Michael Tracey is a freelance journalist who has written for publications including VICE, The Daily Beast, The American Conservative, and The Guardian and he was formerly a reporter for TYT. Tracey is also a member of a small set of leftish Russia collusion skeptics. He’s on the list that includes Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Aaron Mate along with a few others. In this podcast we discuss the Mueller Report, the Barr letter, the Russia collusion investigation, and the failure of most journalists to be skeptical and consistent enough since 2016. I want to say that I’m aware that many people feel as though we won’t know the truth about Trump’s involvement with Russia until after the Mueller report is released to the public. My feeling is that whatever is in that report, it’s clear that the idea that Trump conspired with Russia to fix the election is no longer viable. It’s a dead end politically, and maybe even a counterproductive if we want to protect democratic institutions and civil liberties.This week’s podcast is available in full for our patrons. Our Patreon supporters get access to two podcasts every week: Symptomatic Redness and Zero Squared, but if you’re listening on our free feed you’ll always be able to access one or the other podcasts each week. At the moment we have 587 patrons. When we reach 600 patrons we’ll introduce a new series of patron only videos tentatively entitled Communism 101.