If Donald Trump does not acknowledge that Team Putin has and is attacking the U.S. with cyberwarfare, he succeeds on centering the ongoing news coverage on his denials, which is consistent with his methods used to control media coverage during the 2016 election campaign.
If Trump were to acknowledge Russian cyberattacks, the media questions and discussion would center on "Mr. President, what are you going to do about Russia's attacks?". Trump does not want to go there because he does not want to do anything at all about Russia's cyber warfare. Trump does not want to do anything about Russian cyber warfare because Russian cyber warfare inures to his benefit.
Our mainstream media, including MSNBC, despite calling on all kinds of experts on these matters, still struggles to ignore the president's statements, which are such an effective tool to deflect their attention. Even after two years of this nonsense, the media struggles.
The only effective way for the media to cover this endless obfuscation would be to speculate about matters unknown assuming a worst case scenario. The absolute worst case - that the president is an agent of a foreign enemy - actually provides the most consistent, credible explanation of the behavior of all bad actors throughout the current crisis.
"Mr. President, what did you discuss with Vladimir Putin in private? People are saying (to borrow a phrase from the Obfuscator in Chief)...people are saying that you and Putin agreed on further conspiracies to sabotage the 2018 election, similar to your collaboration on 2016. We suspect that you made agreements on Syria, which, together with your side agreements with the Saudis and the UAE, will result in enormous personal financial gain to you and the Kushners."
And so on. The only way to fight this manipulation by Trump of the media's reluctance to go beyond the minimization of the bad case is for the media to speculate on the maximal worst case. Right now, Trump is just doing a dance as he always has and the media is dancing along with him. The media has come to depend on the "he says/she says - the truth will out as we fact check" so much that they do not know how to shift gears.
The media needs to keep speculating until those tax returns are released and the American translator in Helsinki testifies under oath divulging the details of the most recent secret meeting between Trump and Putin. If the American translator left the room, we need to know that. We need to know the reason so many Republican congressmen had to be in Moscow for the 4th of July this year and why Rand Paul needs to go there.
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