What next?

How much lower can Donald Trump’s American opponents go?

What muck will they dish out next before inauguration day on Jan. 20?

Can they possibly outdo the “unverified document” published by Buzzfeed this week, alleging the Russians — yes, the Russians again — have all sorts of dirt on Trump that they could use to blackmail him and undermine his presidency?

Even veteran journalists are shaking their heads over the apparent willingness of some media outlets to run any unverified information that would make Trump — and the Russians — look bad.

As Piers Morgan wrote in his column, “… if the new journalism is simply publishing whatever comes across your newsdesk, without any independent proof that it’s true, then that’s not journalism – it’s exactly as Trump called it (Friday): ‘crap.’ Or to put it more politely, it’s another blazing log on the ugly bonfire currently fuelling ‘fake news’.”

But you can bet it drew a lot of clicks on the Buzzfeed site, and probably is still drawing them. Yup. The bean counters there must be besides themselves with joy. Take those click numbers to the ad reps . . . raise the ad fees . . .

True, the millions of people who despise Trump are no doubt cheering Buzzfeed today, even if the news is total “bullshit,” as Piers Morgan says. They don’t care that the report, supposedly written by a former British spy who had served in Russia, was commissioned by U.S. opponents of Trump.

They also aren’t questioning — and presumably don’t care — why the report was published a week before inauguration day even though “the 35-page dossier began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington . . . (but) the mainstream media did not pick up the story because reporters were unable to confirm the details,” according to the National Post.

And they aren’t questioning who exactly leaked the “unverified” report to the media, and who gave Buzzfeed editors the go-ahead to print the document.

They don’t care about the backstory. Millions of people simply do not want Trump to assume the presidency next week, and they will applaud any effort to keep him out of office — whether the effort is legitimate or not.

So, they are only too happy to spread the misinformation, to humiliate and ridicule Trump and make his family suffer.

It’s a win-win situation for Buzzfeed and, now, other media outlets that have reported the details of the dossier — citing Buzzfeed, of course. Monkey see, monkey do . . . and all the monkeys get more clicks on their websites.

What if the allegations are true, you might be wondering. And that’s, no doubt, the logic many media outlets are hoping you will be employing. Well, it could be true, so let the people decide, Buzzfeed and others are saying.

Never mind that it might not be true, and publishing it would cause irreparable harm to Trump and family.

There are those, of course, who will blame Trump for all of this, and say he brought it on himself. He deserves it, they say. And the Russians deserve to be smeared, too — because the Russians are always the bad guys, the Americans the good guys.

The National Post piece gives the last word in their article to the Russians. Here it is:

Russia has denied having any compromising material on Trump, saying on Wednesday the dossier was “pulp fiction” intended to hurt Russian-American relations and undermine Trump’s stated goal of improving ties with the country.

“You have to react to this with a certain humour, but there’s also a sad side to this. Hysteria is being whipped up to maintain a political witch hunt,” Dmitry S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said at a regular news briefing.

Amen.

— Jillian

Photo credit: Donald Trump. (Marc Nozell/Wikimedia Commons)