It would take an absolute fool to believe Trump colluded with the Russians, and I do not believe for 1 second that the “main stream” media hacks ever, ever, ever truly believed Trump was Putin’s puppet. They just talked the talk to fool the low info crowd that always blindly vote Dems for the “free stuff”. To believe they were simply reporting what they honestly believed would indicate these people have a little integrity. Nah....simply impossible for me to get my mind around that possibility.
It also takes an absolute fool NOT to shove the "Russia collusion" thing right back down the sleazy democrats' throats, since they are obviously the ones who were doing the colluding. No way in hell would Putin and Co have preferred a strong-on-defense team like Trump-Pence over a pathetically weak, even treasonous, democrat one. See my FR profile page for much more on all this.