It does not bode well for the reconstitution of the mainstream media's reputation.

David Brooks is supposed to be an intelligent and balanced man but this is kind of breathtaking. From We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again by David Brooks. As James Taranto responds:

What do you mean, "we"? pic.twitter.com/JNNOdCfCqA

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) March 26, 2019

But what caught my eye was this paragraph.

Republicans and the Sean Hannity-style Trumpians might also approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. For two years they’ve been calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt. For two years they’ve been spreading the libel that there are no honest brokers in Washington. It’s all a deep-state conspiracy, a swamp. They should apologize for peddling the sort of deep cynicism that undermines our country’s institutions.

I sort of understand the instinct to try and appear balanced by whipping both sides to an argument that has gone pear-shaped. Sort of.

The mainstream media, of which Brooks is an integral member, just got caught by the American public with their hand in the cookie jar. And Brooks turns to the public and chides us for noticing that he and his brethren have been stealing from the cookie jar for years?

It seems almost incomprehensible that he could write this. It is the better part of three years, not two years. It was a manufactured witch hunt, conjured under the most unseemly circumstances by the deepest of deep state players (McCabe, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Power, Rice, Podesta, etc.) That is entirely why this is a big deal in the first place. The Mueller report shows that there was no underlying crime. It was all manufactured. Of course it prompts cynicism.

If you don't want to undermine this country's institutions, don't be part of the narrative which undermines this country's institutions. For Brooks to blame those who pointed out the charade and calling on them to apologize for pointing out that Brooks and his brethren were indeed partisan panderers of fake news takes some gall.

There was a small window at the very beginning, perhaps a few months, when the accusation of collusion was a hypothesis that was at least possible, even though not plausible. It didn't take very long, across the many leaks and revelations of FISA unmasking, and authorized spying on American citizens, and demonstrated attempts at entrapment, and the revelations about the Steele Report and who paid for it, the litany of process crimes rather than real crimes, the total absence of any collusion indictments, to quickly glean that the theoretically possible hypothesis was extremely unlikely. Carl Sagan's admonishment that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence was well worth heeding. But they never did. In fact, Sagan's entire quote is worth recalling.

What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

But collusion sounded plausible to the left and to the never-trumpers. It is what they wanted to believe. But they never had anything but the most vestigial of evidence and even that evidence could not withstand scrutiny. They, including Brooks, made an extraordinary claim and they never had even the barest of evidence.

And now Brooks wants rational empiricists and Republicans to apologize for pointing out their failure. Chutzpah of massive dimensions, profound TDS, or or almost inconceivable insularity. How else to understand this extraordinary assertion. It does not bode well for the reconstitution of the mainstream media's reputation.