Four years ago, The New York Times and The Washington Post received Pulitzers for the newspapers’ coverage of the Russia scandal, and by any fair standard, the honors were well deserved. Donald Trump, of course, didn’t quite see it that way.
In fact, the more the former president convinced himself that the scandal wasn’t real, the more preoccupied he became with the journalistic awards. The Republican even pressed the Pulitzer Prize board to reverse course and strip the newspapers of the honor, since, as far as Trump was concerned, the awards were in recognition of reporting on a scandal that had been discredited.
As CNBC reported, the board considered the American’s request — and rejected it.
The board made that decision after two separate, independent reviews found that the award-winning reporting on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton stood up to scrutiny. “No passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes,” the Pulitzer board said in a press release.
In its public statement, the board concluded, “The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.”
True to form, the former president responded exactly how most observers expected him to respond: with a hysterical diatribe. “Instead of acting with integrity and providing transparency, the Pulitzer Board is running cover for the biggest reporting failure in modern history: the fake Russia Russia Russia collusion hoax,” Trump said in his latest written rant.
Part of what amazes me about this story is the Pulitzer board’s willingness to indulge the Republican’s absurd fantasy. The board went to the trouble of conducting two independent reviews, thoroughly scrutinizing the Post’s and the Times’ reporting, comparing their revelations against the most recent available evidence. “Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other,” according to the board.
This reflects a remarkable generosity on the board members’ part.
Indeed, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that the Pulitzer board appears to have taken Trump’s claims far more seriously than Trump ever did. The former president ignored the facts and dismissed the scandal because it suited his political purposes. It was a mindless, knee-jerk reaction to facts that upset him. Trump didn’t make a serious appeal based on extensive research and credible evidence; he never makes serious appeals based on extensive research and credible evidence.
I can imagine Pulitzer officials saying to themselves, “Well, if a president of the United States has concerns, perhaps we have a responsibility to examine these questions in more detail and through independent investigations.” But the predicate is that Trump is a serious person raising legitimate criticisms worthy of scrutiny.
He is not. The Pulitzer board took the time to answer questions that didn’t need to be asked.
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, to see the Russia scandal as “the fake Russia Russia Russia collusion hoax” is utterly bonkers. The controversy was, and is, entirely real. As regular readers know, investigations from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee documented the extent to which Trump and his team welcomed, received, benefited from, and lied about Russian campaign assistance. The evidence shows there was coordination and high-level connections between Trump’s political operation and those responsible for the attack on the U.S. election. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report at one point literally described a “direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.” If the former president hasn’t seen this, the documentation is online and readily available. I get the feeling the Pulitzer board has read it, even if he hasn’t. Related:
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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