*Yellow journalism  — journalism  that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales.

We have all seen Trump’s recent tweeting contending that Hillary was the true culprit of colluding with Russians to frame Trump.  Wonder where that is coming from?   Well I saw the following story this morning at Yahoo:

Russian Collusion Investigation: It Was Hillary Clinton All Along

Investor’s Business Daily 17 hours ago
“Russia Investigation: It’s beginning to look as if claims of monstrous collusion between Russian officials and U.S. political operatives were true. But it wasn’t Donald Trump who was guilty of Russian collusion. It was Hillary Clinton and U.S. intelligence officials who worked with Russians and others to entrap Trump. That’s the stunning conclusion of a RealClear Investigations report by Lee Smith,…..”
 
Well, I went down that rabbit hole today, starting with Who is Lee Smith?  And what is he reporting?
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I am fairly good at this kind of spelunking, so it bears noting that along the way it involves googling or clicking on every name and every source in an article.  That is where it always gets really, really good.  That is where you learn the anatomy and methodology of misdirection and disingenuous “reporting” to create an elaborate illusion that your story “has legs”, while effectively filing the serial numbers off of any countervailing evidence currently in circulation.   This meticulously researched, spit-polished counter-narrative, which turns the entirety of the Mueller probe on its head, is fascinating in that it employs nearly every logical fallacy and arbitrary conclusion possible; and every Trump defender will embrace it as Gospel of Holy Writ.
 
I will spare you the forensic details.  The regular readers of this blog are all steely-eyed experienced detectives and will no doubt have little difficulty recognizing the alphabetical array of derpology employed in the articles below.  It is all there:  cherry-picking data, willy-nilly connecting of dots, specious sourcing, talented weaving of weasel words and phrases, assuming things not in evidence and ignoring any possibility that Mueller’s team has damning evidence simply because it is yet unrevealed.  ( for example; The released FISA warrants contain dozens of pages that are entirely blacked out, which reportedly contain secret evidence establishing ties between Carter Page and Russians — evidence that goes beyond what was included in the so-called ‘fake’ Steele dossier.) Textbook trial by opinion stuff.  But my very favorite (and also too, a Trump favorite) is the pervasive assumption that denials by accused suspects constitutes exculpatory evidence!
  
What’s that you say?  “Oh Luskus, we know it is all bullshit.”  Well, yes.  But the true revelation is in examining what the bull has been eating.  And this is a particularly elegant — yet typical — steaming pile of rather authoritatively constructed narratives and sloppy conclusions posited and distributed by all the usual suspects, beginning with the conservative grindhouse of hyper-partisan journalism, Investor’s Business Daily.
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I have been on a fact-checking safari more than a few times, and I have to tell you that unless they are stopped by defeats in the mid-terms, this “Hillary and her Deep State minions colluded with Russia to frame Trump”  will be another dead horse that Trump and his Foxbot troops and GOP Congressional Rough Riders will be whipping and dragging all the way to Benghazi Hall in Vallhala.
 
Buckle up.