Legacy media outlets largely silent on Tulsi Gabbard’s bombshell Obama administration claims

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested last week that intelligence was “manufactured and politicized” by the most powerful people in the Obama administration in 2016 and Americans will finally learn the truth, but legacy media outlets didn’t take the announcement particularly seriously. 

On Friday, Gabbard declassified documents revealing “overwhelming evidence” that demonstrates how, after President Donald Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, then-President Barack Obama and his national security team laid the groundwork for what would be the years-long Trump–Russia collusion probe.

ABC News and NBC News failed to cover the story on-air through Sunday, according to a search of transcripts using Grabien Media.  

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CBS News addressed the story Sunday on “Face the Nation,” when anchor Margaret Brennan asked Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., if there is a “legal basis” for prosecution. Himes told CBS viewers that Gabbard peddled a “dangerous lie” that has no basis for prosecution. 

“When you start throwing around language like ‘treason,’ somebody will get hurt,” Himes said. “There is not a judge [in] the land that will treat this with anything other than laughter.” 

NewsBusters analyst Jorge Bonilla was stunned the story was only covered by one of the legacy Sunday public affairs programs after NBC’s “Meet the Press” and ABC’s “This Week” ignored it. 

“Rest assured, it wasn’t a bipartisan panel segment or an interview with Gabbard – but CBS’s Margaret Brennan bringing on the ranking House Intel Democrat in order to firefight the release and subsequent actions,” Bonilla wrote. 

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CNN mentioned the Gabbard bombshell twice from the time Fox News Digital first reported the news on Friday afternoon through Monday, the first time on Saturday morning and the second time on Monday’s installment of “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”

Tapper invited Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., to bash Gabbard’s report, insisting she was trying to get back into Trump’s good graces after initial intel reports watered down the effectiveness of Trump’s airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, while also trying to distract the country’s attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case. 

MSNBC, meanwhile, spent more time downplaying Gabbard’s report and similarly suggested Republicans are using it to distract from unflattering news. 

“The latest distraction comes from the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, who put out a baseless report Friday accusing the Obama administration of manufacturing intelligence that laid the groundwork for the FBI’s Russia probe into Trump,” MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin said. 

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John Brennan, Obama-era CIA director-turned-MSNBC analyst, told “Deadline: White House” host Nicolle Wallace on Monday that Gabbard’s report was “really troubling” and “very dangerous,” saying it “misrepresents in a wholesale manner what the intelligence community did” in 2016, adding that the “misrepresentations are ludicrous.” 

The New York Times ran the headline, “Gabbard Claims Obama Administration Tried to Undermine Trump in 2016” but put heavy focus on Democrats’ criticism of her report.

“Democrats denounced the effort as politically motivated, error-ridden and in contradiction with previous reviews of the assessment,” the Times wrote before citing Himes and top Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia.

The Washington Post waited until Monday evening to acknowledge Gabbard’s report, but only in a brief mention in an article about how Trump wants to “focus on anything else” as “MAGA world focuses on Epstein.”

Documents revealed that in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the intelligence community consistently assessed that Russia was “probably not trying… to influence the election by using cyber means.”

Documents shared by Gabbard’s office claimed that before the 2016 election, there was no evidence showing Russia tried to directly alter vote counts. However, members of the intelligence community later suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump win. Gabbard argued the narrative shift was politically motivated rather than based on new findings. 

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“Creating this piece of manufactured intelligence that claims that Russia had helped Donald Trump get elected contradicted every other assessment that had been made previously in the months leading up to the election that said exactly the opposite, that Russia had neither the intent nor the capability to try to ‘hack the United States election,’” Gabbard told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. 

“So, the effect of what President Obama and his senior national security team did was subvert the will of the American people, undermining our democratic republic and enacting what would be essentially a years-long coup against President Trump, who was duly elected by the American people.”

Evidence released by Gabbard’s office implicated Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, among others, in addition to the former president. Notably, Clapper and Brennan are now on-air analysts for CNN and MSNBC respectively. 

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Taylor Penley contributed to this report.