The lynchpin was an article posted to CNN.com that claimed Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci, a hedge fund manager and confidant to the president, was linked to investments in Russia. He wasn't, of course, and once CNN realized that it didn't have any leg to stand on as far as the story was concerned, it pulled the story from its site. But not before the world took notice and set the house of cards into a free fall.
CNN quickly tried to apologize for the story, and three top journalists quickly bailed as a way to try to smooth things over. But this didn't really work, and President Trump quickly announced the retraction of this "big story on 'Russia,'" asking what will become of "all the other phony stories they do." Mr. Trump followed this up by once again declaring CNN to be "FAKE NEWS!"
"It's over for CNN," writes Dawn Luger for The Daily Sheeple. "The media giant has been busted using propaganda and false narratives to promote an 'anti-Trump' agenda ... For once, 'conspiracy theorists' don't sound like looney birds."
And it only gets worse for CNN. The latest undercover video released by Project Veritas depicts CNN supervising producer John Bonifield openly admitting that the Russia narrative his network has been perpetrating on the masses is complete bunk. When specifically asked about the nature of this narrative, Bonifield is rather frank.
"I mean, it's mostly bulls### right now," Bonifield says to the undercover investigator from Project Veritas about President Trump's alleged connections to Russia. "Like, we don't have any big giant proof."
If you've been able to catch any of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood executives for illegally negotiating sales of aborted baby body parts, this Project Veritas expose is similarly telling. What it reveals is that CNN is willing to invent fake news in order to push an agenda and rake in the dough.
When asked at the beginning of the clip why CNN has focused so intently on spreading the Russia narrative, Bonifield explains it in simple terms: "Because ratings." There's likely even more to it than this, but this statement in and of itself completely disqualifies CNN as being anything more than a tabloid rag that openly and knowingly publishes fake news simply to make a buck. Bonifield further admitted that CNN has no respect for journalistic ethics, which means it can't be trusted as an honest source of information for what's really happening in the world.
Truth be told, the reason why the cable network even pulled the story in the first place is because it was threatened with a $100 million libel suit. Staffers at CNN were reportedly furious when it came out that the story was fake, emphasizing that CNN has now "lost the moral high ground because of this story."
"I think that we have gone to a place where if the media can't be trusted to report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America, and I think if that is the place that certain outlets are going, particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings, and if that’s coming directly from the top, I think that's even more scary," stated White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Sources: