Any new product being launched into today's mass market typically comes with an expensive marketing campaign which will eventually prove decisive regarding the product's ultimate success or failure. Much time and energy will be invested to make sure that the new product is appealing to potential buyers, because without the enthusiasm and buzz generated by the initial buyers, known as early adopters, the product will most likely fail.

The fancy new product being launched into today's political landscape is Robert Mueller's report on President Trump and Russian collusion. There has been an avalanche of daily media reports alleging all kinds of 'collusion' and illegalities by the Trump campaign. 'Russian meddling' has received more media coverage than any of the Trump initiatives such as taxes, ISIS, immigration, North Korea, and so on. Prominent Democrats like Adam Schiff repeatedly claimed to have damning evidence of collusion, without ever producing any. How many times were we made to listen to people on the left warning us that the walls were closing in on the Trump presidency?

Attorney General William Barr's summary letter released to Congress stated clearly that there was no Russian collusion. What is now becoming clear to a lot of independents and Democrats is that the liberal media were the early adopters of the collusion narrative, choosing to be enthusiastic advocates of a fantasy instead of acting as investigative journalists. People are beginning to understand the tremendous damage the media did to our country when they chose to be a mouthpiece for a hoax. The truth of the collusion story has been ignored by our media and the Democrats for over two years, even though a cursory examination would have allowed one to see that from the very onset of Mueller's Special Counsel that 'there is no there there.”

Are there going to be any consequences for these duplicitous actors? My suggestion for the beginning of a proportionate consequence scenario would be for conservative media to identify these perpetrators as Russian Hoax Dupes or Russian Hoax Democrats, RHD for short. Any time one of these people makes a public statement for the next two years, let's attach the initials RHD to their name, so we don't forget who they are and the serious damage they've done to our democracy.

If the bad actors don't like their new brand, they can repair their self-inflicted reputational damage by going back to being true investigative journalists, and/or politicians who put America first. Or will conservatives and Republicans allow all this to wash away like we always do, telling ourselves it's water under the bridge and we just need to move on?