ERIC BOEHLERT: And so we have all these problems with the Clinton Foundation stories, all the problems with emails, hyperventilating, there's no there there, two-thirds the way through every story there's a weak-kneed concession, “well, this doesn't prove anything, but the optics are bad,” right? The optics cops are just circling the Clinton Family. And lo and behold, Donald Trump Foundation --

ARI RABIN-HAVT (HOST): Oh yeah, I was going to get to this.

BOEHLERT: -- which is a joke, it has like a million dollars in the bank, it doesn't give out money to anyone, unlike the Clinton Foundation which gives up hundreds of millions --

RABIN-HAVT: And spends money -- it's an operations foundation so it spends programmatic money.

BOEHLERT: Yes, exactly. The [Trump] Foundation is a complete joke and for someone who claims to be a billionaire it's ridiculously tiny and ungenerous. But they did have enough money to send an illegal $25,000 check to an attorney general whose office claimed it might investigate his bogus Trump University. So this has been the cherry on the cake, right? So we get hyperventilating over a non-Clinton story, and it takes the New York Times five days to type the words “Pam Bondi” in the pages of its newpaper in context of Donald Trump. Again, it's like you can't even draw up a scenario that would make the Times look as bad as it has, sitting on its hands on this actual Trump bribery scandal, and this is a newspaper that has gone out of its way to raise questions. I did a piece yesterday. You know, The Washington Post, very condescending editorial: Hillary, shut down the Clinton Foundation. USA Today. Boston Globe. Where are these editorials demanding that the Trump Foundation shut down? Why are they only these lecturing editorials explaining to Hillary that optics are the most important thing in public life but none of that applies to Donald Trump?

[...]

BOEHLERT: All of it is based on the fact, again, this is Benghazi part two. The press got suckered by these Republican promises of scandal, and now they're in so deep they can't extricate themselves. They're certainly not going to apologize, they're certainly not going to walk back any of this stuff, and the best they can do is just try to pretend it never happened and it'll just go away.

RABIN-HAVT: You know what's going to happen. Whitewater was debunked before election day. The Times ran a story, it was debunked before election day, and it led to a whole impeachment trial. You know there is going to be a Clinton Foundation special prosecutor law.

BOEHLERT: Well [Rep. Jason] Chaffetz is already talking about he wants more hearings for the House Republicans -- that's basically the Republican platform. So yeah, absolutely. It's going to go on and on, and the question is will the press ever kind of say, “enough is enough,” or are they just going to allow themselves to be used year after year and being held -- holding the bag? That's why so many people are expressing amazement and consternation. And they do think that there is long term damage being done, and it's not just sort of a one-off thing. This has been -- again, we're focusing on The Times a lot --  but this has been a newsroom problem for 25 years. It's amazing. None of these reporters that are kind of botching these stories were in a newsroom during the 90s. But if you read these email news stories, these foundation news stories, and you go back and you read those Whitewater stories, they are mirror images of each other. They're written in the same phony, misleading language, the same confusing allegations, a refusal to take acceptance for previous mistakes, omitting embarrassing exculpatory information. It's an institutional problem. 

Previously:

Broadcast News Outlets Essentially Ignored Trump Pay For Play Until This Weekend

NY Times' Haberman: “What Hurts Hillary Clinton Is The Bar Has Been Lowered For Trump Repeatedly”

Watch MSNBC's All In Explore The Double Standard The Media Applies To Covering Clinton And Trump