Walking it back

Ace of Spades writes today,

The Media Continues to Buy Into Any RussiaGate Hoax-Claim, No Matter How Implausible
—Ace of Spades
Yesterday's #FakeNews was a bombshell Guardian report that Paul Manafort had had "secret talks" with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in March 2016.

This is part of the FusionGPS narrative that there was "collusion" between Trump and Assange (who in turn, colluded with Russia) about the DNC hack.

Apparently, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Assange is a permanent guest, did not bother to have Paul Manafort sign the guest register, and this heavily-video-surveilled embassy had no videotape of his arrival. And no foreign intelligence agencies proffered any videotape of Manafort's visit.

After Wikileaks and Manafort completely denied the claim, and Wikileaks threatened to sue, The Guardian began stealth-editing the the story to walk it back, adding in #JustKidding words like "apparently" and "sources say" and changing verb tenses from simple declarative past to conditional would have past in order to signal a level of doubt and lack of verification that the original Fusion produced hit carefully researched piece lacked.

Read more here.