I do wish that Tim Russert would get his butt out of that chair, grab a cameraman and go down to the John Kerry HQ, and ask to see the records. While he is there, he could ask, with camera rolling, where the copy of John Kerry's original discharge is. Surely Kerry does not maintain that he was not discharged from the Navy until 1980.
It would be great television. Russert could edit it down to a 2 minute lede on the next week's MTP. Unless he calls people out when they openly lie to his face, he will not be able to get them to tell the truth on MTP.
Russert has to decide. Does he want to be the conduit for whatever lie his guest wants to tell, or does he want to get at the truth? Right now, Donks can come on his program and just bald-faced lie, and there are no consequences.
You can bet that the next time somebody holds Kerry down and asks him about the Form 180 and his original discharge, he will reference his answer on MTP, as if to say that if he said it to Russert and Russert did not call him on it, it must be true. If Russert allows his reputation to be exploited in this way, he will not have much of a reputation left after a short time.
To me and many others, Russert has no reputation to corrupt.