On Jan. 12, 2017, I appeared on a CNN panel to discuss current events. It was memorable, and not just because we were taping from the roof of a building near the U.S. Capitol as part of the outlet’s special coverage of Trump’s first inauguration. Just as we were about to go on, we were significantly delayed by President Barack Obama surprising Vice President Joe Biden with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
As I recall, there were maybe five or six of us on set, including former Obama political appointee Jim Sciutto and host Jake Tapper, two of the four authors of the most important story of the entire Russia collusion hoax. “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him” had been published just two days prior, followed up by BuzzFeed publishing the actual document claiming widespread collusion between Trump and Russia. That document — which nine months later was revealed to have been secretly bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrat National Committee — included salacious lies about Trump supposedly paying prostitutes to urinate on a bed that the Obamas had slept in during a visit to a fancy Moscow hotel. The hysteria was such that many people wondered if Donald Trump would make it to the inauguration.
It may sound crazy now, but Washington, D.C. at that time was full of people who either believed or pretended to believe that Donald Trump really had colluded with Russia to steal the election.
