If you’ve been reading Twitchy today, you’ve seen quite a few flashbacks to people who wrote off the Hunter Biden story as a distraction or Russian disinformation. Apparently, it was easier to believe that the Russians had planted a laptop filled with incriminating emails in a computer repair shop to help throw the election to President Trump than it was to believe that Biden had been involved in some shady dealings.
We were hoping Drew Holden would post one of his threads naming and shaming those who wrote off the Hunter Biden story before the election and how they’re now acknowledging the fact that he’s been under investigation since 2018, and he came through.
?THREAD?
The Hunter Biden story broke two months ago. Most of the media ignored it or called it “Russian disinformation,” despite no evidence that it was.
Now that the election is over, the story, it seems, is fit to print.
Who’s up for a little before and after?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
You’ll remember that one of the key players in all this was Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunters.
Well, you might not if you’ve only read @CNN. As of last night, they’d never mentioned him. But their homepage featured Hunter and China.
Funny, that. pic.twitter.com/7QHpLxS1Xu
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
And surely you’ll remember that @CNN had former DNI James Clapper on the program to say that the Post’s reporting – that blew the lid off of the Biden family corruption in the first place – was “classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft” back in October. pic.twitter.com/Mw9bInuls1
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
The richest may be @NPR. Back in October they didn’t say a peep about Hunter because – I kid you not – they “don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”
Apparently, now it’s a story. pic.twitter.com/F38qKe5Gcv
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
@politico put out a piece back in October about how 50 “former senior intel officers” said it might be Russian disinfo, despite the entire American intel apparatus saying that was bunk.
Today they used the same picture of Hunter to report about…Hunter’s corruption. pic.twitter.com/AHYyZGEqQq
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Bonus on @politico. Reminder that, back in October, they quoted **a Biden advisor** to make the case that allegations against Hunter were Russian disinformation.
Not exactly Profiles In Courage stuff here. pic.twitter.com/vbgjg0AvDQ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
One of the most egregious displays was @CBSNews, who got upset with one of their reporters for daring to ask about Hunter Biden in October (h/t @CarmineSabia) but, all of a sudden, see it as a valuable story a couple of months later. pic.twitter.com/QWk0GMMNJg
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
I want to pause here to make something abundantly clear: the reason the Hunter story didn’t earn the attention it should have is because the media actively spread a conspiracy theory that it was Russian disinformation in the days leading up to the election. That’s it.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Here’s @NewsHour doing an about-face on Hunter’s impropriety with no recognition of how we got here. pic.twitter.com/2e8jyXLFAh
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
You had to assume that @nytimes would find their way on here. pic.twitter.com/juDtDz3dYK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
I almost appreciate the hustle from @MSNBC, who have continued to go to bat for Hunter through all of this, even if their tone has, well, changed a touch. pic.twitter.com/cZbqD8yIW7
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
And it doesn’t look like their top talent – @JoyAnnReid and @maddow – have thought it important to revisit their earlier claims which weren’t exactly spot on. pic.twitter.com/gPogVgoAv5
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Perhaps now would be a good time to update the fact check, @washingtonpost? pic.twitter.com/FVclAyU2Pd
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
This, from @businessinsider, is a doozy. pic.twitter.com/3SJAIyiBmg
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
It’s interesting to see @USATODAY say that this news puts Hunter’s finances back in the spotlight when back in October the only “spotlight” they gave them was to call them Russian disinformation (wrongly). pic.twitter.com/c0y1fAmnCu
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Funny how the story never “spilled over” into the mainstream media.
Now, the media isn’t omniscient. We shouldn’t have expected they would know about the FBI investigation. That isn’t the problem.
The problem is the absolute absence of interest in this story. The media didn’t just ignore it. They actively undermined it.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
I’ve got a whole separate thread on the Russian disinfo stuff, linked here. The allegations – which have since been shot through – were even more thinly sourced than the Hunter story. Yet TONS of outlets ran with them. Twitter and Facebook blackballed the piece. https://t.co/MK9C2zqu7s
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
But now, with the election in the rearview mirror, they’re interested in Hunter’s impropriety.
Where was this before? Where was this interest when Biden said during the debates that Hunter did everything aboveboard? The fact checkers were mysteriously absent from that one. https://t.co/5SGbkCfq3a
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Yeah, revisit that second presidential debate and Joe Biden’s claims about Hunter.
And of course the richest part of all this is that many of these outlets and individuals are the same people who pushed the idea that perhaps Donald Trump had been a Russian agent since the 1980s. https://t.co/4i73i1xR6P
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
So I don’t want to hear it. This was bad faith all the way down, and it was done deliberately to not upset what these folks thought would be a surefire Biden win in the election.
It stinks to high heavens and we should all be outraged.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Related:
Fix was IN! Politico OWNED with side-by-side screenshots of their Hunter Biden coverage pre and post-election https://t.co/WZYex768QH
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 10, 2020
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