The New York Post’s Miranda Devine reported on Sunday night that a Rasmussen poll scheduled to be released on Monday found that 60% of Democrats continue to believe “the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election.”
Devine noted, “A whopping 69 percent of liberal voters still cling to the Russia collusion hoax, compared to 27 percent of conservatives, and 45 percent of moderates.”
According to Rasmussen:
Despite recent revelations about the corrupt origins of claims that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia, a majority of Democrats still think it explains how Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 42% of Likely U.S. Voters consider it likely that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 election, including 24% who believe it’s Very Likely. Forty-nine percent (49%) don’t think it’s likely the 2016 election was affected by collusion with Russia, including 36% who say it’s Not At All Likely.
Rasmussen surveyed 1,014 Likely Voters between July 6 and 7. [Rasmussen polls are behind a paywall.]
Given the number of times this theory has been debunked, it is almost unfathomable that anyone still believes it. Yet the fact remains: many liberals and Democrats rely almost exclusively on legacy media for their news. Outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, along with networks like CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC, never fully acknowledged that it had been a hoax.
This story circulated for more than two years before it was finally discredited. And I must hand it to the Democrats: as far as hoaxes go, this one was remarkably effective. It was carefully planned and skillfully executed. The entire party was invested in the campaign against Trump and deeply committed to its success. This included Obama administration officials, agencies from that era such as the DOJ, FBI, and CIA, as well as the media. They were not going to let it go without a fight.
The first public indication that the story had been fabricated came in March 2019, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report revealed that, after a 22-month investigation costing taxpayers an estimated $40 million and casting a long shadow over Trump’s presidency, no evidence was found that Trump had colluded with the Kremlin to win the election.
Unwilling to admit that the lack of evidence meant it hadn’t happened, the media instead left the door open to the possibility that it was true — just not yet proven.
For example, in an April 1, 2019, article titled, AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s exaggerations about the Russia probe, the Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump is taking his interpretation of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation well beyond the facts.He says he’s been fully exonerated based on a four-page summary of Mueller’s nearly 400-page report and is casting himself as a victim of illegal practices by the FBI because the agency investigated him in the first place.But Trump is overstating his case. The FBI has legal grounds to open a probe if investigators have information they believe could lead them to a crime, even if one is not ultimately found. And the summary released by Attorney General William Barr says Mueller did not reach a conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice.
The gaslighting from Democrats never stopped.
Earlier this month, CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a review of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian interference in the presidential election. The review, conducted by members of the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis, found that the ICA had been corrupted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Brennan’s determination to include the Steele dossier in the ICA was especially significant given that he knew in July 2016 it was nothing more than a collection of bogus stories commissioned by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign and conjured up by former British spy Christopher Steele and his sub-sources. And so did then-President Barack Obama.
We know that because in October 2020, Fox News reported that Brennan briefed Obama and others present during a July 28, 2016, Oval Office meeting on “Hillary Clinton’s purported ‘plan’ to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as ‘a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server’ ahead of the 2016 presidential election.”
[I reported on the review here.]
As trite as it may sound, Devine points out that the main reason so many Democrats and liberals still believe the Russian collusion hoax can be summed up by the old adage: “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.” There was a lot of ink spilled on this story and many people became firmly convinced it was true. They desperately wanted it to be true. Such deeply held beliefs don’t vanish overnight.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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