Forget Dan Rather and his Microsoft Word document from the Vietnam War. Fake anti-Trump documents are a big business.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow went on the air to warn other lefties of the obvious.
MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on Thursday revealed what she claims to be a forged National Security Agency document sent to her and warned that it could be part of a larger ploy to dupe and discredit journalists reporting on the Russia meddling in the 2016 election story.
"Somebody for some reason appears to be shopping a fairly convincing fake NSA document that purports to directly implicate somebody from the Trump campaign in working with the Russians on their attack on the election," Maddow said. "It is a forgery. Let me caveat that. It is either a forgery, or every national security officials we consulted about it is wrong."
It's not a conspiracy. Except of the very obvious kind.
Lefty greed for a document that will bring down Trump led to a boom market in exactly such fake documents. BuzzFeed reported on a forged anti-Trump document that was sold for $9,000. It hinted at a much larger market.
Since Trump’s election, a spate of people, often with financial motives, have been peddling dirt on the president. One anonymous tipster, for example, asked $15,000 for “credible” videos of women telling “erotic” tales of Trump at nightclubs in various countries. A high-profile private investigator in Los Angeles wanted $2 million in “funding” for what he described as “game-changing information” about Trump and his wife, Melania. In both cases, BuzzFeed News rejected the offers.
Not everybody does. Some lefty activists buy them and then circulate them to get the "truth" out. That is what Maddow ended up with. But instead of dealing with the fact that the left has unleashed a plague of conspiracy theories to explain Hillary's defeat, Maddow dug into another conspiracy theory. Her fake document was yet another plot to undermine the anti-Trump conspiracy theories.
And that is exactly how conspiracy theorists react when their evidence is discredited. The discrediting is proof of the conspiracy.