A Washington Post columnist admitted Thursday that mainstream journalists could never prove that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in 2016 despite their best efforts, suggesting it shouldn't have turned into such a media circus.
On "The Don Lemon Show" podcast, The Washington Post's Perry Bacon Jr. warned Lemon and other journalists not to report too definitively about Trump's alleged links to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, in order to avoid a Russiagate situation in which the media insinuated collusion without proving it.
"You and I were covering the Russia thing a fair amount probably in 2017, 2018. We never really proved the thing we were sort of hinting at-that maybe [Vladimir] Putin and Trump are cheating and so on," Bacon said.
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In the clip flagged by NewsBusters' associate editor Nicholas Fondacaro, Lemon remarked that Trump's relationship with Epstein has broken into the previously uninterested mainstream media.
"After last night, I was like, 'How should they be treating this story?' And I ask because, look, this was sort of a Republican and a MAGA conspiracy theory, a la Pizzagate… initially," he said.
He noted how some outlets were interested in the story at the time, but said, "for the most part, sort of centrist media, they were not obsessed with this Epstein story."
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Lemon then asked Bacon how he felt about the media now taking an interest in it and peppering Trump with questions about the topic.
"Yeah, I mean, the media's now covering it," the columnist and New Republic writer acknowledged. "I think people were slow to it, but I think people are onto it."
But Bacon urged the media to show some restraint on the subject to avoid a years-long Russiagate narrative that turned up zero smoking guns on the president's alleged collusion with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election.
The sprawling Russia investigation dominated the news cycle for years, but dubious sources like the Steele dossier and revelations about the Hillary Clinton campaign's role in disseminating the Russia narrative have sparked fierce criticism of the media's handling of the saga.
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"It was sort of obvious that Putin wanted Trump to win, but I'm not sure we got the sort of smoking gun," Bacon admitted. "So, I think people should cover this, cover this aggressively, but not - it shouldn't turn into like, every hour on MSNBC is Epstein, cause also, there's a lot of other problems," he said.
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"What's happening in Texas is a big story," the columnist continued, noting the story of state Republicans pushing a redistricting vote with Democratic lawmakers going AWOL to avoid it.
