Natasha Bertrand and Trump misinformation

 

CNN Draws Major Backlash for Giving Promotion to Notorious 'Russian Collusion Hoaxer' (msn.com)  "Where do you go after peddling dual lies in the establishment media -- the Donald Trump Russiagate hoax and the fiction that Hunter Biden's toxic laptop was Kremlin disinfo?

"To the top, of course. At least at CNN.

"On Monday, the network you probably only end up watching when your flight is delayed for a few hours announced that Natasha Bertrand, a former reporter at Politico whose stances on the Steele dossier and Hunter's laptop remain controversial blunders that she hasn't disowned to any significant extent, was being promoted to correspondent.

"In her new role, the network said in a media release, Bertrand will be "covering national security, the news organization announced today. She is based in Washington, DC and will continue to focus on national security and politics across CNN’s platforms.". . .

Opinion | How Did So Much of the Media Get the Steele Dossier So Wrong? - The New York Times (nytimes.com)   . . ."So his alleged sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels, who appeared in pornographic films, became the backup for the dossier’s claim of a lurid round with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.

 “The count is growing higher and higher of porn actresses,” Slate’s editor at the time, Jacob Weisberg, said on MSNBC, adding, “The whole picture starts to be more plausible, the picture that’s painted in the dossier.” Natasha Bertrand, who was then a staff writer at The Atlantic, chimed in, “It makes it much more plausible that Trump did go to Russia and he did have these kinds of sexual escapades with prostitutes.”

The dossier’s credibility suffered a grievous blow in December 2019, when an investigation by the Department of Justice’s inspector general found that F.B.I. investigations “raised doubts about the reliability of some of Steele’s reports.”