As Cooper noted, for months, many Trump supporters worried that there might be substance to the Russia-collusion charges. Democrats insisted there was. News media like the Times and CNN ignored or ridiculed efforts by the likes of House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes to show there was nothing there.

Nunes was right, as became apparent when special counsel Robert Mueller admitted in his report that he had no evidence of collusion. But the Times and other papers didn’t return the Pulitzers they won for their Russia-collusion stories.

The Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, acknowledged in an angry newsroom meeting: “The day Bob Mueller walked off the witness stand . . . our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, ‘Holy s- - -, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.’ ” As a result, “We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed. I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years.”

“A little tiny bit flat-footed,” translated into English, means “dead wrong.”