The release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe report has some journalists in apology mode, saying they paid too little attention to Mitt Romney’s 2012 observations about the Kremlin’s threat to U.S. interests.
Back in 2012, Senator Romney. R-Utah, was running for president. And he tagged Russia as the United States’ greatest geopolitical foe.
Back then, Romney “was broadly mocked” over that position, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted on Friday. “I was among reporters who should have given it more weight.”
New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow also joined in. So did Washington Examiner correspondent David M. Drucker, who said he wanted to “reset” his 2017 op-ed titled, “Romney was right about Russia.”
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People on Twitter panned journalists for issuing those statements, suggesting they were disingenuous.
Their comments came as Romney caught heat for criticizing the president over claims made in the special counsel’s report. “I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President,” he said in a statement tweeted Friday.
That brought a Saturday tweet from Trump, saying that if Romney had “spent the same energy fighting Barack Obama as he does fighting Donald Trump, he could have won the race (maybe)!”
Both Democrats and Republicans have seized on the report and what its findings meant for American democracy. While the administration celebrated the fact that no one helped Russia meddle in the 2016 election, Democrats have emphasized the extent to which Russian interference did occur.
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Fox News contributor Donna Brazile called the report a “wake-up call.” “We had a foreign power, another government that was interfering in our election,” said Brazile, who served as interim chairwoman for the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
