Well, this seems significant. I'm strongly of the opinion that conservatives endlessly re-litigating the 2020 election is a waste of time and energy. Pretending that former President Trump didn't lose is counter-productive, in addition to being inaccurate. It's a dead-end. Making 2020 trutherism a loyalty litmus test is corrosive madness. That said, some (frequently lied about) voting reforms like the ones adopted in Georgia and Texas are sensible and defensible, and I'll openly concede that certain dynamics in the last presidential cycle were undoubtedly alarming. One of the worst examples has nothing to with unsubstantiated "stop the steal" conspiracy theories about missing ballots. It has everything to do with the collusion of Big Democrats, Big Media and Big Tech to stifle and suppress journalism that could have been harmful to the Biden campaign during the final stretch of the election. These power players on Team Blue felt collective guilt over the Clinton emails scandal – which was absolutely a bona fide scandal – which they believe unjustly cost their preferred candidate the 2016 election.
They weren't going to allow that to happen again. So the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents had to be delegitimized and buried. The Biden campaign simply declared that the story was "Russian disinformation." On cue, "dozens" of former career intelligence officials rushed to publicly launder and justify this partisan claim, and did so baselessly. The Post's articles were censored, blocked, and throttled on social media. Twitter took extraordinary steps to prevent links from being shared and froze the newspaper's entire account for weeks. Facebook gatekeepers (like this longtime Democratic operative) determined it to be misinformation. "Respectable" journalists took these cues and deep-sixed the story. Biden made it clear that there would be zero tolerance for even asking questions about it. The news media and social media companies' handling of the entire matter was a scandal. Even the Biden campaign wouldn't deny that the laptop was authentic, yet their "Russia!" deflection was effectively treated as gospel. He won. The plan worked. Now, let's revisit this answer Biden hissed at Fox's Peter Doocy on the campaign trail:
"I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings...Ask the right questions!" Biden categorically denied knowledge of his son's lucrative and suspicious overseas business dealings in places like Ukraine and China. Hunter's correspondence suggests otherwise, and a Biden business associate has asserted that the then-candidate's statement was "a blatant lie," based on his own firsthand knowledge and experience on the subject. And now, a journalist at Politico seems to have corroborated some of the Post-reported information that was furiously dismissed and discarded as Kremlin dirty tricks in the heat of an election cycle:
POLITICO reporter @SchreckReports has a new book *confirming* the emails from Hunter Biden's laptop about Joe Biden's business deals in China & Ukraine are genuine.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 21, 2021
People complaining about pre-election censorship by Google in Russia cheered Big Tech's censoring this reporting. pic.twitter.com/T7r8G6MSDW
Exactly. That's the other thing liberal outlets lied about.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 21, 2021
It was completely scummy to publish docs about Hunter's personal life, including his private sex life and drug use: nobody's business.
What mattered were the ample docs about *Joe's* activities in China and Ukraine. https://t.co/BhwUkcmYC7
Some people will predictably react to all of this by rolling their eyes about "old news" that isn't relevant. But it was potentially highly relevant prior to the election – back when it was new news and was subjected to a breathtaking campaign of censorship and delegitimization by major arbiters of information in our society. I do not know if Hunter Biden or Joe Biden did anything illegal. The younger Biden's access to high-paying jobs and relationships do seem almost exclusively tied to his proximity to power and access, as opposed to qualifications or competency. And Joe Biden's disavowal of any knowledge of these dodgy dealings – which he claimed her knew nothing about whatsoever, while offering ludicrous spin – seems less and less credible. A legitimate and potentially-explosive news story was suppressed in the weeks leading up to a consequential US election. Rather than racing to confirm or debunk allegations, most of the "news" media raced to strangle the story altogether. Big Tech, the Democratic Party, and intelligence community alumni all pitched in, too. Is this not "election interference" – or at least very ethically worrisome?
I sincerely doubt if the parties to this conspiracy of silence and suppression are eager to see it revisited, so expect to see this revelation largely ignored. If it starts to gain traction, expect attacks on the journalist who dug into it, and bullying of any mainstream figures or outlets who stray from the united front. These journalistic findings should be a catalyst for a major conversation. Will they be? Count me as skeptical.
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