As Twitchy reported earlier, Politico reported with independent confirmation that, at minimum, parts of the Hunter Biden laptop story are legitimate (including the email about a proposed venture with Chinese energy executives including the line, “10 held by H for the big guy?”).
Glenn Greenwald already posted a righteous thread about social media’s “grave assault” on the truth, and here’s Drew Holden pulling the receipts for the media that either ignored the story or insisted it was Russian disinformation.
🧵THREAD🧵
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 ⤵️
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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? pic.twitter.com/SxMB18Cy7P
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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? pic.twitter.com/UPxdHskDsn
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
Yep, NPR came right out and said “we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” so we won’t be covering it.
@MSNBC went all in on this. They had a member of Congress, @CongressmanRaja, on to spread misinformation about it being a “Russian influence operation.”@JoyAnnReid called it a “Russian hatchet-job”@kylegriffin1 said it “appears to contain disinformation”
All lies. pic.twitter.com/S8ZIX4aKJE
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/tyX6JjHwuz
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
Might be a good time to update this fact check, @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/I5AgToXJEk
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
There were a bunch of elected officials who repeated this bogus allegation. Here are just a few.
Obviously we had chief Russia conspiracy theorist @RepAdamSchiff. But we also had @davidcicilline, @BillPascrell and @ChrisMurphyCT, among others.
Where’s the accountability? pic.twitter.com/WOWvbN4WBr
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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? pic.twitter.com/p9IFZU4DJU
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
How about from @EvanMcMullin and @DavidCornDC? Care to follow up? pic.twitter.com/RlsXKTzGFM
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
Never change, @brhodes pic.twitter.com/e03bldRCzW
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/V6C1pAxtY1
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
Wherever Russian conspiracy theories go, the Never Trump crowd is rarely far behind.
This was the case here as ever. @davidfrum @MaxBoot pic.twitter.com/zb3oDXIYYU
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
And this from @kurteichenwald is unhinged, even for him. pic.twitter.com/y5LXsXvLcm
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
“Every decent reporter?” Name one.
So, where is the follow up? Where are the fact checkers? Where are the social media warnings about these lies being disinformation?
Not a peep.
A fundamentally shameful episode. And one we aren’t likely to see any of the perpetrators of it revisit.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
There are a lot more examples from a thread I did back when the story first broke, linked here: https://t.co/MK9C2z8SIS
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 21, 2021
Related:
‘What???!!! No!!! Really?’ Looks like there may have been something to that Hunter Biden laptop story after all https://t.co/uR32hwg0vg
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 21, 2021
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