The New York Times waited well over a year after the presidential election to “confirm” that a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop computer and its contents was indeed factual. But ahead of the 2020 election the media and social media outlets suppressed and censored the story purely for reasons of damage control for the Biden campaign.
Over the weekend, Washington Post reporter Philip Bump made excuses for the media by providing “context” to why much of the media either ignored the laptop story or called it “disinformation.” Yesterday Juan Williams picked up where Bump left off:
Juan Williams bizarrely claims about the Hunter Biden laptop scoops on "Fox News Sunday" that "nobody said it wasn't true," still says media were "properly cautious."https://t.co/RU6J7ZGbnP
— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) March 20, 2022
Here’s a partial transcript (via Newsbusters) of Williams’ exchange with Fox News Sunday fill-in host Trace Gallagher:
Gallagher began: “The New York Times comes out and says, hey, it’s legit after all. You know, Facebook was going to do a fact-check. Never did it. Twitter, never happened. And you think nobody has apologized at all for this. They were wrong across the media, Juan, and nobody has said, you know what, we screwed that up, it wasn’t Russian disinformation.”
WILLIAMS: No, but I think there’s a larger context here, which is that what was this about? What does it prove? Nobody said it wasn’t true. That — what was said was that you can’t authenticate it. And then you had certain publications that said, we have authenticated it.
GALLAGHER: The analysts said it wasn’t true. The analysts, the intel analysts said they didn’t — couldn’t prove it. It sure looked like Russian disinformation.
WILLIAMS: Right, couldn’t prove it was the key point for organizations.
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Williams defended the media by saying those who dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story (or social media companies that were censoring the reports) were being “properly cautious”:
Fox News' Howard Kurtz: "It is an absolute embarrassment the way that the media downplayed or ignored or mocked or minimized [the Hunter Biden laptop] story…they're still not covering it." pic.twitter.com/XNK3enhwtG
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 20, 2022
If the media and Big Tech had been censoring a story that could have been damaging to Trump we highly doubt Williams would have defended the media as “properly cautious.”
On "Fox News at Night" (Thu.), they played clips of Joe Biden claiming the Hunter Biden stories were a "smear campaign" and a "hoax," so it's pretty odd when Juan Williams claimed today on @FoxNewsSunday "nobody said it wasn't true." pic.twitter.com/uiceAqcwwx
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) March 20, 2022
“Nobody said it wasn’t true.” LOL.
I don’t always agree with Howie Kurtz, but he’s always fair and balanced, and 100% correct here.
Juan Williams is a partisan hack. Period.— 𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓈𝓉𝒾𝓉𝓊𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉 (@MSMCali) March 20, 2022
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Related:
Jen Psaki refers reporter with question about her 2020 dismissal of Hunter Biden laptop story to DOJ
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