It's hard not to be angry reading this. Some journalists knew everything in this article long ago: how damning the report was; how much it missed; most importantly, what it means to not back down from a tyrant. But those who failed, failed. Now a bestseller will tell us about it. https://twitter.com/CarolLeonnig/status/1308043306211762178

PS/ When the report came out, it was used as a weapon—for a year—gainst those who'd been chronicling Trump's perfidy. And media let that happen. Now—mirabile dictu!—media will discover, just in time to hawk a new bestseller, that the folks it said were wrong were right all along.

PS2/ The Trump era has seen both the best *and* the worst post-WWII journalism. I compiled the best journalism in the Proof series. The worst journalism chased Trump scandals from miles behind—for years—while casually tarnishing the reputation of anyone who was getting it right.

PS3/ The sad thing is, there's still a chance—pre-election—to do the right thing: for media to say that those it ridiculed were right from the start, and for media to recommend Americans read the work of those who don't have to apologize now for screwing up *because they didn't*.

PS4/ Look at it from this standpoint: if there's an Andrew Weissman out there who can write a bestseller by saying that he failed at his job, there must be a person or group of folks out there who did *not* fail at what they were doing and can be equally attended to by the media.

PS5/ This only applies, of course, if media just wants the truth out there. If, instead, what media wants is for us to ping-pong between partial and failed reports of what Trump has done, it should just keep doing what it's doing, which is painting a *totally incoherent* picture.

PS6/ I wrote a thread a couple weeks ago explaining that Donald Trump's belief that Vladimir Putin had given him $54 million in 2008 as a way of rescuing him from financial distress—with Putin thereafter promising multi-billion dollar tower deals—explains Putin's allure to Trump.

PS7/ Media decided that that analysis, though correct, should be ignored in favor of a thousand articles falsely telling Americans we've no idea what financial relationship Donald Trump has with Vladimir Putin. And there's one thing about that media rejection that makes no sense:

PS8/ What makes no sense is that the journalist and lawyer U.S. media insisted on ignoring has published more bestsellers on Donald Trump's foreign policy than any author in the United States. There was no reason for media to ignore my books because my books feature *their* work.

PS9/ I was a regular on CNN until the moment I published my first bestseller about Trump. Then CNN ghosted me. MSNBC invited me on 12 times and canceled 12 times. The Rachel Maddow Program followed me for years then unfollowed me just as soon as Proof of Corruption was published.

PS10/ My point is that media doesn't act like it wants to get to the bottom of what Trump has done—and it's participating in this conspicuously weird flailing and failing at a time when Trump is routinely declaring the media needs him even more than he needs it. Maybe he's right?

PS11/ I'm not necessarily saying that media is deliberately failing in the Trump era, I'm simply saying that it is deliberately trying to destroy the reputation of anyone who appears to have done accurate and damning research on Donald Trump. And I don't know why in hell that is.

PS12/ The next bestseller that media is going to tell America to chase is a book detailing the failures of the Mueller investigation. But there's a bestseller on bookstands now that takes the more typical approach: revealing what Trump actually did wrong. Media is silent on that.

PS13/ Do I have a theory on the inexplicable conduct of media in ignoring, say, its own past reporting on Trump's collusion with China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Kremlin agents formerly in the Ukrainian government, the Maduro government in Venezuela, and others? Yes.

PS14/ A working theory: just as it was revealed yesterday that McConnell would give up the Ginsburg seat if he had to do so to maintain his Senate majority, full-time media would give up the *country* if the alternative was acknowledging the ways in which journalism is changing.

PS15/ Media will be damned if it's going to let a non-fulltime journalist be part of media coverage in the Trump era.

Media will be damned if it lets "metajournalism" be popularized on its watch.

Media will be damned if it lets social media websites become social news websites.

PS16/ To be clear, this only applies to corporate media in the United States. The BBC has consistently wanted me as a political analyst. There's been no pushback to metajournalism in the UK. What's happening in America is about a rearguard action *US media* feels it is fighting.

PS17/ To some of you, this sounds bizarre. I'd say the same were I in your shoes. But remember, I know the names of every one of the thousands of major-media journalists who follow this feed. I know the ones who DM me. I know the ones who like—but can't risk retweeting—my tweets.

PS18/ What I'm telling you is that behind the scenes, media is at war with itself over its own uncertain future, and that that internal strife is hurting the country because our most important class of professionals in an emergency is more concerned about themselves than America.

PS19/ I can say this because I teach journalism at a flagship public research university but *don't* rely on journalism for my annual income. I can say what's going on and not worry about the recriminations, as frankly they've already been visited upon me and my work twenty-fold.

PS20/ In journalism, media has taken to demanding of the White House that it tell America its plan for the virus. Americans should be asking *media* what its plan is for exposing every course of Trump collusion rather than amping up books focused on the failures of investigators.

PS21/ Imagine if America asked just one key question of those who report on and review books: "Let's say I don't want to read books by former Trumpists cashing in, or by those who failed to investigate Trump properly. What book would I read to find out what Trump actually *did*?"

PS22/ I admire Peter Strzok and many in the FBI. But they failed America—and reading about the failures doesn't inform me. I admire Mueller and his team—but they failed America and reading about the failures doesn't inform me. Who's out there simply saying, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED?

PS23/ The answer is that hundreds of major-media reports from around the world—going back years—told us what happened. But once published they were ignored by all future journalists, and in any case were *never put in conversation with one another* so we could get a full picture.

PS24/ I set out—as a metajournalist—to find the best journalism of the Trump era and put it in conversation with itself between the covers of one book. But in doing so I stepped in the middle of a crisis in media about its own identity: a crisis that has nothing to do with Trump.

PS25/ Years from now—after it's too late—someone will try to do a retrospective on how we failed so badly in the Trump era. I'm telling you I had a front row seat for one of the chief failures, and it's not written about because those who would've written about it *committed* it.