According to Chomsky, there’s some truth in the conservative reference to Russiagate as a “hoax”, albeit not in the context they’d have the electorate believe.

In an interview posted July 20, 2017 by The Free Thought Project, Chomsky, who’s hardly a Trump supporter, described Russiagate as a contrived pseudo-scandal only serving to distract from real scandals taking place daily in Washington, D.C.

He cited the cabinet’s configuration as an example: “Every cabinet official was chosen to destroy anything of human significance in that part of the government. It’s so systematic that it can’t be unplanned. I doubt that Trump planned it … [since] his only ideology is ‘me’. But whoever is working on it is doing a pretty effective job, and the Democrats are cooperating … in a very striking way …

So maybe members of his transition team contacted the Russians. Is that a bad thing? [Then] recent ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, had a blog where he pointed out that, ‘It’s exactly what you should be doing. It’s the job of ambassadors and diplomats coming in. There are serious problems and tensions you want to talk over to see if there’s anything you can do about them. Instead of just building up force and violence.’ That’s what the democrats are focusing on, and meanwhile all these other things are going on and they’re not saying anything about them.”