Smoking gun on Joe Biden

[Ming]

Only in Kidland is calling somebody a female successful journalist supposed to be an insult....

[Aeson]

Why does Trump keep appointing all these deep state guys to the deep state?

[Kidlicious]

Why does Trump keep appointing all these deep state guys to the deep state?

He's horrible at hiring people.

[-Jrabbit]

Finding people who are both competent and blindly loyal to one's whims can be a challenge.

[giblets]

Interesting quality for a lifelong businessman to have

[-Jrabbit]

Meanwhile, the laptop story is quietly fading from view. There was only one story about it on FoxNews.com this morning. It's an analysis column by their own media expert, Howard Kurtz, and here are the high points:

The thing about “fake news” is that it suddenly seems authentic when it’s on your side.

For all of President Trump’s attacks on the “enemy of the people”--and some criticism from the Bernie Sanders wing that derides the corporate-controlled media--nonpartisan journalists can still be useful in the role of umpire. And that’s why the president, and politicians of all stripes, try to orchestrate favorable coverage, especially on controversial issues.

This enables them to point to a news story as validation of whatever political charge they’re hurling at the moment. Such stories give their rhetoric a certain gravitas, a patina of credibility.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

But--and here’s the rub--nowhere near as much as in the past. A huge swath of the country no longer trusts the elite media, which has been battered by Trumpian attacks as well as their own increasingly blatant biases and blunders. Many people no longer believe the fact-checkers will deliver the facts. Many reflexively dismiss a story in the New York Times or Washington Post, no matter how well-documented, as trash because of the perception of political animus.

They were once the gatekeepers, the big papers, networks and magazines who mainly controlled what you read, saw and heard. But the rise of the web and social media destroyed their stranglehold on the news. And that, despite the vitriol and misinformation that are part of the Twitter and Facebook culture, was a healthy thing...

The downside of their forced abdication is the absence of neutral referees, the inability to agree on a common set of facts, that has been a hallmark of the Trump era, as major news outlets have turned sharply left. Who, in the past, could imagine a president walking out on “60 Minutes”?

And that brings us to Hunter Biden.

Trump campaign operatives tried to give the story--the batch of emails and a former Hunter business partner accusing Joe Biden of involvement--to a Wall Street Journal reporter. “The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president,” who told one crowd the Journal was working on an exciting story.

But when Journal reporters--who operate separately from its conservative editorial page--took too long with their digging, the Trump folks, who wanted the story out before the final debate, got antsy. Rudy Giuliani delivered some of the same documents to the New York Post, which like the Journal and Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch but operates independently. The Post’s story, alleging the former vice president was involved in Hunter’s foreign dealmaking, drew plenty of criticism (and was censored by Twitter and Facebook, which have essentially become the new virtual gatekeepers).

The ex-business partner, Tony Bobulinski, issued a statement implicating Biden the night before the debate, and the Trump campaign brought him to Nashville for an appearance the next day. Breitbart, which used to be run by Steve Bannon, the ex-White House aide who was working with Giuliani, published the entire statement.

The result is the latest Hunter stories were birthed in a hyperpartisan storm, rather than with the imprimatur of the Journal news pages.

Worse, from the Trump campaign’s point of view, is that the Journal ran a short news story saying “corporate records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.” Fox’s news division, reviewing the same records, reached the same conclusion. At both outlets, conservative opinion people disagreed.

There was a barrage of online denunciations from Trump supporters after I laid out these facts on “Media Buzz.”

On one side, you have Bobulinski’s account and an email saying that “H” (presumably Hunter) would reserve 10 percent of the millions of dollars from China for the “big man” (presumably Joe).

On the other side, another ex-partner says Joe Biden was not involved, while two news organizations failed to find evidence to contradict that. And in any event this happened in 2017, when Biden was out of office, and the China project never went anywhere.

TL/DR: Trump has spent 4 years getting people not to trust the MSM, so it's telling that they needed a major mainstream publication like the (Murdoch-owned) Wall Street Journal to give this bogus laptop story any credibility. When the WSJ decided to fact-check the story first, Team Trump went decided timing was more important than credibility and went to the NY Post and Breitbart.

So the blame for the obviously phony laptop story never gaining traction beyond the rabid, believe-anything base actually lies with Trump's constant attacks on the free press. Which is deliciously ironic.

[-Jrabbit]

Here's the link to Howard Kurtz's FoxNews.com analysis of the failed laptop story today:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-the-wall-street-journal-and-the-decline-of-media-gatekeepers

[Kidlicious]

Here's the link to Howard Kurtz's FoxNews.com analysis of the failed laptop story today:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-the-wall-street-journal-and-the-decline-of-media-gatekeepers

Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ verified the emails.

[Kidlicious]

"That’s the reality now that a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s has come forward to provide the ugly details of the “family brand.” Tony Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and institutional investor, has provided the Journal emails and text messages associated with his time as CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, a venture between the Bidens and CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate. That correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post, which says they come from a Hunter laptop."

- Kimberly Strassel (WSJ)

[-Jrabbit]

She's an opinion writer, not a journalist. And the story isn't that simple:

Readers of the Wall Street Journal may have felt a bit of whiplash on Thursday over a news story and an opinion column that presented sharply conflicting accounts of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s alleged role in one of his son’s business ventures.

TheJournal column — hailed as a bombshell before the final presidential debate by Biden critics, including President Trump — asserted that Biden was involved in a deal arranged by his son Hunter with a Chinese energy conglomerate in 2017 (when Joe Biden was not in office).

Columnist Kimberley Strassel relied on the account of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, who provided documents that “suggest Hunter was cashing in on the Biden name and that Joe Biden was involved.”

But a few hours after Strassel’s column was published, the Journal’s news side offered a much different take.

“The venture . . . never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals, according to people familiar with the matter,” Wall Street Journal reporters Andrew Duehren and James Areddy wrote. “Corporate records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.” The reporters also quoted another partner in the venture, James Gilliar, who said he was “unaware of any involvement at anytime of the former vice president.”

Biden has long denied that he ever had foreign business dealings with his son, and there is no evidence beyond Bobulinski’s assertions. Trump himself has facedquestions about foreign business interests while serving as president.

Dueling accounts from the same publication about a major news story are rare. Also unusual: Opinion columnists typically don’t attempt to break news. Large, mainstream news organizations such as the Journal manage their news-reporting and opinion operations separately. The Journal’s news side is under editor in chief Matthew Murray; Paul A. Gigot is editor of its editorial page.

In the Journal’s case, there’s an ongoing civil war between its news staff and its opinion side, as well as a wider war among news organizations controlled by the family of media baron Rupert Murdoch.

In July, more than 280 employees at the Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, protested what they said was the spread of “misinformation” by the paper’s opinion pages. “Opinion’s lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence, undermine our readers’ trust and our ability to gain credibility with sources,” the employees wrote to new publisher Almar Latour. “Many readers already cannot tell the difference between reporting and Opinion. And from those who know of the divide, reporters nonetheless face questions about the Journal’s accuracy and fairness because of errors published in opinion.”

The letter cited a column by Vice President Pence in which he asserted that concerns about a second wave of coronavirus infections were “overblown.”

In response, the editorial board posted “A Note to Readers,” in which it vowed that its writers “won’t wilt under cancel-culture pressure.”

Strassel is a prominent conservative writer who is a member of the Journal’s editorial board and a Fox News contributor. Her Thursday column on the Bidens — titled “The Biden ‘Family Legacy’” — was republished by FoxNews.com, but the Journal’s news story on the same topic was not.

Joe Biden’s campaign has denied the allegations, which have been promoted by Trump allies Stephen K. Bannon and Rudolph W. Giuliani and embraced by Trump’s reelection campaign. On Thursday, Trump sought to highlight the allegations by inviting Bobulinski to the presidential debate in Nashville.

The Washington Post has been unable to independently verify the emails or to obtain a copy of the hard drive that Bannon and Giuliani allege was owned by Hunter Biden.

The New York Post, Journal and Fox News are all owned by companies in which Murdoch and his family are the controlling shareholders.

Neither Strassel nor Wall Street Journal editor Murray responded to requests for comment.

[Kidlicious]

That article is total bull****. There is all kinds of evidence that Joe Biden is involved in this on the laptop. The whistleblower says he is and has provided evidence. These journos don't know anything. Liars.

[-Jrabbit]

What laptop? The one no one has actually seen, with the files never released as originals with metadata?
There is literally no corporate document connecting Joe Biden to the company.
The company itself never did any of the envisioned "deals" being talked about
And it was 2017, when Joe Biden was not working for the government at all.

THIS is your smoking gun??? LOL LOL LOL

[Kidlicious]

I don't give a damn if she's an opinion writer or not. That doesn't mean anything. She doesn't report fake news like your fake news journos do.

[Ming]

I love how the latest poll show that the majority of Americans believe Trump and his family are more “corrupt” than the Bidens.

[Ming]

I don't give a damn if she's an opinion writer or not. That doesn't mean anything. She doesn't report fake news like your fake news journos do.

In Kidland, anything he believes is real news, but anything that disagrees with him is fake news.
It's to be expected from Trump supporters who will believe anything their masters tell them... Like the virus is going away.

[Kidlicious]

In Kidland, anything he believes is real news, but anything that disagrees with him is fake news.
It's to be expected from Trump supporters who will believe anything their masters tell them... Like the virus is going away.

No. I believe Kimberly Strassel because she has a good reputation. I believe the whistleblowers. I believe the shop owner. You're the one that calls real evidence fake, and real news fake.

[Ming]

And where are the indictments...
Trump is being investigated, but you aren't claiming he's guilty.

Please let us know when the indictments occur... unlike those Trump inner circle criminals who have already been convicted.

[Kidlicious]

Here's the link to Howard Kurtz's FoxNews.com analysis of the failed laptop story today:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-the-wall-street-journal-and-the-decline-of-media-gatekeepers

So this article, which is horrible and dishonest, doesn't dispute Kimberly Strassel's findings or what she reported. It's a smear against a fine women, underhandedly accusing her of dishonesty or incompetence. Disgusting.

[-Jrabbit]

News flash: Kidicious admits Fox News is disgusting, horrible, and dishonest.

[Kidlicious]

2 days ago from WSJ editorial board...

"The Press of Conformity

A case study in how the media stigmatize opposing views.

By
The Editorial Board
Oct. 25, 2020

Tony Bobulinski speaks to reporters at a hotel in Nashville, Tenn., Oct. 22.

PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Some institutions are responding better than others to the stress of political polarization, and one of the worst performers has been the press. Its broad and intense progressive partisanship is escalating into attempts to stifle information and stigmatize opposing points of view.

A case in point is the media distortion of a pair of recent reports in The Wall Street Journal. Our Kimberley Strassel wrote a detailed analysis in her Friday column about the emails and text messages of former Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski. Journal reporters wrote later that day about Mr. Bobulinski’s claims, and media partisans jumped to assert that the news story contradicted Ms. Strassel’s.

No, it didn't, as more careful analysts like Mark Hemingway have noted. The Journal news story added the fact that their examination of business records found no evidence of Joe Biden having an ownership stake in the Hunter Biden-Bobulinski company.

But Ms. Strassel never said Joe Biden did. She reported that Mr. Bobulinski provided documents supporting his claim that a stake was envisioned for Joe Biden, but that Mr. Biden ought to respond to clear the record if this wasn’t true. The news story treated the emails and texts as real, and thus tacitly confirmed that they weren’t “Russian disinformation” as Joe Biden and others have claimed.

---

The news and opinion sections of the Journal operate separately, and we can’t speak for our news colleagues. But our view is that Mr. Bobulinski’s documents and statements are news that the public deserves to see. This is why Ms. Strassel reported the story in meticulous fashion, and we published it. By pretending that the two stories conflict, the progressive media are attempting to say that the emails and texts should never have been reported.

This is laughable coming from the crowd that spent four years pushing the Russia-Trump collusion narrative from 2016 that was ginned up and promoted by the Hillary Clinton campaign. They spun the claims of the Steele dossier, despite no supporting evidence and no on-the-record witnesses. Yet now they claim that on-the-record statements from a former Hunter Biden associate, along with emails and texts that the Biden campaign hasn’t disputed, should be kept from the public.

All of this is relevant beyond next week’s election. If Democrats win up and down the ballot, progressives will control the commanding heights of nearly every American elite institution: Congress, the administrative state, Hollywood and the arts, the universities, nonprofits, Silicon Valley and nearly all of the media.

Yet instead of playing watchdog for the public, today’s progressive press partisans devote themselves to attacking anyone who breaks from their orthodoxy. They denounce independent voices like Ms. Strassel with their Twitter brigades, then they unleash reporters who are ideological enforcers masquerading as media critics. They can’t tolerate any opposing political view. This is why Americans in record numbers don’t trust the media, and it’s why we will keep reporting the news others won’t."

There was no contradiction. Fake news!

[-Jrabbit]

Strassel IS A MEMBER of the WSJ editorial board. It's the editorial board protecting its own, nothing more.
What's hilarious is that they are defending themselves against the WSJ news division.