Liberals tripped over themselves to push a story about Russian bounties that can't be corroborated[0] and that was criticized by people like Glenn Greenwald, hardly a right-winger. It's fine to hate Trump I guess and if you think the ends justify the means, that's your right, but it's demonstrably true that people who in normal years would be highly skeptical of anything coming out of the intelligence agencies are eager to promote anything that makes the Trump administration look bad.
Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad.
Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true.
Anyone claiming the Russian bounty program was a certainty or a hoax is misinformed. Some credible agencies had a high degree of confidence; others, such as the NSA, disagreed [1]. “Can’t be corroborated” reflects the NSA’s view, but not the CIA or NIC’s, who found it “credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of certainty.”
I can't even say this without sounding like a "whataboutism," but the main material support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, for the last nineteen years, roughly two decades of war, has been Pakistan, and we've done NOTHING about it but keep shoveling them money in exchange for the transit rights to ship material through to support our troops in a rearguard fight against their minions.
WE are paying people to kill US troops by ignoring what Pakistan does with the money.
And that they were harboring Osama Bin Laden for a decade.
But we need to chase rumors that Russia does the same. Yeah, right.
Maybe we need to stop sending troops to countries where they're not accomplishing anything besides being hostages?
The tone of the initial NYT story that broke the scoop certainly didn't reflect any of this uncertainty. Would have been a good idea for them to check in with the NSA or the DoD first!
Edit: Another aspect of this story is that it was pushed after bipartisan support for exiting Afghanistan was emerging. So basically this "information" was put out there to keep us in a war no one likes and the putatively anti-war party eagerly promoted it because Trump is bad.
Edit 2: I fully expected this comment to be downvoted, but I hope some of you downvoters will engage with my argument in the replies, since most of you have no argument against my claims, which are factually true.
[0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/top-pentagon-officials-russi...