“Deep State PANIC! Putin Gives Trump Valuable Info To Take Down The Clinton’s [sic] And Obama’s [sic],” the blog Neal Rodrigues claimed this week.
Surely, you might be thinking, no one buys into that headline?
In two days the article received some 1,600 shares on Facebook pages such as “Colorado for Donald Trump 2020” (which, in fairness, might have been “in the clouds” at the time of sharing), “We Love Donald Trump!” and “Rebels Against Government.”
The article provides no evidence to support it’s [sic] claim, linking only to an opinion piece from the blog Gateway Pundit, who posited that the “deep state is in a panic fearing Putin shared with Trump devastating information not yet reported.” Yes, you read that correctly, “not yet reported.”
And who, exactly, in the “deep state” is “in panic”? The blog post from Rodrigues cites “MSNBC, CNN, and left wing pundits” alongside “high profile democrats such as Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi.”
Even if one were to accept the premise that “MSNBC, CNN” and two Democrats make up some part of the “deep state” there is no evidence that Putin supplied “Trump with valuable info to take down the Clinton’s and Obama’s.”
In fact, the only evidence (a generous word in this circumstance) that Rodrigues supplies is the false report that the “Clinton campaign had received 400 million from Russia as a campaign contribution,” a claim that Putin peddled on Monday which our fellow fact checkers at Politifact thoroughly debunked earlier this week:
One comment on the post sums up the reader-sentiment nicely: “I realize there is no ‘facts’ to stand by this thought — but I actually had the same idea — Putin has ‘goods’ on Hillary, Obama, and his administration and he’s willing to talk.”
No facts, indeed.
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