I don’t know if folks remember how bad the smear campaign was about NY Post’s Hunter Biden laptop reporting was, so quick trip back down memory lane.
Beyond the full-court press from Twitter & Facebook, the media & Dems worked overtime to shut down the story. Look ⤵️
It’s worth starting with @CNN. They brought on James Clapper to call the scoop - confirmed today by Politico - “textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft.” @brianstelter had a program about how it was obviously fake. @apbenven had an “anatomy” of it.
Where’s the follow up, guys?
I mean, for crying out loud, @NPR went through the trouble of explaining why they weren’t going to report on the story!
Can we revisit that?
@MSNBC went all in on this. They had a member of Congress, @CongressmanRaja, on to spread misinformation about it being a “Russian influence operation.”
@kylegriffin1 said it “appears to contain disinformation”
All lies.
A lot of the original narrative was framed up by @politico, who ran a story that a bunch of former intel types disputed the findings (without seeing them, of course).
Today Politico announced that they had confirmed two of the key underlying details.
Might be a good time to update this fact check, @washingtonpost
There were a bunch of elected officials who repeated this bogus allegation. Here are just a few.
I want to pause to drive a point home: in the weeks leading up to an election, big tech, the Democrats and the corporate press worked together to bury a damaging story about one of the candidates, and they succeeded.
If you can shrug that off, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.
There were a ton of the usual suspects pushing this false narrative. I don’t have room for all of them but I wanted to point out some of the more egregious ones.
@joelockhart and @ThePlumLineGS, anything more from you guys? Still convinced it’s Russian disinformation?
And you, @McFaul? Do you still stand by your belief that this is a “hit piece so false that Twitter won’t even post it”? Or might there be something else afoot?
And I suspect @TVietor08 is right that folks haven’t learned the lessons of 2016, just wrong about what the lesson is.
Wherever Russian conspiracy theories go, the Never Trump crowd is rarely far behind.
Also worth pointing out: the smear here worked in both directions. Not only was Biden the blameless victim of supposed disinformation, but Trump was the reported bad guy pushing the (supposed) conspiracy theory.
Days before the presidential election between the two.
Quick addendum. @McFaul reminded me of a long thread he had on this subject, part explanation, part apology. Some of that is below.
A couple points:
First, I certainly don’t dispute that Russia actively uses disinformation to target the US. Or that Rudy Giuliani has proven himself an unreliable narrator, to put it mildly, when it comes to just about anything.
But he elides an important distinction here. It wasn’t that he “automatically questioned the veracity of [Giuliani’s] claims,” as he says.
He wrote those claims off completely as a malicious lie, helping feed into an effort to bury a real news story as “disinformation.”
As I’ve told him, I don’t expect I’ll be able to change his mind now that he‘s “MOVING ON FOREVER ON THIS!” but it’s obvious that he hasn’t actually taken any responsibility for helping to bury a since-verified, damaging story about the now-president days before his election.
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“15 days to slow the spread” kicked off four years ago Saturday, sending the media into perhaps its most deranged cycle of my lifetime.
I dove back into some of the worst lockdown media coverage from those early days.
Buckle in, this one’s long. ⤵️
The real worst of the coverage was when states started reopening. The media outrage was palpable. Republicans wanted people to die, we were told.
Remember @TheAtlantic’s “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice”? You may’ve forgotten how wild the text of it was. I did.
But that wasn’t a one off sentiment. The belief four years ago among the media was that allowing people to leave their homes was tantamount to killing people.
@washingtonpost called it a “deadly error” — not in an opinion piece, mind you, but in a “health” news headline.
Another media conspiracy, this time that Trump attacked a Secret Service agent on Jan 6, imploded yesterday.
Remember when the media—in unison—reported the “bombshell” allegations as fact?
I do. And I’ve got screenshots.⤵️
You’re familiar with the story I suspect but just in case: when former aid Cassidy Hutchinson testified Trump had “lunged” for a secret service steering wheel on Jan. 6, the media rushed to print the salacious (& false) claims as true.
Here’s @NBCNews @CNN @ABC @washingtonpost
Trump was allegedly going to drive himself to the Capitol to take part in the riot.
That’s what @CBSNews @Independent @NPR @NewsHour said.
The new change is stark. I went thru @nytimes digital archive.
Since Biden said the border wasn’t secure in late Jan, “border crisis” appeared in 26 NYT stories, even as crossings declined.
When crossings peaked in Nov & Dec, but there was no one but Biden to blame?
5 mentions
So what changed? Well, Biden empowered the press by saying the border wasn’t secure in late Jan. Then Republicans voted against a “bipartisan” border deal.
After that, the media were off to the races: yes, there was a border crisis, and it was the GOP’s fault. Here’s @CNN.
What happened to the media’s legal “experts” who said Colorado was right to kick Trump off the ballot? Remember them? I do. @FreeBeacon.
Quick trip down memory lane after even the liberal SCOTUS justices rejected Colorado’s claims. ⤵️ freebeacon.com/media/watch-su…
Here’s a link to the video which is incredible. Lot of media hosts and talking heads were convinced Trump was toast. (H/t @thaleigha_ for making this gem).
The “experts” said so!
Print reporting read the same way.
@nytimes cited an “expert” who said Colorado’s case was “legally sound” and that the only thing that could stop it was politics.
Why, then, did the 3 liberal justices also side against Colorado?
After Republicans accused Biden of refusing to do anything to address the border crisis for weeks, the press jumped in to suggest the president’s hands were tied.
Just look at this headline from @Forbes
Or this reporting from @AP, here to fact check Republicans and say that the authority they claimed Biden had (which, spoiler, he would soon use) was “far more complicated”