This week, BuzzFeed News published a story about Michael Cohen and Russia that seemed like it could be the revelation that finally brought down President Donald Trump. Then, in a rare public statement, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office threw cold water on the whole thing.
Or as Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost put it, “The details were so sketchy that even Mueller’s team had to be like, ‘OK, fake news.”
“How disappointing was that?” Jost asked. “You know how many suburban moms had to retract their group texts to the family saying, ‘We got him!’ The crazy part is that the White House is now celebrating that Mueller disputed this one part of the investigation while there are like 100 other crimes on the table. If you got tested for every STD and your doctor said, ‘The good news is you don’t have chlamydia,’ you wouldn’t say, ‘That’s all I need to hear, no condoms for this guy!’”
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After the Special Counsel’s office said that BuzzFeed’s “description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith stood by his site’s reporting and urged Mueller’s team to “make clear what he’s disputing.”
“Look, BuzzFeed, we all think it’s great that you want to help,” Michael Che added, “but this is not what we need from you. Y’all are BuzzFeed, you do memes and lists.”
Che compared the situation to everyone’s aunt who has roaches and every Thanksgiving asks what she should bring and you say ice. “You bring the ice because we don’t want to be picking ‘raisins’ out of the turkey,” he said. “That’s you, BuzzFeed, you bring the ice. As Dr. King once said, ‘Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes you are used to.”
“There’s no shame in that, we all play a role. Look, sometimes kids come up to me and they’ll say, ‘Michael Che, I get all my news from you.’ And I say, ‘Don’t do that.’ I bring the ice.”
