The collapse of the cryptocurrency company FTX could be as massive a scandal for Democrats as the Democrats insisted the Enron debacle was for former President George W. Bush. The man who took over the wreckage of Enron is now in charge of managing the end of FTX.
But our largest national media outlets are going to bury the point that FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was the second-largest donor to the Democratic Party in the 2022 election cycle, with over $40 million in contributions, second only to socialist agitator George Soros. The former crypto king made one of the largest donations to Joe Biden's presidential campaign in 2020, a cool $5.2 million.
Just check out how the alphabet networks steered clear of troubling facts on Dec. 14.
On ABC's "Good Morning America," chief business correspondent Rebecca Jarvis: "Sam Bankman-Fried was a major political donor and invested in a number of companies, and now there are calls for those politicians and those businesses to give that money back."
On "CBS Mornings," Capitol Hill reporter Scott McFarlane: "Federal prosecutors allege Bankman-Fried violated campaign finance law, directing millions in campaign contributions to both parties, some of it, they say, with stolen customer money."
On NBC's "Today," correspondent Stephanie Gosk: "Bankman-Fried allegedly used the money for his own personal gain, including lavish real estate purchases and large political donations."
On the Dec. 13 NPR podcast "Consider This," NPR business reporter David Gura noted: "Bankman-Fried, who is a big political donor, has also been charged with violating campaign finance laws."
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Not everyone played stupid. CNN's Randi Kaye noted in passing that "he donated more than $900,000 to candidates and nearly $39 million to outside groups for midterms. Most of the spending supported Democrats."
The most outrageous take on the SBF donations came from MSNBC's "All In" host Chris Hayes. He was raining fire on Fox for pushing right-wing conspiracy theories. "Now, there's two major problems with the story they've been telling. The first major problem is that Sam Bankman-Fried, it turns out, wasn't a partisan donor. By his own admission last month, he gave just as much to Republicans as he did to Democrats."
So wait a minute. Bankman-Fried is on record for humongous Democrat donations, but the fraudster should be automatically believed when he claims he made massive but untraceable donations to the GOP?!
Hayes was putting all of his crypto-punditry on the empty words of SBF: "All his Republican donations were dark, the dark money the Republican Supreme Court enabled, that he was able to funnel without anyone noticing to Republican donors, too. Somebody please tell Tucker."
Hayes didn't mention that Bankman-Fried claimed he gave "dark money" to Republicans because "reporters freak the f--k out if you donate to Republicans. They're all super liberal, and I didn't want to have that fight."
There were Republican politicians on the SBF list. Nik Popli at TIME magazine reported Sen. John Boozman, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins received the maximum individual contribution of $5,800. But that doesn't balance out being the No. 2 Democrat sugar daddy of 2022.
Bankman-Fried conned a large number of leftist journalists with his talk of "effective altruism," growing mega-rich only to give it all away. Even now, they can't admit how easily conned they were.
The most obvious evidence of journalistic skullduggery perpetually emerges in coverage of scandals. Republican scandals are hyped to the skies, and Democrat scandals are buried or carefully elided. The media elite's transparent partisanship is at the center of why they're not trusted by most Americans.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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