CIA Says CNN’s Big American/Russian Spy Bombshell Story is Fake News

Another day, another blitheringly idiotic attempt by the mainstream media to take President Trump down a notch. This one comes courtesy of good old CNN, which still apparently hasn’t learned its lesson. Despite sinking to a distant third in the cable news ratings behind Fox News and MSNBC, Ted Turner’s former baby continues to peddle fake news as if their lives depended on it. This week, their big scoop was that the CIA had been forced to extract an American spy from Russia after President Trump recklessly gave away information that might have led to the agent’s death or imprisonment in Moscow.

The decision, according to CNN, “occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.”

Trump’s disclosure, CNN continued, “prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure.”

So, to put it in a nutshell, here’s what CNN would have us take away from the story: Trump, the blabbermouth, gave high-level Russians access to intelligence information that could have allowed them to uncover and expose our embedded spy. He either did this because he’s a loudmouth or because he’s actually working for the Russians, unbeknownst to the American people. And because he did this, the CIA discussed seriously the idea of withholding top secret intelligence from the President of the United States.

On Monday afternoon, the CIA hit back. Hard.

“CNN’s narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false,” the agency said in a statement. “Misguided speculation that the President’s handling of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence — which he has access to each and every day — drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate.”

Indeed, as The New York Times reported later in the same day, CNN was right about one thing and one thing only: the CIA did have to extract an American spy from Russia. They were just completely wrong about the reasons for doing so.

CIA officials, reported the Times, “made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia.”

Late 2016. Not only before Trump talked to those Russians in the Oval Office, but before he even assumed the presidency.

We’ve seen CNN engage in embarrassing, reckless reporting, but this is on another level.

Will the last remaining viewer please turn off the lights after leaving?