Caught in the act.

Project Veritas, the undercover news group devoted to exposing how the establishment really thinks, got a CNN producer on camera to admit that the news network's coverage of the phony Trump colluded with Russia story is a cynical effort to whip up ratings, a false narrative promoted to make money, not a bid to report the news as a first draft of history.

Hence its wall-to-wall coverage of the Democrats' Russia narrative, despite there being no there there.  CNN has mentioned Russia 60,000 times since President Trump was inaugurated.

Here's the thinking behind the obsession that has occupied a huge part of the Trump presidency:

Speaking on camera, CNN supervising producer John Bonifield in Atlanta told Project Veritas:

Project Veritas: The more CNN is constantly like Russia this, Russia that...

Bonifield: Because it's ratings.

Project Veritas: Because it's ratings?

Bonifield: Our ratings are incredible right now.

After that, he admitted there was little substance to the story – the network was just catering to what its leftist viewers want to hear:

Project Veritas: But honestly you think the whole thing is just like [b-------].

[Bonifield:] It could be [b-------]. It's mostly [b-------] right now, like we don't have any big giant proof.

I just feel like they don't really have it, but they want to keep digging. So I think the president is probably right to say like 'ook you are witch-hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof.'

And why does he think it is a false narrative?  Because if there were any substance to the story...

Bonifield: It would leak. If it was something really good, it would leak.

...and...

Bonifield: The leaks keep leaking I just refuse to believe that if they had something really good like that, it wouldn't leak. (inaudible) I just feel like the[y] don't really have it but they want to keep digging.

Bonifield suggested that it is ratings-driven and it comes from the top.  The CEO of the network, he said, told the editors, "Good job covering the climate accords[,] but we are done[.  L]et's move back to Russia."

Bonifield also admitted he was cynical, and most of his colleagues were, too.  Questioned about journalistic ethics, he said with withering sarcasm: "That's adorable."

So what can be said is going on?  CNN is no longer a news network – it's more a whip-up-the-left operation, to make leftists feel good about their crazed anti-Trump suspicions.  It's ratings-driven, not news-driven.  And it's interfering with what President Trump was put into office by voters to do.

It's a strange beast these days.  It's not really about news.  It's about fake news.