The Democratic Party alleges that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. (DonkeyHotey / CC BY-SA 2.0)

For five months, there was a daily drumbeat on Russiagate, the theory that Russia put Donald Trump in the White House. Now, the “scandal” has disappeared.

In this edition of “This Is Happening” with Jerry Quickley, Consortium News Editor Robert Parry explains what Russiagate has wrought.

One thing it’s done is it’s prevented the Democratic Party from trying to examine what it really did wrong in this past election. Instead of focusing on the failure to present a message that was appealing to large segments of the population that allowed someone as unqualified as Donald Trump to somehow win, there has been this attention instead on what, even if it’s true, is rather a minor factor in the election, which was the release of two sets of emails: one from the Democratic National Committee through WikLeaks and the other from Clinton’s chairman John Podesta through WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks, by the way, denies having gotten this information from the Russians. The U.S. intelligence community argues that they did, but they have [not] presented their evidence to show how they know that.

Nevertheless, this information was true.

Listen to the entire interview with Parry below.