In a discussion of the Russian social media attack on AM Joy today, Joy Reid asked Sarah Kendzior if she thinks the American media "needs to do some soul searching here."
"Yeah, sure. Because all of this information couldn't have survived if it didn't have the oxygen of media interest in the e-mails as a source of news and information. It wasn't just the conspiracy theorists that were hungry for the e-mails, it was us, the media," Kendzior said.
"Absolutely, they bear responsibility for that. A lot of this goes back to kind an obsession with Hillary Clinton with the false assumption that Hillary Clinton was bound to win the election, so they could spend their time on matters like the emails," she said.
"There were also financial improprieties that were happening with the Trump campaign that went unexamined. It doesn't take a genius to know that the media will bite on any kind of anti-Hillary Clinton story. So of course the Kremlin would peddle it in that way. It appeals to some of the Bernie Sanders voters and a lot of the public in general. So a smart move on their part, but the media should have paid more attention and done a better job."
"Is this the most successful intelligence operation in at least modern Kremlin history?" Reid asked Malcolm Nance.
"I'm tempted to say it's the most successful intelligence operation in the history of the world," Nance said. "And I'm a scholar in this and I know people who are very, very close to this who were real-time participants, and they say that the Russians apparently got their hooks into another country that has atomic bombs. But do you know who warned us? Hillary Clinton."
"She did. There is a lengthy video that you can find online," Reid said. "Nobody listened."
