Intelligencer tells Congress to “probe Clinton”

Once again the Intelligencer demonstrates that its allegiance to Trump supersedes any ethical coverage of a story. This morning’s editorial, “Probe Clinton Link to Uranium Deal,” is just a rehash of their last editorial on the subject on October 27. Of course there is nothing new and the editorial simply repeats the same unproven assertions. I dealt with the editorial here. I also quoted the standard factcheckers who said that the Trump, rightwing, and local media assertions on the subject are fact free. That doesn’t matter for totally partisan sources like the Ogden chain; Trump’s presidency needs to be defended and for them the easiest way is to throw red meat to his base – bring back Hillary.

Fox reporter “debunks” the Clinton/Russia scandal

According to this morning’s Washington Post:

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith debunked what his own network has called the Hillary Clinton uranium “scandal,” infuriating Fox viewers, some of whom suggested that he ought to work for CNN or MSNBC.

Smith’s critique, which called President Trump’s accusations against Clinton “inaccurate,” was triggered by renewed calls from Republicans on Capitol Hill for a special counsel to investigate Clinton.

Fox News, along with Trump and his allies, has been suggesting for months a link between donations to the Clinton Foundation and the approval of a deal by the State Department and the Obama administration allowing a Russian company to purchase a Canada-based mining group with operations in the United States. . . .

Various fact-checkers, including The Washington Post’s, have already dismantled the underpinnings of these accusations. No one expected a similar debunking from Fox. . . .

But Smith, in his broadcast, made many of the same points as the fact-checkers.

The Post article does note that some Fox viewers were not happy with Smith’s fact-checking.
(If you’re interested, the video is available on the Washington Post link above.)

Update -- Jonah Goldberg, editor at the conservative National Review and frequent Intelligencer columnist, agrees with Smith

From a Goldberg posting earlier today at the National Review:

I was going to do this as a column for tomorrow, but since Shep beat me to the punch I’ll do it as a Corner post. Shep is right. The Uranium One story is crap.

His conclusion:

I get that uranium sounds scary. I’ve heard a lot of pundits say something like, “I mean the word uranium was right there! Hello! The Clintons should have known!”

Well, the pundits should know what they’re talking about, too.