By Robert Parry
Mainstream media and politicians are fond of denouncing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for trafficking in conspiracy theories and playing fast and loose with the facts, but some of them slide into the same patterns in attacking Trump or other demonized leaders, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
For instance, on ABC-TV’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos deployed a favorite “conspiracy theory” technique to accuse Putin of murdering journalists and then demanded that Trump explain why he would welcome praise from such a nefarious character. The technique was to cite a sizable number of “mysterious deaths” as proof that the conspiracy-theory target was guilty, even if there was no specific evidence in any individual case.
ABC-TV anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Stephanopoulos challenged Trump by asking: “When you were pressed about [Putin’s] killing of journalists, you said, ‘I think our country does plenty of killing too.’ What were you thinking about there? What killing sanctioned by the U.S. government is like killing journalists?”
Trump responded that “in all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that. I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that? Do you know the names of the reporters that he’s killed? Because I’ve been – you know, you’ve been hearing this, but I haven’t seen the name. Now, I think it would be despicable if that took place, but I haven’t’ seen any evidence that he killed anybody in terms of reporters.”
Stephanopoulos then backed up his murder charge against Putin by saying: “here’s what Mitt Romney tweeted about that. He said, there’s an important distinction here. Thug Putin kills journalists and opponents. Our presidents kill terrorists and enemy combatants.”
Trump answered back, “Does he [Romney] know…