Fox News and Breitbart focused on tin-foil hat theories instead of Trump revelations
Even as most news outlets were reeling from the revelation that President Donald Trump had revealed highly classified information to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during an Oval Office meeting, right-wing news outlets remained mostly silent on what became the story of the day.
Instead, some focused yet another conspiracy theory regarding Hillary Clinton.
According to a report by The Week, right-wing media outlets including Fox News, Breitbart and The Drudge Report avoided the story that broke Washington Post broke readership records. Instead, The Drudge Report and Fox News focused on a report by Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the family of deceased Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich. After Rich was shot and killed in Washington in July, many on the right began speculating that he may have been the source behind WikiLeaks’ publication of emails that embarrassed the Hillary Clinton campaign during last year’s presidential election.
Wheeler now claims that there is information on Rich’s computer linking him to WikiLeaks and that neither, “the police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming,” about his investigation into the circumstances behind Rich’s death.
While neither Wheeler nor any of the right-wing sites breathlessly covering his claims have provided any proof of their veracity, that story was deemed sufficiently newsworthy to take precedence over the revelation that Trump had betrayed a highly classified bilateral confidence by sharing it with Kislyak and Lavrov.
If there was any doubt that Trump had indeed leaked the information, the President himself confirmed the story in a tweet Tuesday morning.
As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
…to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
Originally from Salon.com