Ukraine Involvement in U.S. 2016 Election - and the Fox News Version

Click here for a Politico article entitled "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire," by Kenneth P. Vogel and David Stern.

Brian Stelter, in one of his "Reliable Sources" articles, has a piece subtitled "The right-wing roots of impeachment," in which he argues that Hannity and others embellished and blew the Politico article up out of all proportion, using it as the basis for their specious claims that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in the U.S. election -- with the intention of helping Hillary to defeat Trump.

Stelter says:

How did we get here? How did Trump wind up on the verge of impeachment? Well, his sources of information led him astray. He was misinformed by the shows and sites he was watching and reading.

To be clear: His choices, what Trump did with the information — the withholding of aid money, the alleged shakedown of the Ukrainian president, the claims that it was a "perfect" phone call — that's all his own doing. Trump is responsible for what he did. But what he was hearing from right-wing media was crucial. The conspiratorial bent of his favorite talk shows was critical.

--> Re: Ukraine and 2016: Sean Hannity and other Trump backers took tiny bits of true information from a January 2017 Politico story titled "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire" and blew it way, way out of proportion, to the point that some viewers thought Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election. Hannity leaned on the Politico story for months and months — in fact, he's still talking about it, as of Sunday -- so it's no wonder why Trump harbored a grudge against Ukraine.

--> Re: the Bidens and Burisma: Enter John Solomon, the right-wing columnist for The Hill who worked closely with Rudy Giuliani to light the fuse of the Ukraine scandal. Trump was watching when Solomon went on Hannity in March and described a Ukrainian effort to "try to influence the United States election in favor of Hillary Clinton." We know he was watching because he tweeted about the segment. Solomon rolled out an anti-Biden conspiracy theory... the feedback loop kept looping... and it ultimately ensnared Trump.

--> Re: the aid money for Ukraine, according to WaPo, Trump saw an article from the right-leaning Washington Examiner titled "Pentagon to send $250M in weapons to Ukraine" and started to ask Q's about the $$.

Here's the thing: The pro-Trump media bubble did not actually help Trump. To the contrary, it led him to the brink of impeachment...

Click here for more at the Stelter "Reliable Sources" piece.