After Rachel Maddow's report yesterday about the incomplete transcript and video of the Putin press conference, Washington Post reporter Philip Bump leapt to the defense of the White House. While I'm sure he would claim it's a defense of the truth, I have issues with his explanation and omission of some key answers.

According to Bump, this was all just an inadvertent error, because the Washington Post transcript and video was wrong too, and it was all because the sound shifted from one side to the other.

Never mind that there was complete video being played ad nauseam on the networks. Never mind that this was a huge issue on that day, at that time. Never mind that the story at The Atlantic was published for a week, or that it was on the Maddow Blog for a week while no one fixed their video or audio. Never mind all that, because Mr. Bump has decided that Rachel Maddow has cooked up a "conspiracy theory."

How convenient. By kicking Maddow in the teeth while ignoring the fact that there was a convenient omission of a key question on the official White House historical record as well as the Washington Post and apparently also Bloomberg Politics, Bump ran successful interference for the White House.

Here's a fact: It is inexcusable that ANY official record maintained by the White House as a historical record is incomplete and especially with regard to something as sensitive as a question and an answer about Russian attacks on our elections and Vladimir Putin's obvious preference for Donald Trump. Inexcusable. You can attribute it to a mistake or intent to mislead, but either way, it's unacceptable.

They had a FULL WEEK to fix it. The story was in the wild for a full week. No one did.

I hope Bump's White House access was worth that hit job, a hit job that flack outlets like The Daily Caller are calling "fake news," as if they'd recognize "fake news" if they saw it on their front page every day for five years.