MIKA BRZEZINSKI (CO-HOST): Jeremy Peters, your latest piece for The New York Times is entitled “A Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorist, a False Tweet and a Runaway Story.” Tell us about what you're reporting on.
JEREMY PETERS: Well, one of the more interesting developments in the Comey/Russia investigation denial on the right is this weaponization of fake news. And this is something that we may kind of tend to brush off to the side and say, “Oh, it's just a bunch of crazy people on Facebook sharing these stories,” but actually it's a much broader and more important and effective phenomenon than you realize because where you have in this one instance here is this guy by the name of Jack Posobiec, who probably many of us have never even heard of, but with this one fake tweet about what Comey said in the hearing, Jack Posobiec set off this chain reaction in the fake news disinformation ecosystem that basically led to a story that would appear on Fox News and be read aloud by Rush Limbaugh that said Comey exonerates Donald Trump. Now, Comey had done no such thing. He was responding to this question in his testimony back in May about whether or not the attorney general or the Justice Department had ever asked him to stop an investigation. Comey said no. So these right-wing bloggers and pro-Trump activists -- and they're not shy, by the way, about being pro-Trump, and that's what's interesting here, is they are working on his behalf to undermine the mainstream media story line, the truth about these stories involving Trump and the investigation.
JOE SCARBOROUGH (CO-HOST): Why do some of these radio hosts follow these people down the rabbit trail? The rat hole?
PETERS: Because it's what they want to believe. That's what's so, I think, so strange and unsettling about all of this, Joe, is that there is such a willingness on the right to discredit and excuse away any type of criticism of Donald Trump or any kind of culpability that he or his associates may have in this Russia investigation that they will latch on to almost anything. You were asking earlier about will conservatives ever come around and say something's amiss here. This guy has really gone off the tracks. Well, not when they're clinging to information like this, fake discredited stories, and that's what you're seeing. It's a huge disinformation campaign.
