This morning there was such pearl clutching on Morning Joe over the CNN story on Russians alleged compromising info on Donald Trump.

They shouldn't have! They should have! It's a circus! Trump always wins when there's a circus!

I didn't think much of it until Willie Geist said this:

WILLIE GEIST: There's a reason that Tom Brokaw and Richard Engle have known about this for four months and you haven't heard it on NBC News. There's a reason as The New York Times says in its piece, they've known about it and haven't reported on it. It's an unsubstantiated claim! News organizations have been working hard to do it, but if the new standard from one news organization last night is, we're gonna put it out there, and let the people decide, that's a crazy precedent.

Let's stay classy and leave "unsubstantiated" golden showers out of this.

The facts are that:

Donald Trump was in Moscow as a private citizen in 2013.

The Russian FSB (formerly KGB) may have made recordings of Trump while he stayed at a Moscow hotel while hosting Miss Universe during that time.

The hotel where Trump stayed is suspected by the CIA to be bugged. Permanently bugged.

Mother Jones reported all of this in December:

James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out, "It's safe to assume that high-profile public figures and billionaires attract the attention of the Russian security services, including bugging any hotel rooms." And Malcolm Nance, a terrorism and intelligence expert and author of The Plot to Hack America, says the Russian version of the National Security Agency, the Spetssvyaz, manages specialized technical teams that would have been all over Trump.

During the campaign, Trump and his supporters railed about Hillary Clinton's mishandling of her private email server and claimed she had jeopardized US secrets. Her actions—while never shown to have led to any compromise of classified information—were troubling. A related but different set of issues faces Trump. Did he fail to take precautions that would prevent the Russians from gaining access to his private personal and professional information? If so, might the Russians possess secret information on the next president of the United States? Should that be true, Nance adds, it could pose "a monumental potential intelligence crisis never before seen in American history."

Tom Brokaw and Richard Engle have known about this for FOUR MONTHS. But the "unsubstantiated" part of the story prevented it from being discussed on the evening news. Meanwhile, Hillary's emails? We could die from suffocation from the pure volume of garbage over Hillary's emails.

And now let's discuss the whole "new standard/crazy precedent" that "we're gonna put it out there, and let the people decide."

Isn't that what the Wall Street Editorial Board has decided concerning calling Donald Trump a liar?

Isn't that what Fox News claims to do every day?

Isn't that CNN's excuse for endless panels featuring lying Trump surrogates instead of substantive news coverage?

Isn't that how Trey Gowdy ran away from his own Benghazi report?

Isn't that how Trump Foundation-funded Project Veritas releases doctored video?

Isn't that how Rush Limbaugh gets away with lying for 25 years?

And finally.....

Isn't that why MSNBC never mentions right wing media when decrying "lowered standards" in the "news" business?