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Eagerly deploying newsroom resources to the perpetually overblown Hunter Biden story — just as Trump and Fox News kick off a new smear campaign — CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post gladly did the GOP’s bidding this week. Signing off on the idea that the Hunter Biden story remains a scandal simply because Republicans say so, the press has adopted a Whitewater-like obsession with the perpetual dead-end story.
One White House reporter from CBS News, doing his best Fox News impression, asked if President Joe Biden would take the extraordinary step of pardoning Hunter — who is not accused of any crime.
Producing remarkably similar articles that were published nearly simultaneously this week, the CNN.com, Journal, and Post efforts all swung and missed. On paper, there’s no reason why they would pick the exact same moment to churn out nearly 7,000 words of Biden reporting. Especially since none of the investigations dug up any startling revelations about his business dealings from the previous decade.
The copycat nature of the reports raises questions about who the unnamed sources for these stories were, and if there was a coordinated effort by Republican operatives to push simultaneous Hunter updates.
It’s also telling that the hand-delivered leaks arrived the same time we’re learning even more about the Trump White House’s criminality. Specifically, the administration’s clear lawbreaking surrounding the January 6th coup attempt.
This was the big ah-ha moment from the Post piece: “The new documents illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.”
And?
The press can’t provide an answer to the “and” — they can’t find anything illegal or shocking — so they pretend that the business deals themselves are newsworthy and that Hunter’s career requires years of media digging. Meanwhile, the recent revelation about a Supreme Court Justice’s wife strategizing with the Trump White House to overturn an election has evaporated from most newsrooms in less than one week.
After years of media focus there’s nothing to suggest Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business dealings or profited from them in any way, or that the senior Biden ever did anything remotely unethical in connection with Hunter’s career. The son has never run for office, never served in the government, never lobbied to change U.S. policy, and never acted as an advisor to his father in any way.
The fact is, he remains under investigation for matters related to tax payments and his foreign work, and there is a chance he could be indicted. Although, as the New York Times recently reported, Biden recently paid off “a significant tax liability,” which “could make it harder for prosecutors to win a conviction or a long sentence for tax-related offenses.”
It’s a relatively small stakes tax case that has produced a ridiculous amount of breathless Beltway coverage, much to the delight of the GOP. Context: 11 Trump associates who worked directly with the president have been indicted on criminal charges.
The press relentlessly pursues the Hunter story because they insist there’s the appearance of conflict of interest given the family connections. But Hunter began making overseas energy deals just as his father was leaving office in 2016 after eight years serving with President Barack Obama. If Hunter wanted to cash in on his father’s vice presidency, why did he wait until the end of his father’s vice presidency?
Still, the media fixation continues.
Look at the Post’s headline, “Inside Hunter Biden’s Multimillion-Dollar Deals With a Chinese Energy Company.” Why the assumption that there’s a need to delve “inside”? There’s no reason why a private citizen’s deals with a Chinese energy company should be considered newsworthy five years after the fact. It’s a detailed Post article about a short-lived business venture Biden had between 2017 and 2018 — what’s the point?
The paper makes no attempt to explain why any of this is important, and why the paper assigned three reporters to produce an exhaustive overview. The same was true of the media’s two-year obsession over Hillary Clinton’s emails. My guess is the Hunter enterprise is to show the Post, and the rest of the press, can be ‘tough on Democrats,’ and to perpetuate a poisonous brand of Both Sides journalism.
If the paper were honest with readers, it would tell them it spent a ton of time researching Hunter Biden’s dealings — because unhinged Republicans claim the “Deep State” is behind it all — and could not find anything newsworthy. But that’s not how the Beltway press treats Democrats (see: Whitewater), so the Post did its best to justify the GOP-sponsored fishing expedition. The article included a baffling, multi-paragraph examination of a dispute Hunter once had with an office building landlord, complete with angry emails about duplicate keys being made.
Other tell-tale signs of a journalism flop were sprinkled throughout the three articles. Buried deep down, they often included awkward concessions:
• “The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions”
• “Hunter Biden has not been charged with any crimes and has denied any wrongdoing. His father, President Joe Biden is not being investigated as part of the probe of his son’s business activities,” (CNN)
• “The progress prosecutors have made doesn’t mean they will ultimately bring charges.” (Journal)
“I’m so glad our colleagues are still doing strong reporting on this story,” New York Times columnist Gail Collins cheered last week. “Hunter Biden’s scummy business dealings shouldn’t be swept under the rug any more than anyone else’s.”
Swept under the rug? Good grief. Since 2017, “Hunter Biden” has appeared in more than 800 articles and columns published by the Times, according to Nexis.
The media’s Hunter Biden charade is becoming preposterous.
(Photo: Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images)
📺 GOOD STUFF:
CBS News’ hiring of a former Trump lackey just keeps getting worse for the network.
From the Washington Post’s “Turmoil at CBS News Over Trump aide Mick Mulvaney’s Punditry Gig”:
“If you look at some of the people that we’ve been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms,” CBS News’s co-president Neeraj Khemlani told the staff of the network’s morning show, according to a recording of his comments obtained by The Washington Post. “A lot of the people that we’re bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.”
🇨🇦 FUN STUFF — BECAUSE WE ALL NEED A BREAK
Arcade Fire, “The Lighting I, II ”
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From Pitchfork’s praise: “There’s a sense that after Arcade Fire steered away from shout-choruses and earnest sing-a-longs—those musty relics of aughts indie rock—they’ve found their way back home, sounding fearless and genuine once again.”
Fourth place anthem playing tonight
On a broken radio
Thought we reached the mountaintop
But now we just feel so low
The sky is breaking open, we keep hoping
In the distance, we'll see a glow
Lightning, light our way
'Til the black sky turns back to indigo
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The entirety of Hunterpalooza is based on inference, implication, and leaps of logic, and because it is a complex story, the media is utterly incapable of making it comprehensible to the average news consumer. The consumer's takeaway is, "Hunter Biden must be corrupt because he is under investigation." That = mission accomplished for the GOP. Going back to the nothingburger of Hunter's tenure on the Burisma Board of Directors, the media "forgot" to mention that corporate board positions are routinely do-nothing jobs with phenomenal compensation. (John Boehner went from the House to the Board of RJ Reynolds where he was getting $400,000 a year. All Boehner knew about tobacco was that he liked to smoke it.) Many directors are named because of who they are, or what corporation they work for, and there is plenty of back-scratching. If the media was truly concerned with how it looks for a president's family member to cash in on the name they would have been all over Neil Bush, who never aspired to elected office because he was making too much money grifting in the private sector. I won't bother to elaborate on the laughably implausible "smoking gun" that Rudy Guilani wants everyone to believe the laptop to be other than to note the WaPo story's 13th paragraph mention that the experts hired to look at it said it was hopelessly compromised. And the media should have smelled a rat when The Former Guy did his appeal to Putin regarding Hunter Biden - the appeal to a murderous dictator wasn't the goal - the goal was to get a headline about Hunter Biden. Again, mission accomplished.
yep. yr description sounds exactly like Whitewater coverage.
"Experts hired to look at it said it was hopelessly compromised..."
Exactly. THAT is the only thing worth publishing at this point. Anything else is clickbait.
Idea: Great headline!?
The media fall for this every single time. The only conclusion is that it is intentional and they are willing accomplices of the takedown. I’m done being charitable. Democrats have been put through these hit jobs way too many times to keep tolerating it.
‘Hunterpalooza’… exactly… c’mon 🇺🇸 - laugh this off , seriously.
Impossible, unfortunately. This is one way the Republicans can throw the midterms - legally. Endless carping over inflation, and oh, the fun they had over Joe's remark that Putin shouldn't be allowed to stay in power, and the whole ugly mess they made of Judge Jackson's confirmation hearing are all the GOP brand of dirty politics.
Exactly. It has to be stopped, one way or the other. If Democrats turn the other cheek and tolerate this bullshit this time around, they deserve to lose. It has to be stopped.
Exactly. And on a related note, does Merrick Garland know how much we need him to step up to the plate? Somehow, I doubt it.
right! and I am so curious: what is he so afraid of? and why?
He may simply not want to be the one to bring criminal charges against a former president. He wouldn't be the first one either. Nixon could have been charged in the Watergate affair, but it was swept under the rug. It would be an embarrassing thing for the country and hurt our prestige and our credibility, that's what I believe they're thinking. I doubt Trump and his acolytes will be charged with anything for this reason.
Convenient distractions from SCOTUS shenanigans :/
I don't think so. The SCOTUS stuff IS a distraction - from the serious story about the missing 7 1/2 hours of phone calls from the WH log on Jan 6th. And sadly, it looks like it's working.
W O W…
NBC jumped on the bandwagon last night - “Hunter Biden investigation intensifies”. Let’s face it. Every news organization wants Trump to be President. Their profits and subscriptions skyrocketed the last time around. Greed drives the fourth estate.
and someone is leaning the a act same “investigation intensifies” stories, which are regurgitated w/o context
The timing is so painfully obvious, it’s both breathtaking AND embarrassing… :/
Yes.
NBC nightly news jumped on the story last night. Their framing left the impression that Hunter Biden made millions in questionable deals with China, cheated on his taxes, and implied Joe Biden lied during the debates when he said Hunter had not made any money from China. No mention of where this is coming from or how questionable the evidence is.
And when the media returns Republicans to power, they will blame Democrats for poor messaging skills, paying the price for going too far left, and having Biden as a failed president.
Somewhere Jimmy Carter is having a deja vu moment.
I was thinking the exact same thing. The media is for sure trying to Jimmy Carter Joe Biden.
Rhandi Rhodes, on her show yesterday, reported that a poll showed that two thirds of Americans want Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as the new SCOTUS justice. Glenn Kirschner on his daily podcast outlined what he believed the DOJ is doing after several criminal indictments have come down against Trump "gang" members. The reports may tie together what's happening and why the latest MSM version of "But her emails" is nothing more than a desperate attempt to deflect just how fucked the Republicans are about to get. The good news here is that in the case of KBJ, the majority of the American public didn't buy into the child porn narrative the childish GOP attempted to weave during her Senate hearings. Rhodes pointed out that perhaps the constant MSMs normalization of GOP talking points has fallen on deaf ears. And according to Kirschner's podcast, it's likely that Merrick Garland and his DOJ are much smarter than we have given them credit for and have been able to keep the leaks away from, who Glenn likes to call, the leakers, the liars, and the lawyers. I don't know what's more sad, that the Republicans would think that beating this Hunter Biden dead horse story is actually going to save them or that much of the general public will believe it. For the first time in a long time, I'm hopeful that justice might be coming to Trump and this once political party that have almost gotten away with destroying our democracy. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm going use the Hunter Biden story frequency as a barometer for how close we are getting to seeing some serious shit hitting the Trump fan.
KBJ is walking through this minefield like Obama did - retaining solid support from a public who clearly SEES that they are solid, 100% qualified candidates… you know - that is heartening!
I hope you are right. My cynical brain regarding all of this is just so corrosive, and I really want to be wrong.
It's bad enough that all of this stinks of a fishing expedition in search of a crime. It's also that there is a feeling conveyed by the press that a crime MUST exist and they're simply unable to find it.
for a 2017 biz deal
I think the reason the media does these detailed accounts is they know most people can’t stand reading such long accounts so they are left with the impression of wrongdoing even though those articles contain no proof. If journalists were really interested in putting the facts in perspective they would lead with “When Biden was out of office Hunter did deals with Russians and Chinese”.
Which is why headlines can be misleading and very, very damaging. I read the WaPo article twice and realized it's an article full of absolutely nothing of any interest. And the investigation seems boilerplate to me, as someone who used to work for a tax agency (big corporations are under constant, ongoing audit, and big money deals absolutely do trigger an audit, which is what happened to Hunter Biden). He's a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, it would not surprise me if these vultures are trying to push him into using again.
He really should file a lawsuit for defamation and libel. At the very least, it would change the narrative and ruin their attempt to paint President Biden as weak and corrupt.
Yeah, but of course it would be a distraction, and the press and GOP would eat him alive. To be honest, I just hope Hunter has stopped acting like Billy Carter and Roger Clinton. He's certainly old enough to know better.
Unfortunately, Hunter is his father's Achilles heel.
Haha. The truth is just soooo boring. (Snark)
I know there was a time once when the media was boring and nobody paid attention and people actually respected and trusted it. Can we get back to that again?
I grew up with Walter Cronkite and still think of him every day. I remember being a kid and eating dinner while he was on TV. And every Friday he told us how many US soldiers died in Vietnam. We trusted him to tell us the truth.
Hunter Biden should press charges against them for this smear campaign. I know Democrats are supposed to take the high road, but my God, enough is enough. These hit jobs have got to stop.
Well said!
Let me know when the son of an ex-Vice President makes $640mm, like the son-in-law of a sitting President just did.
So:
Hunter Biden did stuff
There is no evidence the President had any personal benefit.
The President is not being investigated
And, even after this long ass story, it’s entirely possible Hunter won’t even be charged.
Thanks Washington Post
Liberal bias my ass
You forget that Hunter did those things when his dad was no longer in power.
That could be a headline, too!? (in parallel universe, but still…)
I forced myself to read Wapo’s Matt Viser piece y’day and concluded what is plain for all of us to see, ie NO THERE THERE. All that ink for not much, a hit job with no punch. I hadn’t known about the quasi coordinated stories among CNN et al or the likely well timed leaks by Rs to each of these media outlets. MSM are saps for these non stories, and Wapo has a black eye for obvious pandering to both sides reporting. MSM has lost so much credibility twisting themselves into pretzels in the interest of fairness??????’ Come on. MSM is just proving the point.
I tried to read it but got fed up with I realized this went on when Biden was out of office.
The media always gets in a lather when a relative of a Democrat appears to be trading on their family name — Billy Carter, Roger Clinton — but can’t be bothered when Republicans do this. They know the Bush family has been doing that for decades and generations but find it totally acceptable. The media seems to realize that people can’t control what their family members do when Republicans are involved.
For example most people I ask have never heard that Neil Bush constantly traded on the Bush name when Dubya was in office. Not only did Neil make a lot of money selling semiconductors in Asia despite having no expertise in that area, he also got rewarded with free sex romps with prostitutes who magically turned up at his hotel room. The media didn’t even have to do a deep dive on that story since Neil admitted these facts in his divorce deposition.
https://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/25/bush.brother.reut/
I think they get in a lather whenever a D seems to get traction, period.
Yep. Mainstream media really does hate Democrats, and then they have the nerve to claim the both-sides perspective. It really gets my blood up.
And it’s become incredibly normalized :/
Democrats need to de-normalize it asap. We cannot survive another election cycle with a rightwing biased media hanging over it.
"One White House reporter from CBS News, doing his best Fox News impression, asked if President Joe Biden would take the extraordinary step of pardoning Hunter — who is not accused of any crime."
It's like an investigator who starts a suspect's interrogation with 'So how long have you been beating your wife..."
Weird to see from professional "journalists." Totally in character for professional infotainers.
Lockstep - just like the R Senate. Another ‘hollowing out’ of their own brand :/
What's particularly baffling to me is how anyone can draw conclusions at this point when, according to WAPO reporting, "people other than Hunter Biden had accessed the drive and written files to it, both before and after the initial stories in the New York Post and long after the laptop itself had been turned over to the FBI."
Can any of the information be validated? And if not, how is ANY of this newsworthy now? It's kinda like examining a crime scene at a busy subway station a week or two after the fact, no?
Nice analysis!😆
Related - :/
@joshtpm: As you can see the reporters have literally internalized gop attack ads and their content as a central element of a news story even to the point of reporting the attacks, their intensity and success in advance of their even happening.
You need read no further than the 6th graf of WaPo piece:
"The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC, which took place after he had left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020."
But you should read further, and sample the sidebar for a flavor of this thinnest of gruels in which they refer to the "purported hard drive." Purported? That's what passes for confirmation in a purported investigative piece with global dimensions? Aluminum nuclear tubes, anyone? Sych mealy mouthing would get a story spiked at any credible news organization.
But there's more! From the sidebar on how the Post sought to confirm the validity of the purported hard drive:
"The verifiable emails are a small fraction of 217 gigabytes of data provided to The Post on a portable hard drive by Republican activist Jack Maxey. He said the contents of the portable drive originated from Hunter Biden’s MacBook Pro, which Hunter reportedly dropped off at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del., in April 2019 and never reclaimed."
"The vast majority of the data — and most of the nearly 129,000 emails it contained — could not be verified by either of the two security experts who reviewed the data for The Post. Neither found clear evidence of tampering in their examinations, but some of the records that might have helped verify contents were not available for analysis, they said. The Post was able in some instances to find documents from other sources that matched content on the laptop that the experts were not able to assess."
"Among the reasons for the inconclusive findings was sloppy handling of the data, which damaged some records. The experts found the data had been repeatedly accessed and copied by people other than Hunter Biden over nearly three years."
"Most of the data obtained by The Post lacks cryptographic features that would help experts make a reliable determination of authenticity, especially in a case where the original computer and its hard drive are not available for forensic examination. Other factors, such as emails that were only partially downloaded, also stymied the security experts’ efforts to verify the content."
The reporting "is unlikely to resolve [the] debate, offering instead only the limited revelation that some of the data on the portable drive appears to be authentic. The security experts who examined the data for The Post struggled to reach definitive conclusions about the contents as a whole, including whether all of it originated from a single computer or could have been assembled from files from multiple computers and put on the portable drive."
No wonder Vince Foster killed himself.
“Thinnest of gruels”…
”Hunterpalooza”… “Katie bar the door”. I love this site
Like a snail on a fence post.
Something from Atrios on media logic that dictates why CBS has hired Mulvaney:
“The Business Of The News Business
Would also be bad, but I'm curious if similar decisions are made in the other direction. You know, the Dems are going to take charge so we need access to them!
No I'm not curious. They don't do that.
Back when Media Matters did guests studies of the Sunday shows, the excuses made were literally, "Republicans are in charge so our viewers need to hear what they think" and then "Democrats are in charge so we need to give viewers a chance to hear what Republicans think."
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2022/03/the-business-of-news-business.html
CBS News has stated flat out why they hired Mulvaney and are looking to hire more former GOP and GOP insiders. They want ACCESS—as if they don't already have it!—ahead of the Republicans taking over Congress. The media already decided the outcome of the election—pushed by them, in fact. Envious to see all those profits being generated by Fox and the other odious outlets, they want in on the gravy train. From the WAPO story:
“If you look at some of the people that we’ve been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms,” CBS News’s co-president Neeraj Khemlani told the staff of the network’s morning show, according to a recording of his comments obtained by The Washington Post. “A lot of the people that we’re bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.”
It's beyond despicable. The media is broken when Hunter Biden's laptop is a big story but the threats to America democracy are not.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/03/30/cbs-mulvaney-backlash/
It is hilarious how the media are pretending that nepotism is a new concept and is only being exploited by the Biden family. You know, because nepotism does not exist at the NYT, WaPo, WSJ and CNN. Also, where is this laptop? Who has it? Is there anything to it other than Rudy Giuliani talking about it non-stop since 2016?
It isn’t just about nepotism it is about the power and influence of a person’s family. Maggie Haberman’s mother Nancy is a prominent media communications exec at NYC’s top PR firm. She has worked for many influential New Yorkers, including Trump. Don’t tell me the fact that Maggie is likely to have better access to the rich and powerful than your average reporter didn’t play a role in her hiring by the Times.
Along with your point about her Mom, Maggie's Dad Clyde worked for NYT. Yet she started with the New York Post, then NY Daily News, then back to the Post then Politico. It wasn't until 2016 the NYT became interested in her--a full 20 + years after college graduation. I'll add that she like many "journalists" withheld critical, and criminal, WH information to get a book deal.
Guess: It’s with Biden’s ‘granddaughter’s diary’?… in safekeeping /s
At what point can the Bidens' sue? At what point does innuendo become slander and a possible crime? I'm not saying they want to do it or should do it. I'm just wondering.
Ask HRC I guess?… /s
I think it would be possible because there is clear lying and intentional malice. I would have loved to have seen the Clintons sue the right wing media outlets spreading the lies that they had had their close friend Vince Foster murdered. I think they just figure it’s not worth calling even more attention to the slanders. The media should be doing that.
I think it is beyond time for Democrats to fight back as hard as legally allowed. What has ignoring it and turning the other cheek done for them? Republicans just take advantage and do even more harm. In the same way Kamala Harris held up her hand and declared, “I’m speaking” when the reprobate Republican tried to interrupt and disrupt her, the Bidens need to stand up and fight back, and call Republicans and the media out on these baseless attacks. At this point, ignoring it and turning the other cheek cannot be an option.
The buzzwords "Hunter Biden" and "China" in the same sentence make Republicans' hearts go pitter-patter. It doesn't matter that these were hotsy-totsy big money business deals that can be verified, and were. Nothing to see here, folks.
Was it a Freudian slip that the Washington Post stated in the article that their source for Hunter's emails and other garbage is what they termed a "Republican activist"? What the actual F is a Republican activist? I bet I can guess. Someone pitched this crap story to the major newspapers, starting with the NYT, whose story on the laptops popped up out of the trash bin last week, followed by the NY Post.
Biden's success in dealing with Ukraine, and the very serious stories about Ginni Thomas and those missing WH phone call logs, demanded a Trump-style "intervention." He's calling his acolytes and putting them to work.
Notice the possible relationship between Eric's main article today and the Good Stuff. Is the press preparing itself for what they believe to be a republican takeover in the midterms? Time to appease the republicans with the Hunter Biden flop of a story because the republicans are apt to win?
yep, good point
Everyone is going to be really disappointed when the Dems hold both chambers with room to breathe. :::she said boldly:::
Can’t hurt! Next: Double-down?! :)
Funny you mention that because yesterday, the dream of having every iteration of "double down" removed from the lexicon was dashed when Joey said, "We have to double-down...something something gas prices and whining car owners."
Joey…S?
Sorry, Biden. I call him Joey.
Agreed. They are living in a fantasy. Dems will hold both chambers, and will add a couple of seats to the Senate.
That’s what my best pal is saying as well…👍
So happy to meet someone who shares my view about the midterms. I know it's virtual but still.
Yes, they are. And helping Republicans do it!
The old gray lady must be rolling over in her grave as if on a spit when presented with this drivel.
The NYT alone has published 800 stories on Hunter Biden, come up with nothing, and then these two dolts are allowed to publish what is nothing more than an insipid back and forth one might find in comments by equally drunk Facebook posters as "opinion" in one of the most venerated publications in the world.
Bret Stephens inadvertently gave away the game when the self-professed "fiscal conservative" made this observation about pork barrel spending coming back:
Bret: Don Young dies, but pork is forever. I don’t think pork is such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. It brings projects to constituents who need them and makes politics a whole lot more fun to cover. What do you think?
I think you're full of BS, BS.
The media was getting a ton of pressure from the right for "showing favoritism" by not reporting on this truly nothing burger story, so the Post just had to dig into it because of "fairness" and all that BS. The Post story was filled with so many caveats, it was ridiculous. The only good thing about the story were the reader comments. People saw through it and were outraged.
If Hunter had truly done something egregious, it might have been a worthwhile story, but it was a failed business dealing that happened when his father was out of govt. OMG stop the presses someone gets an opportunity because of his/her last name—and because the deal was with someone in China.
What's especially galling is that they've ignored Kushner and Ivanka's dealings WHILE THEY WERE WORKING IN THE WH.
The media isn't just broken, it is, with few exceptions, corrupt.
I read in NYT or WaPo that the House Jan 6 comm subpoeanaed Mulvaney's niece bec she had an organizational role in the pre-riot rally. Are there no reputable, credible, uncompromised conservative voices CBS could have hired instead of a partisan?
From everything I have read so far, the Hunter Biden case seems to be only about whether or not he paid enough in Federal taxes. To my knowledge there has never been a DOJ investigation on how Trump paid $750 in taxes for each year, 2015 and 2016. A single person working fulltime and making $15 an hour pays $780 in Federal taxes. I was in college when the headlines
were that President Nixon paid less Federal tax than his mailman from 1969-1972. Nixon would blame administrative and accounting errors and send over $450,000 to the IRS, claiming no bad intent. When Richard Nixon's history has shown more scruples and honesty than Trump, we have a serious problem, and the post-Watergate reforms have been toothless.
TFG is colorful, d-mmit!
These same Republicans remain strangely (ha ha) silent about TFG's constant business dealings while he was still in The White House, and the fact that he employed his family in various governmental roles. That was just A-OK with them.
As was the fact that TFG and his staff constantly violated the Hatch Act. Congress should immediately remove enforcement of the Hatch Act from the president.
Can we throw in a dash of Emoluments clause while we’re in there? (asking for a friend)…
Remember all the patents Ivanka Trump got from the Chinese, and how she and Jared were working on getting building contracts with Chinese businesses?
I KNOW!!!!! Enraging at the very least.
Probably mirrors what the Rs do themselves while in office. Nothing to see…..
CBS’s new motto “Trading truth for access”.
See B.S. is just another cog in the GOP 24/7 Bullshit Machine.
*that would actually read better if you capitalized every word but ‘for’… AWESOME!
The Mulvaney story —for me, anyway— is the longer-term failure of Our Failed Political Press ™. Remember this: he directly lied to the press and told them to “get over it” following “the perfect phone call.”
There is no doubt in my mind that Maggie Haberman is smiling somewhere now that Access Journalism is validated at the so-called Tiffany Network.
Our Failed Press is not the 4th estate, it is the 5th column.
Meanwhile this cuckoo clock fired from See B.S. goes full anti-semitic
https://www.wonkette.com/lara-logan-sh-tcanned-by-fox-news-emerges-from-cocoon-as-full-fledged-antisemitic-whacko
I appreciate the Twitter clip of the CBS reporter asking one of the dumbest questions of the modern era of political reporting, but what's his name? Until individual reporters and editors are publicly embarrased through public displays OF THEIR OWN work product and work process, there'll be no cost, no penalty, no accountability, and no change.
This guy didn't even bother to do his own reporting. Lazy asshole.
In a sane, honest world, our awesome mainstream media would provide propionate reporting on a profoundly corrupt POTUS. Detailed here:
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-trump-and-ukraine?r=hdnf&utm_campaign=post&utm_source=The%20Truth%20About%20Trump%20and%20Ukraine&utm_medium=ios
tl;dr: Donnie was doing corruption with numerous Russian state agents: much corruption in Ukraine was and is the work of Russia agents; Crooked Donnie solicited electoral assistance from Russia; the former US officeholders also doing business with Russian thieves seem to be only Republicans including former FBI director William Sessions.
And good stuff: Mick Mulvaney makes a very special appearance up at that link.
But since we’re not getting honest proportionate reportage, I’d settle for a sober explanation why Hunter matters. But I’m not counting on that happening.
(Actually the vocal outrage against the Mulv hiring has also been heartening…)
As I say ad nauseum, CBS News is, at best, insignificantly better than Fox’s news side. The Mulvaney hiring is stupid to say the least — ditto the rationalization — but the operation is still s*** with or without him.
True race to the bottom - thx for the info
That's a lot of gaslighting . . .
It brings to mind the insane coverage of Hillary's emails- not to mention Benghazi- which after countless investigations on the taxpayers' dime turned up nothing. https://www.vox.com/2017/12/7/16747712/study-media-2016-election-clintons-emails
On the latest Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the late-night host trashed CBS over Mick Mulvaney's hiring with examples of his previous statements downplaying the Covid-19 pandemic and claiming Genghis Con would accept the results of the 2020 election (obviously he didn't and that led to an insurrection). Colbert also criticized his own network of trying to predict the news based on the statement of co-president about the possibility of a Republican domination at the midterms.
Why is the American mainstream media so afraid to tell the truth just because they're afraid of losing to access to assholes in the Republican Party, they're scared that they'll be attacked by the whackjobs in the right-wing media ecosystem for being biased, and they're afraid of losing the financial compensation for doing the GOP's dirty work?
Seriously, they don't seem to care about the long-term damage being inflicted on American democracy with their dishonest & shoddy reporting, and they're more concerned with the short-term eyeballs, clicks and profits that benefit their bosses & themselves.
They aren't afraid. They want in with the GOP—as if they don't have "access" already! The executives don't give a damn about democracy or the country. It's all about bread and circuses and greed, their own, the networks', and the shareholders'.
There was a furor at CBS over the hiring, but that won't make a damn bit of difference and all those reporters will eventually toe the line. Just look at the pathetic WH press corps—a model of ridiculousness.
Seriously, the "greed is good" mentality from the Eighties has poisoned every facet of American culture & society.
It's troubling that journalists are suffering from a massive case of self-denial that their profession has been corrupted by vested financial interests that has somehow made them lose touch with the ordinary people they claim to serve since they're feeding blatant lies & half-truths all in the name of facism & greed.
Plus - the ‘b.s. to memory hole’ pipeline has gotten much shorter and faster. So Mulv can lie for the boss, then land a pretty big gig - in record real time - shortly thereafter :/
Tough but fair 😞
Exactly this: long-term vs short term ::
It brings to mind the insane coverage of Hillary's emails, which after countless investigations turned up nothing.
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/7/16747712/study-media-2016-election-clintons-emails
CBS hired Mulvaney, a known liar and sociopath, in anticipation of a Republican takeover in either the 2022 midterms or the 2024 presidential election? So, CBS executives essentially admit to helping Republicans win back control of our government? The same Republicans who only a year ago staged an attempted coup on our federal government? On what grounds do they reach this insane conclusion that Republicans will takeover? Joe Biden’s and the Democrats approval ratings have for the most part been positive, or at least mostly stable and it’s still seven months out before the election, and even at his lowest this week, it is still better than Trump and Republicans and will certainly go back up by October. The only thing getting in the way IS THE SO-CALLED UNBIASED MEDIA, in the holy freaking name of both-siderism.
Furthermore, mainstream media is deliberately tanking Joe Biden and the Democrats to turn it into a nail-biter for clicks and ratings with unrelenting batshit crazy negative-to-the-point-of-flagrant-sabotage sensationalized “news” stories, while they ignore anything good Biden or Congress does. Biden’s approval rating is 41.1%, and who the fuck cares? It. Is. Seven. Months. Before. The. Election. He is still universally well-regarded, despite the media’s best efforts to paint him otherwise. And Americans still prefer Democrats over Republicans.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
I mean, the complete lack of interest by the American public in the GOP’s latest batshit crazy scheme in the form of the trucker’s convoy is only one example of how they’ve lost their grip and none of their shit sticks to the wall among American voters.
Personally, I’m at the point where I want to press criminal charges against these media outlets for reckless endangerment and being a public menace, and then sue them in a civil suit for libel and defamation. The 1st Amendment is important and needs to be protected, but it is not an unlimited, unrestricted excuse for lying and systematically destroying people with coordinated messaging to benefit one political party at the expense of another political party, and ultimately at the expense of the American public, nor should it be. And there are legal precedents in place already to hold people accountable for libel and defamation that endangers the public. I say we use them to put a stop to this rightwing mainstream media circus they perpetuate under the guise of both-sides journalism. Social media and other online platforms have done it. Why not Democrats?
CBS laid down the gauntlet and all but admitted their intention to take down Democrats in the midterms and the presidential election. They won’t be the only media doing it. If Democrats do not act now to protect themselves, and yes, I fully mean by challenging the 1st Amendment, we’ll be looking at another shift towards fascism, and it will be even more embedded with each Republican gain. It is what the American mainstream media is salivating for.
Also very interesting that the Rs have NOTHING ELSE TO DO other than obsess and position themselves for the midterms. Nothing else going on in the world?… I’d be extremely concerned, say - if my Governor was focusing on ‘4 trans kids playing sports’ vs the thousands in state not getting other basic necessities, for example… Not to mention Senators who simply vote ‘No’ (to look strong!) - giving themselves plenty of free time to generate ‘outrage’ sound bites and enjoy 🦊 guest spots… just incredible.
Do-nothing Republicans have been a mainstay in D.C. for decades, yet the media give them a pass. Worse, their constituents do not care. I mean, they really don’t care. If it has a “R” next to the name, they can do or not do whatever they want. Meanwhile, Democrats get raked through the coals no matter what they do or don’t do. It is beyond infuriating.
And I personally look forward to watching that CBS asshat’s walk of shame in November when Democrats retain the House and Senate as they pick up a few more Senate seats in the process.
Ya wonder if having given them 6 months to examine how voting machines ‘work’ is also gonna make a difference idk