House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, during a private dinner on Wednesday night with a few dozen conservatives, took aim at “fake news,” declared the “legacy media is dead,” and expressed skepticism that special counsel Robert Mueller would find any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians during the 2016 election.
Nunes, whose Republican-led committee on Monday released its findings that there was no collusion, said that Democrats, with the help of the media, are hyping the Russia story because it’s key to their plans of motivating their voters ahead of the 2018 election, and warned that Republicans could face massive nationwide losses if their own voters are unmotivated.
During the dinner , which was hosted by the American Spectator, Nunes said there was a “paradigm shift” away from the legacy media, and he described how it was “rather ironic” how Republicans came to appropriate the term “fake news” from Democrats.
“From what I can tell, it was actually Mark Zuckerberg and the Obama Democrats who started really putting out the topic ‘fake news,’ because it was their first attempt to blame Hillary Clinton’s loss on fake news that people were getting on their iPhones and Facebook and Twitter and everything else … A week or two later, Trump liked the term, and a lot of Republicans like me liked the term, we thought it was pretty good, and so we started using it against the media, and now it’s quickly becoming, I think, it’s finally settled in on about 40 percent of Americans that would be in the conservative to center-right and I think they’re well aware of fake news.”
Nunes, R-Calif., complained that the media has been more sympathetic to Democrats, arguing that there has been a much larger media presence when the committee interviews somebody the media thinks will strengthen the narrative of collusion, while virtually ignoring witnesses who could shed light on the Republican case that under Obama, the law enforcement and intelligence community abused their power to target the political opposition during an election year.
He said that initially, he was positive about the appointment of Mueller, but grew increasingly skeptical that the prosecutor would act on what Nunes sees as egregious and unprecedented abuses of counterintelligence by the Obama administration in 2016.
“When Mueller was first appointed, I actually sent out a press release that said, this is great, because they’re going to quickly come in, and see what we’ve seen, which is that there’s no evidence whatsoever of collusion, but he’ll immediately go after the crimes which we know have been committed,” he said.
Nunes described as a “major felony” the leak of the intercepted call between incoming Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and then Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. “You would think that would be one to focus on, and then the unmaskings that occurred, the leaks that occurred out of there — obvious places that you would go. They’re clearly not going there. And now with all of the people he hired, it makes it more of a question. And as we dig, things pop up every day that are alarming about where he’s going.”
Nunes said that he doesn’t see who Mueller could indict for collusion if all the indictments to date have been on other charges.
“Now look at who Mueller has prosecuted at this point, and who is left to prosecute for collusion?” he wondered. “I mean, there’s no one left. [Former Trump campaign manager Paul] Manafort would be the obvious guy to think of that was colluding, right? If you could have gotten him on collusion, he would have been the obvious choice. Flynn, I mean, I knew Flynn very very well, and he is not a secret communist supporting Putin. So, they can’t get him on that. So who else do they have?”
Thinking toward the 2018 elections, Nunes said given that Republicans could count on the support of about 40 percent, “the way I look at this, we have about 10 percent to go, and I think we’re on a full on messaging war.”
The Russia story, he said, “is being used now by the Left to incite the base and keep their base motivated, because without this, without the Left thinking the election was stolen from them, and the Russians were responsible, that Donald Trump and Putin were best friends, if that message isn’t out there, then I think their base is demoralized, because what else do they have to run on? We have a growing economy, we’re doing better abroad, and it’s going to be really really tough.”
That said, he said Republicans need to be able to motivate their own voters, because traditionally, the electorate has tended to be more Republican-friendly in midterm elections, which has given the GOP the edge in the past. “If the Democrats are excited to turn out and we’re not that excited, and that just dips a little bit, than it could be really damaging across the country,” Nunes warned.
