The Bidens, some Ukranians, and the corporate media walk into a bar

Not Hunter Biden's laptop. // photo by Junior Teixeira

The New York Post published an article, releasing an email that potentially links Joe Biden's son, Hunter, to payments from foreign nationals, particularly Ukraine, for access to his father, a sitting Senator, signaling corruption. Emails directly implicate the presidential nominee, refuting his earlier claim that he wasn't aware of his son's business dealings. The details surrounding how the data was leaked is, strange, to say the least, making me doubt the veracity when I first heard of it. Someone brought the laptop in for repair and the legally blind owner found a bunch of this data on the laptop after the person never picked it back up. But it contained personal photos and videos of Hunter, inquiries to email recipients were verified, and his signed receipt at the store was later released.

The story didn't stop there. Twitter blocked the story from being shared and Facebook deprioritized it. Which, of course, guarantees that the story would blow up. Twitter said it had a policy against hacked emails. Okay, someone with evidence of corruption on their computer, giving it to a repair shop, and never picking it up is hardly hacking. As Gilfoyle would say, "It's barely social engineering. It's more like natural selection." Still, what about the Pentagon Papers that showed improper US involvement in Vietnam well before the war? What about the Panama Papers that showed widespread government corruption? These hacked or otherwise leaked documents provide extremely valuable insight into the corruption and misdeeds of government officials. Facebook restricted the article due to questions of its validity, patently laughable after the three-year Russiagate media storm that never materialized into any real corruption.

This clearly illustrates the Trump Derangement Syndrome bias in the corporate media. Every negative news item leaked about Russiagate, like the completely false Buzzfeed story, was taken at face value, while negative reports about Biden in the Hunter Biden story was largely ignored. Major publications like the New York Times never even bothered to link to the original story (but they did the fake Buzzfeed story) when talking about the media backlash but made certain to link to an article about a potential Joe Biden landslide victory, for some reason, and a year-old fact check about Hunter and Ukraine. They even used the formula Michael Malice has illustrated of media bias, of "[name of person], known for [negative or positive item, depending on how the writer wants to frame the narrative], [insert factual story after having already framed the narrative]" to plant a biased impression of the person out the gate: "Mr. Bannon, who was arrested in August and charged with fraud, informed the Post about the hard drive, and on Sunday Mr. Giuliani — who has been accused this election cycle of taking information from Russian agents — provided a copy to the Post, the article said." None of that has any real bearing on the story's or the hard drive's validity, and the latter not even substantiated, but is clearly used to frame the story in a falsified light without outright calling it a false story. Like Malice says, "factual, but not truthful." The New York Times called the incident "unsubstantiated" even though they followed up numerous Russiagate unsubstantiated stories for the better part of the last four years, but instead focused on the social media backlash. That the corporate media would denounce the right so savagely of uniquely spreading conspiracy theories proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that none of them has ever looked in a mirror.

In the one New York Times article that actually covered the original, scandalous story (instead of the tangential stories) over a week later, the entire framing was centered on Trump trying to damage Biden's campaign instead of the potential evidence of corruption within those emails. Right in the subheader, it's framed as Trump's allies trying to damage the Biden campaign. Really? That's the main story? Not that the presidential candidate lied about not knowing about Hunter's business interests, possibly getting paid for access to his father? The story tries its darndest to cast doubt on the laptop itself, ignoring the verified signature on the receipt, which predates this article. Then an entire section talks about "concerns over Russian disinformation," which begrudgingly says there was no concrete evidence for. What? Who really thought this, outside of the inner circle of TDS patients? The "intelligence community", the article claims. Oh, the same intelligence community that pushed the Russiagate nonsense? Did the New York Times miss the declassified documents that show the ordeal was orchestrated by the Clinton campaign, with Obama's knowledge? This story, while it could still amount to little, has more concrete evidence to it than the entirety of the Trump-Russia collusion story of the past three years. The discrepancy of how the media outlets approach these situations are incredibly stark, even for those that have been red-pilled.

After locking both the New York Post and White House press secretary Mayleigh McEnany's Twitter accounts over this, Twitter's CEO announced that they would slightly scale back their moderation policy after the incident. If not a step in the right direction, at least they have stopped backpedaling at such a ferocious rate.

Yet again proving he never commits more than three or four brain cells to examine any policy, Trump, in another idiotic tweet, used this incident to push for the repeal of Section 230, which provides protection to media companies from legal liability on what its users post. The result of Section 230 being repealed is obvious. Media platforms would scrutinize user content even more than they do now to shield themselves from legal liability. Links to news articles like the New York Post above would be even more likely to be censored off platforms since it would potentially open themselves up to libel lawsuits. Trump and his sycophants appear to not be able to realize that this is exactly the same thing the left pushes with making gun manufacturers liable for the murders committed with the goods they produce. It makes zero sense to hold companies that provide a service or tool liable for how the end-users use it. Should we make car manufacturers liable for drivers crashing cars they made? Should we make email providers liable for spreading misinformation between private users? None of it makes any sense.

Since none of it makes any sense, it makes complete sense that Joe Biden also favors the repeal of Section 230. But Biden's position on it actually is sensical in the context of this story and considering how it would benefit him. Even though it's been proven time and again that social media companies are terrible at it, it would force them to censor more and create more excuses for largely Biden-friendly entities to curate the narrative in his direction.

This really illustrates this election, and really, virtually all elections, beautifully. You can choose an idiot in Trump, or a corrupt politician in Biden, and the American people suffer the same, as a result, no matter which they choose. The Democrats and Republicans are, as usual, two sides of the same shit coin. The American voters would do well to think outside the duopolistic box, but I doubt most have enough imagination or attention span to do so.