In most cases you would be right, but this is a tectonic shift in the way they have approached this situation. Their mantra this whole time has been "No collusion No collusion. We had nothing to do with the Russians at all" and now out of nowhere with seemingly no change in the investigation (that we know of) its now "Well we didn't do anything, but even if we did its not illegal so its not a big deal".
That to me says that something has happened behind the scenes that we the public don't know about yet. I don't know what that could be, but it seems rather strange to change their tune like they have out of nowhere like this. I am gonna be very interested to see if one of the usual suspects has a story that breaks sometime this week.
Okay, but we
had this exact same rationale during the lead-up to President Trump's meeting with N. Korea, timeline as follows:
Trump says "we gonna meet with those N. Koreans". Media mostly mocks him and brushes it aside.
Trump makes genuine headway. Media wrings their hands and goes "but will it happen?"
N. Korea blusters about maybe not meeting.
Trump says "maybe we won't meet, then". Media melts down and wonders if Trump can handle the situation.
Within less than 24 hours, N. Korea publicly states "please! We will meet any time, any place".
Media shuffles their feet and returns to pointing fingers at Russia for the world's ills.
I mean, c'mon. I'm not saying this is the same situation. But it follows the exact pattern.
I'd argue the bait-and-switch for Supreme Justice appointment is another similar example. Media totally fell for it and spent all their time wringing their hands over the
wrong appointee, which really hamstrung any genuine efforts to paint Trump's
actual appointment in a bad light.
I suppose there is another side to it as well: if Trump is baiting his opponents to condemn collusion and then word comes out that some Democrat colluded, that'd be a pretty hard reversal to take.