Not yet fully pivoting to trumped up “obstruction” fake news, the Demo/MSM propaganda machine is back on the trail of the Trump/Putin collusion fake news this week, trickling out new evidence daily to keep Trump on the ropes and media advertising rates up. They seem hell-bent on destroying any shred of credibility they have left in an effort to take down President Donald Trump.

Case in point, the unfolding “scandal” involving Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney. The Cliff’s Notes version is this: In June 2016, Trump Jr., son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, and campaign manager Paul Manafort met with a Russian attorney purporting to have dirt on Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Trump Jr. said that the meeting ended less than half an hour later because the Russian’s comments were “vague, ambiguous and made no sense.” The discussion even moved on to sanctions and adoption.

Despite the breathless accusations by The New York Times, the paper can’t even get its own story straight. The Times contradicts itself in a single article, first saying, “Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy…” but just a few paragraphs later noting “it is unclear whether Mr. Goldstone had direct knowledge of the origin of the damaging material. One person who was briefed on the emails said it appeared that he was passing along information that had been passed through several others.” As National Review’s Jim Geraghty questions, “If he may not have known the ‘direct origin’ of the material, how did he know it was ‘part of a Russian government effort’?”

Regardless of how Trump Jr.‘s friend portrayed the purpose of the meeting in helping to set it up, the Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, now denies she claimed she had or said anything about Clinton: “I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that.”

Trump Jr. also now says, “In retrospect, I probably would have done things a little differently.” However, he added, “This is before the Russia mania. This is before they were building it up in the press.” Hindsight is 20/20, so he’s got a point about the timing during the heat of the campaign. “For me,” he continued, “this was opposition research that had … maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about that were probably underreported for years, not just during the campaign. So, I think I wanted to hear it out. But, really, it went nowhere and it was apparent that that wasn’t what the meeting was actually about.”

My attempt at collusion with a hostile foreign government failed to yield results may be the least satisfying defense ever, but it’s also a long way from evidence of any actual collusion.

In an effort at transparency, Don Jr. this week released the full transcript of the emails in question. Contrast that to Hillary Clinton, who set up a private email server to secretly conduct government business away from the prying eyes of Congress and FOIA requests and then, when subpoenaed, cherry-picked the emails she would release, handed over printed copies (that could not be easily searched, and from which meta-data was stripped), deleted the rest, used BleachBit to render any data unrecoverable, destroyed her phones with hammers, and then lied about it all. The media reaction to Hillary’s actions? Yaaawwnnn… nothing to see here.

A key question — does anyone think that Chelsea Clinton would have hesitated for a New York second if a good friend called her and said a Russian lawyer had dirt on Donald Trump? You know, like the fake Russian dossier that set off the whole Russian fake news cycle — with the help of James Comey.

But back to Trump Jr. Where is the collusion? There’s quid quo pro without the “quid.”

After all the hysteria, the Times anticlimactically admits, “There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.”

At this point, it appears the only thing Trump Jr. is guilty of is colossally poor judgment. As Jonathan Turley of George Washington University School of Law stated, “There is no crime in listening to people who say that they have incriminating information on a political opponent, even a foreigner. … If notice of a possible crime or information is now deemed as a thing of tangible value under federal campaign laws, the wide array of exchanges on behalf of campaign would be implicated. Indeed, major free speech and association issues would be raised. … However, these possible criminal charges are radically over-extended on the facts that we currently have.”

Power Line’s Scott Johnson summarizes, “There is no evidence that the Russian lawyer had damaging information to deliver… that the Russian lawyer delivered damaging information… that Trump Jr. asked the Russian lawyer to come back with damaging information… that Trump Jr. would have promised the Russian lawyer anything if she had agreed to return with damaging information… that Trump Jr. came away from the meeting with anything but disappointed expectations.”

Does Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who somebody else claimed might have some information on Hillary Clinton matter to anyone outside the Beltway who is not a first-tier stakeholder in the effort to undermine Donald Trump’s agenda, or media principals who need to churn news to sell advertising?

Further undermining the credibility of the media is the fact that, not only do they go after Trump with the vigor of a rabid dog, but they have ignored, soft-peddled, or dismissed similar or worse actions by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

For example, how much time did the press spend on revelations the DNC colluded with Ukrainian government officials to sabotage Trump? Or on the revelation that, as secretary of state, Hillary approved a business deal giving a Russian energy company 20% of the U.S.’s uranium reserves, which coincided with Bill Clinton getting paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow, and millions of dollars being donated by Uranium One’s chairman to the Clinton Foundation? Nor did they care when the Clintons raked in millions more from Russian oligarchs, or when Hillary’s top aide, Huma Abedin, was doing favors for a Russia-connected group while at the State Department.

Regarding the 2016 presidential election, the good news is that we did not get yet another polished, poll-tested, packaged politician. The bad news is… we didn’t get a polished, poll-tested, packaged politician.

Donald Trump has not only broken the mold of the typical politician, he has shattered the pieces, pulverized them, and carried them away on the winds of his Twitter feed. He has Democrats, their Leftmedia colluders and progressive foot soldiers losing their minds in a frothing, incoherent rage, utterly destroying their credibility and common sense. For those long tormented by the dishonest, mean-spirited, even hateful portrayal of conservatives and Republicans by the Left, it is entertaining to watch.

As for President Trump, he seems to relish walking that tightrope, tempting and tormenting his detractors, stoking the rage of those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yet that carries with it its own danger, in that the media chaos obscures a very impressive list of Trump accomplishments. Decorum and stability are not bad things.

At the same time, the Founding Fathers enshrined a free press into the First Amendment as a watchdog against government corruption and abuse. If the credibility of the press is destroyed, even if by their own dishonest actions, that should give all who love freedom cause for concern, regardless of the party of the president in power.

So the key question is this: When did The New York Times have this information? What did they know and when did they know it? That’s the question that really underlies their subversive motivation.

And that’s the bottom line: The most dangerous collusion is that between leftist Democrats and the mainstream media.