To keep the media in the position of enemy of the people, which is only to erode the freedom of the press and the role it plays in any democracy, any effort by any news outlet to do honest post mortems should be applauded. Doesn’t mean you have to become a CNN fan or forget all about the wrongs wrt the Steele Dossier, but this is what a press organization with editorial standards should be doing. We should be encouraging more of it, not saying “fuck them”.

Do make sure you read the entire article (I skimmed it more than read it). Very critical of Steele and the Clinton campaign and the FBI and so on, but says he was right that Russia used “trusted agents of influence” to target Trump’s inner circle, and that of course Trump began exaggerating the Dossier’s influence on the origins of the Russia probe as Steele lost credibility.

IMO, the Steele Dossier had no influence on the Senate Select Committee report. That report found collusion. Full stop. It found that Manafort shared data with a Russian agent. The answer I usually get back from Trumpies is “oh big deal he shared polling data”. Sometimes “public polling data”. I don’t actually believe it was public polling data; I think it was the Trump campaign’s polling data, and we don’t know the full extent - the senate committee called it a “grave threat to American counterintelligence”.

On the ol’ Trumpie refrain about it being no big deal, I say fine, maybe, so it was insignificant collusion, but collusion happened. I think it’s a near certainty (I was surprised by the senate committee’s conclusions). I also think there never should have been an impeachment push over it, and that there was never any evidence of anything like a criminal conspiracy, and that it is quite possible to keep both those thoughts logically in one’s head at the same time.

If only Trumpistan would do a little critical thinking about it’s constant “Russia hoax” refrain, sort of like that represented in this CNN article, the entire country might start moving gradually back in the right direction again - together.