A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
At a Thursday afternoon press conference, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he would recuse himself from any investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign. In the wake of that announcement, conservative media outlets continued to defend Sessions. LifeZette, for example, ran a lengthy summary of an interview between Sessions and Tucker Carlson under the headline, “Sessions: Recusal ‘Not an Admission of Any Wrongdoing.’ ”
Many publications also took up a new line of commentary, arguing that liberals were connected to Russia too. Both Breitbart and the Daily Caller ran articles pointing out that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak appeared on the guest list of the Obama White House at least 22 times. After citing the years of those visits and the administration figures who hosted Kislyak, the Daily Caller wrote, “The Obama visitor logs are known to be an imperfect record of how often someone visits the White House—since scheduled, but unfulfilled appointments are often included—but the logs make clear that Kislyak was welcome at 1600 Penn on more than a handful of occasions.”
Fox News took up a similar line in “Sessions Not Alone: Russian Ambassador Also Met With Numerous Democrats.” As that article acknowledged, “The central issue dogging Sessions is not so much that he met with the ambassador but that he claimed during his confirmation hearing he had no ‘communications’ with Russian officials during his time as a Trump campaign surrogate.” Nevertheless, the piece went on to cite a number of other Democratic senators who had met with the ambassador, including, “Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.”
Gateway Pundit zeroed in on another senator, publishing a post on Thursday evening titled, “Flashback: Chuck Schumer Meets With Putin in New York City.” “Where’s the outrage?” that post asked, adding, “Democrat Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer continues to push the Russia conspiracy. But it was Schumer who met with Putin in New York City – not Trump.”
On Friday morning, the Drudge Report linked to that article in its prime home page slot. Soon after, Trump tweeted about Schumer’s “ties to Russia and Putin.”
Posts promoting allegations of Democratic party hypocrisy over Russia were widely shared from conservative Facebook pages:
