Trump and Conflating of Reporting

From the New York Times:

Another was how Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer conflated BuzzFeed’s reporting of the Russia story with CNN’s (which omitted the uncorroborated details). This let him conveniently lump two very different Russia-Trump reports into the same manila folder, mislabeled “fake news,” and deposit them in the circular file together.

While true, this misses an important aspect of the matter. While Trump and Spicer may have intentionally conflated Buzzfeed's and CNN's reporting as a way of dismissing both, it's a near certainty that many people were going to conflate the two when assessing Trump and the stories. We had just seen similar where many were conflating Russian meddling in the election, including releasing emails hacked from Podesta and the DNC, with Russia hacking the election-possibly down to the vote tallying itself.

Frankly, most journalists did not do a very good job of pushing back against that conflation.

Why I am skeptical

Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands; and your plan, is to *blackmail* this person?

We are supposed to believe that the Russians pulled out all the stops to get Trump compromised. And that a single spook had sources who gave him the goods on it. And that the story was percolating through the press corps for months; a veritable open secret, perhaps sans one or two details. And Putin, rather than protecting this leverage in his own particular fashion, let this spook run it to the one journalistic enterprise with the balls to run with it, Buzzfeed, taking away his ability to blackmail the most powerful man in the world? And you want me to believe that?

Good luck.