In All-Time Loathsome Podcast, Reporters Cheerfully Admit Screwing Up Russiagate

Ben Smith and Ezra Klein yuk it up on Russiagate

In late 2018 and early 2019, before the release of the Mueller report, I sometimes felt fear that if I didn’t get out of the legacy press soon, I might go on a tri-state killing spree, ending up a young father gunned down on the Taconic Parkway. I thought those feelings were past, but a clip of Ezra Klein chuckling to former Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith about Russiagate brought them all back:

Smith, whose decision to publish the loony Steele Dossier in full despite obvious factual problems struck me as nuts at the time, and later doubled down on the decision multiple times (including in a long Atlantic piece in 2023), now smiles and speaks of regrets. Echoing former New York Times editor Dean Bacquet, who after the collapse of the Mueller probe complained of pressure on Russia from “our readers who want Donald Trump to go away,” Smith explained Buzzfeed’s predicament:

A lot of our readers felt, and a lot of Democrats felt, like, there’s no way this guy was legitimately elected. There are two theories. One, it was Facebook. Two it was Russia. And lots of media energy went into chasing those two things. The White House felt totally under siege from, like, that set of questions. I think I have regrets about that in retrospect…

Smith was speaking on his own “Mixed Signals” podcast. Guest and author Klein, whose current hit book Abundance enumerates the many things besides galactic media misses that contributed to “the rise of Trumpism,” grinned and asked: