I’ll give Tapper credit for one thing. CNN was supposedly approached by Steele directly in 2016, and they refused to run the story because they couldn’t confirm it.
That’s a bit like giving a guy credit for not helping a buddy rob a bank even though he doesn’t turn him in and then perjures himself giving his buddy an alibi.
This email suggests that wouldn’t be the reason why they wouldn’t have directly published it.
Maybe, but in this email exchange and his position in Jan. 2017 Tapper is actually much worse, in the sense that he wants CNN to be able to report on rumors and “allegations” without needing to produce any evidence at all. So Tapper/CNN’s position seemed to be that they would use the fraudulent “hook” of Comey briefing Trump (an extremely partial, one-sided briefing as we later learned), while not needing to verify anything about the memos.
At least Smith/Buzzfeed, as bad as they are, put the fraudulent document into the public arena.... which helped with the unraveling of the entire hoax, even if two years later it is taking much too long to play out.