You may remember that Paul Simon sang "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover."  When will The New York Times write an editorial called "50 ways for experts to lose their expertise"?

It turns out that everyone was lying, including those 50 experts who called the laptop Russian misinformation.  Can't wait to see one of the 50 explain it to Representative Jim Jordan now that Hunter Biden admitted that the laptop is his.

Wouldn't you love to see the Trump-Biden second debate now that we know that it was his laptop?  As you may remember, President Trump kept bringing up Hunter and Biden to the experts.

In other words, the whole Russia-Trump story, from collusion to the laptop to Hamilton 68, was fake.  Roger Kimball gets it right:

So here we are. The entire "Russia Collusion" hoax was dreamed up, paid for, and set into action by Hillary Clinton's campaign. It aimed at and succeeded in hobbling Trump's first term, weighing it down with the $40 million fishing expedition conducted by senile former FBI chief Robert "What's Fusion GPS?" Mueller.

And now we learn that all the ambient static about the Russkies are coming! the Russkies are coming! was similarly fabricated out of whole cloth. Here's how it worked: Hamilton 68, a "research institute," invents claims about Russian bots. Reporters then target public enemies like Devin Nunes, Mike Flynn, Tulsi Gabbard, or Donald Trump with the claims and, as Taibbi says, "headlines flow." 

The scam, he concludes, "needed just three elements: credentials of someone like 'former FBI agent' [Clint] Watts, the absence of any semblance of fact-checking, and the silence of companies like Twitter."

And let me add a fourth element: too many media outlets invested in Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Let me repeat that this whole lie needed a megaphone, and journalists looking for ratings were the perfect choice.

What happens now?  I don't know, but it would help if a few media sources would look at the camera and admit that they were wrong and too invested in the Biden candidacy.  We can't redo that second debate, but we could admit that U.S. voters were not told the truth.

So how do the experts get their expertise back?  For starters, they should admit that they were political hacks, not experts.

PS: Check out my blog for posts, podcasts, and videos.

Image: Public Domain Pictures.