Sorry to break it to you but the real world isn't this binary.

Also recent reports indicate that their is no evidence to support that story:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-comma...

Still, the story was pitched perfectly to the essential self-centeredness of Americans. You mean, in the nation we invaded decades ago and have bombed mercilessly ever since, murdering and orphaning hundreds of thousands of innocents, there are some people who oppose us to the extent that they'll shoot back, without being paid to do so? They must hate us for our freedom!

I hope that if nothing else happens after Trump is out of office, that we all at least collectively regain our distrust of US intelligence agencies again.

Your optimism is misplaced. They may not be smart, but they have a low cunning. They have learned from this episode, and they will make sure there is always a Trump figure in place (not necessarily at the presidential level, but that might work best) to distract the more credulous 80% of the public. Obama at least pretended that there could be public oversight of the unsupervised services. They haven't suffered that insult since Trump took office.