CNN Falls to Fifteenth Place on Cable

#FakeNewsCNN's ratings fell to their lowest weekly level of the year, continuing the fall that began when their Collusion Delusion was revealed some weeks ago.

The top networks for primetime viewership last week were led by Fox News, followed by MSNBC, the Home and Garden TV, USA Network and TBS Network to round out the top five.

CNN finished 15th, behind networks like Discovery Channel, Food Network, TLC and A&E Network. Their ratings have continued to drop following the conclusion of the Mueller report.

The President congratulated the "news" channel:

In case you missed it on Friday, even the shabby DNC front company, the NYT, is now forced to admit that the entire dossier that Jake Tapper so proudly reported on may be nothing more than the product of a Russian Disinformation Campaign aimed at reducing confidence in US elections.

Agents did not believe that either the source or Mr. Steele was deliberately inventing things, according to the former official. How the dossier ended up loaded with dubious or exaggerated details remains uncertain, but the document may be the result of a high-stakes game of telephone, in which rumors and hearsay were passed from source to source.

Another possibility -- one that Mr. Steele has not ruled out -- could be Russian disinformation. That would mean that in addition to carrying out an effective attack on the Clinton campaign, Russian spymasters hedged their bets and placed a few land mines under Mr. Trump’s presidency as well.

Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience in spreading false information," he said.

Mr. Steele declined to comment for this article.

...

Last year, in a deposition in a lawsuit filed against Buzzfeed, Mr. Steele emphasized that his reports consisted of unverified intelligence. Asked whether he took into account that some claims might be Russian fabrications, he replied, "Yes."

F.B.I. agents considered whether Russia had polluted the stream of intelligence, but did not give it much credence, according to the former official.

But that is an issue to which multiple inquiries are likely to return. There has been much chatter among intelligence experts that Mr. Steele's Russian informants could have been pressured to feed him disinformation.

Daniel Hoffman, a former C.I.A. officer who served in Moscow, said he had long suspected the dossier was contaminated by Russian fabrications. The goal, he said, would be to deepen American divisions and blur the line between truth and falsehood.

"How many times have hearings on Capitol Hill used information from the dossier?" Mr. Hoffman said. "How much damage has it already caused?"

posted by Ace of Spades at 02:51 PM

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