A few days after counsel Robert Mueller announced an indictment against several Russians for meddling in the 2016 election, President Donald Trump latched into Mueller’s finding that Russians organized and promoted anti-Trump rallies after the election.
Trump attacked the media for covering the rallies and appeared to suggest that cable news networks may have known the rallies were organized by foreigners posing as Americans on social media.
Bad ratings @CNN & @MSNBC got scammed when they covered the anti-Trump Russia rally wall-to-wall. They probably knew it was Fake News but, because it was a rally against me, they pushed it hard anyway. Two really dishonest newscasters, but the public is wise!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 21, 2018
Trump’s tweet came after conservative news outlets pointed out on Monday that the cable news networks covered a Nov. 12 of an anti-Trump rally. The conservative site NewsBusters first highlighted this, and the Daily Caller then picked it up.
Mueller’s indictment found that Russians promoted both a pro-Trump rally and an anti-Trump protest on the same day in November as part of the effort to sow discord in the U.S. elections process.