How Democrat Activists Conned The Country By Pretending To Be ‘Journalists’

The Federalist ^ | 10/16/2026 | Hans Mahncke

[Kid Shelleen]

On Oct. 14, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reported that FBI Director Kash Patel had secretly traveled to Russia for meetings with the Russian security service, the FSB. The sensational story was attributed to two anonymous sources and immediately suggested that the FBI director was involved in some sinister dealings with Moscow. ---snip--- Russiagate remains the prime example of how this machinery operates. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manufactured the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and used its contractors, Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, to disguise its allegations as independent intelligence. That much is now widely understood, at least among conservatives. What remains far less understood is that major media organizations were themselves integral to the operation.

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TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: arrestkendilanian; cia; ciadisinfo; ciashillkendilanian; couptruth; deepstatetruth; dilanianiscia; liberaltruth; msmtruth; operationmockingbird

[Flaming Conservative]

Is Hans just now discovering this? Paging Walter Duranty.

[KC_Conspirator]

MS Later is a joke. The whole network should have their license pulled.

[Tench_Coxe]

"There was just one problem. Patel was in Virginia, attending an event at Liberty University. Within hours, Dilanian was forced to retract his report."

In other words, they outright lied, hoping the story would circulate in the news cycle before the truth was found out.

[Terry L Smith]

To cockup a movie script line...a journalist puts himself as the hero of the story, whereas a reporter is interested in just the facts.

[PGR88]

This is a succinct history of the whole Russia-gate fraud, and how the deep-state and corrupt media conduct their “wrap up scandals”

[TexasFreeper2009]

Journalism schools were taken over DECADES ago.

Ever wondered why nearly 100% of news stories dont mention the race of the perp (if they are black) or that they are Muslim (if the incident is terrorism related)

That is because all journalism students are taught that past reporting is part of what created and sustained racism, and that it is their ethical duty when they become journalists themselves to not perpetuate racism by how they report the news.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

The real question is how they conned Free Republic by pretending to be Freepers.

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

The entire democRAT/DemoKKKrat/Marxist/Leninist/Maoist/Socialist/MSLSD/Drive-By Media

is a con.

“How can we fool them today” is their motto and mission statement.

Their pronouns are ME, MYSELF & I

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

Great article. I’d have to reead it closer, but for complete historical context, I think two points are missing. First is the time 15-20 years ago when CBS announced it was killing off it’s history-making News Division, and rolling its functions into the entertainment division. Henceforth, “it’s just entertainment, tweak the story any way you like.”

Second, around 2016, as a result of Trump running, one or the other news media giants announced it was abandoning its old policy of telling “both sides of the story” and would now just tell the “correct version.”