For almost a full year now the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN, among others, have teamed up to bring us one Russian collusion story after another. Yet, after all of it, even including the New York Times' most recent Trump Jr. 'bombshell', they are still no closer to actually presenting any tangible evidence that anyone within the Trump administration actually colluded with the Russian government and/or otherwise committed any actual crimes of any type throughout the 2016 campaign.
And while we suspect that these media outlets somehow feel it is their duty to advance the cause of 'The Resistance' at all costs, even if it means destroying their own journalistic integrity from time to time with a few fake news reports, we get the feeling that this crusade could end up backfiring 'bigly' with the folks of middle America.
As Reuters points out today, absent any tangible evidence to the contrary, the media's breathless Russian coverage has done little to turn the pro-Trump sections of middle America against the President...if anything, it has only served to bolster their support of the President and further erode their confidence in the media.
Many of the 20 people interviewed in several Ohio towns were dismissive of the barrage of headlines about a June 2016 meeting between Trump's eldest son Donald Jr. and a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton.
In Little Hocking, Ohio, Lisa Walker, 54, runs a small thrift shop. Wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the American flag, she says her husband has expressed fears that somebody is going to try and assassinate Trump.
She and her husband voted for Trump. She has followed the revelations about the younger Trump on the news. She sees the Russia investigation as proof that "people are out to get Trump. I would hope they have better things to do than play games and attack Trump."
Similarly, in Jackson and Piketon, Ohio, Donald Trump Jr.'s troubles appeared to strengthen support for his father and Trump family members who many in the area see as embattled victims.
In Hillsboro, the county seat of Highland County, the editor of the Hillsboro Times Gazette, Gary Abernathy, says many people in the county believe the media is trying to destroy Trump.
"I don't mind Donald Trump being treated critically or aggressively, but not in a way that is an effort to drag him down. Donald Trump Jr. had one 20 minute meeting with a lawyer from Russia and it's wall-to-wall coverage."
In reality, it's quite obvious that the media's mass hysteria is really only serving to bolster 'The Resistance' in the major metro areas of the country. But, as Democrats should have learned by now, rallying the disaffected liberal voters of New York and California is not going to win any national elections.
Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon. Recent polls have suggested that voters grew weary of the media's constant Russia hysteria some time ago. In fact, a recent Marist poll conducted before the latest Trump Jr. story was released suggested that only 25% of Americans thought that Trump had done "something illegal." Meanwhile, even among Democrats, only 41% thought that something criminal happened in the 2016 election.
Moreover, only slightly more people, 33%, thought any of Trump's campaign associates had done anything illegal.
In short, for those folks at the NYT, CNN, etc, whose goal is the destruction of Trump - even if simply to validate their erroneous reporting in 2016 when everyone had written Trump off - then perhaps consider changing the strategy when it comes to impacting roughly half of America, as the current path appears self-destructive with those voters who will matter the most when 2020 comes along.