If anyone is still wondering why significant elements of the American electorate have lost faith in the credibility of Big Tech, the mainstream media, and the Washington Establishment, the recent revelation by The New York Times that emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop are, in fact, authentic, and the collective reaction to that news by Big Tech, the mainstream media, and the Washington Establishment – to wit, a collective yawn – should be all the explanation necessary.
For those late to the story, here’s a quick recap:
In October 2020, just three weeks before the presidential election, The New York Post – the nation’s oldest newspaper – published a series of articles based on documents found on a laptop computer that had belonged to Biden’s son Hunter. The stories provided evidence that Joe Biden had lied when he declared that, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” and revealed that Hunter had pursued a series of business deals in Ukraine and China, and appeared to have leveraged his father’s political position to make money. Further, it appeared, based on the documents on the laptop, that Hunter may have violated certain laws requiring disclosure of activities on behalf of foreign entities, and he may not have reported to the IRS all the income he earned. The documents even raised questions about whether or not Joe himself had reported all his income.
Those matters were, of course, legitimate subjects of discussion in a presidential campaign.
Yet Big Tech, the mainstream media, and the Washington Establishment moved immediately to shut down the story. Twitter locked the Post’s account for two weeks, and refused even to allow users to circulate the articles in private messages to one another; Facebook, too, blocked circulation of the articles. Mainstream media outlets refused to report the emerging stories, and the Washington Establishment – in the form of 51 former national security and intelligence community professionals, led by James Clapper, Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan – went to bat for the Bidens, publishing a letter justifying the decision by Big Tech and the mainstream media to block circulation of the story by declaring their belief that it “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
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The combined efforts to block circulation of the news was so effective that a post-election survey conducted by McLaughlin & Associates on behalf of the Media Research Center showed that 36 percent of Biden voters “were NOT aware of the evidence linking Joe Biden to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter.” Moreover, “Thirteen percent of these voters (or 4.6% of Biden’s total vote) say that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for the former Vice President.”
In other words, Big Tech, the mainstream media, and the Washington Establishment worked together to rig the 2020 election.
Now comes The New York Times 17 months later with an acknowledgement that the emails found on Hunter Biden’s “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the [federal] investigation” into Hunter Biden. That would have been a helpful acknowledgement … 17 months ago.
Has the Times apologized for its role 17 months ago in suppressing the circulation of critical information? No. Have any of the 51 national security and intelligence community professionals apologized for their actions? No. Has any cable television booker or producer even decided to stop using any of the 51 as on-air national security analysts? Based on a quick review, the answer is no – Clapper, Brennan, Morrell, Vickers, and Panetta have all appeared in their regular cable TV talking head role for CNN, MSNBC, and CBS in recent weeks, opining on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with none of their viewers the wiser.
The New York Times has been feeding us lies about Russia and communism for more than a century. Correspondent John Reed wrote “It is still fashionable, after a whole year of the Soviet Government, to speak of the Bolshevik insurrection as an ‘adventure.’ Adventure it was, and one of the most marvelous mankind ever embarked upon.” A dozen years later, correspondent Walter Duranty was even awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his “coverage” of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, including the forced and brutal collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine that led to millions of deaths. And who can forget the role played by correspondent Herbert Matthews in his fawning coverage of the young Cuban communist Fidel Castro?
You might think the Times might have learned something from its previous failures. You’d be wrong.
Next time someone from Big Tech, or the mainstream media, or the Washington Establishment wonders why tens of millions of Americans don’t believe them and asks you if you can help them understand, tell them to start by looking in the mirror.
Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.
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