. They cant claim to be taken
seriously as journalists. Theyre basically, at this point, propagandists on
this issue. Hopefully they can have time to focus on real issues. But
theyve painted themselves into a real corner, and its going to be kind of
both sad and hilarious to watch how they continue to try to wiggle out of
it.
KH: I feel gaslit. You must feel especially gaslit. I just interview people
like you, but you guys are actually doing all the research and you guys are
dismissed as conspiracy theorists, which is really ironic because you guys
are skeptical of the conspiracy theory. How does it feel doing the work that
youre doing?
MT: I had it pretty easy compared to otherswhat the people who work at RT
have gone through, for instance, is horrible. I cant even tell most of the
stories Ive heard. But, for instance, I know one very talented person who
worked at RT briefly years ago, long before any of this, and now cant get
work because of that one blip on the resumé. For me, these last three years
for sure have been the most unpleasant of my career. I was regularly accused
of being a foreign agent. Threats are normal in this business, but there
were some especially weird things with this. I had somebody from one of
these self-described Russia-watching websites call me upon my unpublished
landline number, on a Sundayand offer to escort me to the FBI so I could
give my confession. I think my experience was probably a little different
from Aarons, because I work for a massive corporate organization, where I
had the support of editors, at least. Still, it was difficult operating
within those parameters, because Im pretty sure everyone assumed I was
crazy.
One thing that I felt pretty clearly was that even people I knew pretty well
seemed to suspect Id become a secret Trump supporter and this was how I was
expressing it. So suddenly I was like the kid with lice. All of this stuff
drove me a little bit crazy, to be honest. Again, I cant stress enough:
Other people went through things that were a lot worse: losing work, being
condemned by colleaguesthe academic, Stephen Cohen, went through a very
tough time for instance, being removed from internet platformsIm talking
especially about small websites that in many cases were family businesses
where people had invested their lifes savings into their sites. Some I
talked to had paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote
their businesses on platforms like Facebook, only to be removed abruptly one
day for coordinated inauthentic activity.
Again, all of this is small beans compared to problems people face in the
real world, and under this administration, where immigrant families were
separated. I wouldnt want to even begin to compare. But in the press, when
everyone feels the same pressure to avoid saying certain things, the tragedy
there isnt necessarily how hard it is for the individuals, but what it does
to the business overall. Youll end up with a landscape where everyone is
saying the same thing and audiences are only hearing one thing, which is
totally dysfunctional.
AM: Ultimately, what matters in journalism are the facts, and the facts were
always on our side. My feelings dont matter. Even though all these people
are trying to attack you and marginalize you, I never took them seriously.
As Matt said, it was so unpleasant, but it also was kind of amusing. And I
felt sorry for themthat they were so in it. And I have been surprised that
even after Mueller collapsed the conspiracy theoryI mean, its one thing if
you dont want to acknowledge people who got it rightbut I saw leftist
pundits who I respect coming out of nowhere to take shots at me and my
colleagues and disingenuously accuse us of helping Trump and saying we were
the ones fixated on this issue. And meanwhile, not coincidentally, these
were some of the same people who got the story wrong. As Matt said, there
are incentives to going along with this and conforming. And I just really
respect Matt and others who never thought twice about doing their jobs:
being real journalists and following the facts.
KH: I get that youre saying its just feelings, Aaron, and that feelings
dont matter as much as facts. But I think its important for people to
know, when theyre assessing the media, that there are all these incentives
against doing what youre doing and all these incentives to do what the
Rachel Maddows are doing. So wed have a lot more people speaking and
writing the way you both are if there werent these incentives.
Thank you, guys, so much for being so relentless and fearless.
Katie Halper
