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With whistleblower ‘protection’ fake news, media does Trump another favor
By Sohrab Ahmari September 30, 2019 | 3:23pm | Updated

Even on its own terms, the media’s Get Trump project has proved a monumental failure. If the blob of blue-checkmark Twitterati wanted to help President Trump portray the latest impeachment push as a partisan witch hunt, they couldn’t have done a better job than they are now.

Consider the latest example: On Sunday, CBS’ venerable “60 Minutes” program reported on Twitter that “the government whistleblower who set off the impeachment inquiry of President Trump is under federal protection because they fear for their safety.” The explosive news seemed to vindicate his opponents’ darkest fantasies about the president: Of course Trump would physically threaten a whistleblower, much as the Corleone family would deal with a snitch.

“The whistleblower is being protected from the executive branch of his or her own government,” fretted Aaron Rupar of Vox. “That’s not quite right,” The Atlantic’s David Frum chimed in. “The whistleblower is also at risk from the private citizen supporters the president incites to violence.”

And so on until — oops: As Politico reported, “an attorney for the whistleblower in the Trump-Ukraine scandal said Sunday that CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ had ‘completely misinterpreted’ a document from his legal group, after the news outlet tweeted that the whistleblower was now under federal protection.”

It turns out the lawyers had merely asked Joseph Maguire, the director of national intelligence, for “appropriate resources to ensure [their client’s] safety.” That’s emphatically not the same thing as the whistleblower enjoying federal protection.

Why does the difference matter? To claim, as CBS did, that the whistleblower is under protection suggests that some federal agency had already assessed his security needs and determined that he faces significant enough threats to justify such protection. A request isn’t the same thing as a request granted.

The whistleblower’s safety concerns may be legitimate. Or they might be politically motivated, aimed at shielding him and his claims from scrutiny. After all, as the intelligence community inspector general noted, the whistleblower has a “political bias” in favor of one of Trump’s rivals. It isn’t unreasonable to suspect that a political actor might use unfounded concerns about “safety” as a shield and a sword.

By jumping the gun and misreporting the whistleblower’s request, CBS disserved its audience. The outlet also lent more credence to the Trumpian belief that the Democratic-media complex will play dirty if it means getting their man. Add this to the New York Times’ all-but-retracted story about a new accuser against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; MSNBC’s retracted story about Trump’s financial arrangements with Russian oligarchs; BuzzFeed’s debunked story about Trump suborning perjury; ABC’s retracted story about Trump ordering a subordinate to make contact with the Kremlin during his campaign; and on and on.

Take in this enormous pile of fake news, and it soon becomes clear that the media are their own worst enemy — and Trump’s unwitting best friends.

Sohrab Ahmari is The Post’s op-ed editor.

https://nypost.com/2019/09/30/with-whistleblower-protection-fake-news-media-does-trump-another-favor/