Posted on 10/19/2020 11:46:10 AM PDT by Red Badger
What to make of the 'Hunter Biden laptop' stories from the New York Post? A few thoughts, to start: (1) It seems pretty telling that the Biden campaign -- for all its umbrage -- has not denied the authenticity of the emails themselves, and has declined to rule out the possibility that Biden's son did arrange a meeting between the then-Vice President and a top Burisma adviser. This calls into question Biden's prior denials, and raises questions about Hunter Biden's apparent lucrative arrangement with a Chinese energy company, under which a key deliverable was access to power. This stuff is intriguing, but the authenticity of the material matters most. (2) Hunter Biden's struggles with addiction seem pretty obvious, and his father's expressions of love and support demonstrate compassion and humanity. Any dunking or ridicule on this front is callous and gross. (3) The near-instant lefty/media narrative that the laptop caper is a Kremlin operation, which is now being investigated, does not appear to have much (or any) basis in verifiable fact at this stage. And if this does turn out to be a Russian conspiracy, that still doesn't explain first point.
(4) Social media companies' efforts to suppress this reporting have been appalling, heavy-handed, and revealing. The back-filling of excuses and justifications by Twitter demonstrate how badly they botched this. I do not believe that new government intervention and regulation is a viable or smart solution, but it's not at all unreasonable to have serious concerns about Big Tech wielding the power to simply erase inconvenient stories (using various high-minded-sounding rationalizations) from the virtual public square. I worry more about search engines like Google more than I do about other platforms. (5) Much larger stories than this have proven not to be electoral game-changers this cycle, so I'd be very surprised if this one moves the needle meaningfully with voters. (6) There are fair questions to be asked about the contents of some of these emails, and launching nasty attacks on a campaign embed reporter for even raising the issue is both unresponsive and a bad look:
VIDEO AT LINK....................
Veteran journalists Paula Reid and Major Garrett called this out:
VIDEO AT LINK....................
Right on all counts, especially that last one from Garrett. It's a journalistic badge of honor to ask tough (even hostile and tendentious) questions of the Trump administration and campaign. Journos congratulate each other, express solidarity with one another, and help each other sell books about their courage. Garrett's observation about the Obama years is correct and may again become relevant very soon. The press corps was usually docile-to-supine in its coverage of the previous administration. Occasional hard questions were often received with snide scorn. Fox -- which came somewhat close to treating the Obama campaign and administration the way the rest of the media covers Trump -- was singled out as illegitimate.
Too many powerful Democrats (this one in particular comes to mind) feel entitled to coast, more or less unchallenged, through the media interviews they deign to grant. Unfortunately, quite a few journalists seem to agree. They're scarred from Trump's surprise victory four years, and leftists have convinced them that treating serious Clinton flaws seriously makes them complicit. They don't want to risk a repeat, so a lot of serious potential journalism has been put on hold -- and 'problematic' stories are downplayed, ignored, or outright suppressed. So much of this is unhealthy and contributes to the conspiratorial paranoia that increasingly characterizes American politics, at both ends of the spectrum. In any case, will other journalists condemn this bullying from Biden? I'll leave you with this: Was this the last question Joe Biden will field until Thursday?
“You idiot! 50 percent isn’t enough, now it’s 75 percent for the Big Guy!”
(typing error!)
Pulitzer’s are reserved for lefty journalists exposing conservative politicians.
It’s way past time to consider that the NSA, and the Oval Office has pretty much known the scope of Hunter’s activities as “an earner” for his father. But you need the kind of evidence that doesn’t reveal methods.
Huh? Not reveal methods? It's sex, booze, drugs and money drops. The methods used for years.
Agree. The first time all networks address this will be when Biden loses.
Speaking of intelligence gathering, and the extent to which Uncle Sugar spies on all of its citizens.
Unless they have a vested interest is keeping Trump from draining the swamp. And I think most of them do...they don’t want their cushy swamp drained.
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