On MSDNC Jon Meacham Say Trump Supporters Am "Lizard Brains"

 jonathanturley  |  We recently discussed how Vanderbilt professor and historian Jon Meacham gave a quiz in his course on the 2020 Election in which students were asked “Was the Constitution designed to perpetuate white supremacy and protect the institution of slavery?” You had to answer “yes” or get points deducted.

It appears that the final exam in the class could prove even more demanding for any intellectually honest student if Meacham asks about the voters themselves. The NBC analyst this week declared that President Trump and his supporters are examples of being controlled by what is called “the lizard brain.”

It only got worse from there.

Meacham addressed a simple question of whether Trump helped himself with his base in the second presidential debate Thursday night. It is impossible on NBC, however, to refer to Trump voters without some derisive or insulting precursor. Meacham did not disappoint his audience.

“I think Trump did himself good with his base tonight,” Meacham said. “The question for America is how big that base is. There is a lizard brain in this country. Donald Trump is a product of the White man’s, the anguished, nervous White guy’s lizard brain.”

Meacham was referring to a primitive part of the brain in psychological literature: “Many people call it the ‘Lizard Brain,’ because the limbic system is about all a lizard has for brain function. It is in charge of fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing up, and fornication.”

Of course, even with the lead held by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in the polls, roughly half of this country still supports Trump (or at least rejects Biden, who Meacham has endorsed). That is a lot of lizard people.

What is striking is that Meacham is supposed to give what NBC, MSNBC and PBS present as neutral, scholarly analysis. But his comment about Trump supporters having lizard brains captures why conservative or independent voters view the networks as biased and gratuitously insulting.

Indeed, these comments show that networks like NBC are now focusing entirely on Democratic and liberal viewers — writing off half of the American people as gag lines.

I have written repeatedly about how the media have helped Trump by fulfilling his narrative of open bias. Meacham shows that they are now enjoying this too much.

Bought And Paid For - Biden Is Communist China's Bish

epochtimes |  In May 2019 Joe Biden distinguished himself from all of the other candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination by ridiculing the idea that China is a strategic threat to the United States. “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” he told a campaign crowd in Iowa City. Biden had for years adopted a soft approach to China. When President Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was taking a tougher position towards China’s adventurism in Asia, Vice President Biden was urging caution. Biden had formed a warm personal relationship with Xi Jinping when Xi was vice president and president-in-waiting.

In his second term, Obama replaced Clinton as secretary of state with the more accommodating John Kerry. The dynamics help to explain why Obama’s 2012 “pivot to Asia” was a damp squib. The United States stood back while China annexed islands and features in the South China Sea and built military bases on them, something Xi had promised Obama he would not do. Breaking the promise has given China an enormous strategic advantage.

Joe Biden cleaves to the belief, now abandoned by many China scholars and most Washington politicians, that engagement with China will entice it into being a responsible stakeholder. The University of Pennsylvania’s D.C. think tank—named, for him, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement—aims to address threats to the liberal international order, yet China is absent from the threats identified on its website: Russia, climate change and terrorism. Biden has spoken about China’s violation of human rights but still clings to the idea of China’s “peaceful rise.”

So does it matter if Joe Biden has a different view of China? It does, because there is evidence that the CCP has been currying his favor by awarding business deals that have enriched his son, Hunter Biden. One account of this is given by Peter Schweizer in his 2019 book “Secret Empires.” Some of his key claims were subsequently challenged and Schweizer refined them in an op-ed in the New York Times (famous for fact-checking). In short, when Vice President Biden travelled to China in December 2013 on an official trip, his son flew with him on Airforce Two. While Biden senior was engaging in soft diplomacy with China’s leaders, Hunter was having other kinds of meetings. Then, “less than two weeks after the trip, Hunter’s firm … which he founded with two other businessmen [including John Kerry’s stepson] in June 2013, finalized a deal to open a fund, BHR Partners, whose largest shareholder is the government-run Bank of China, even though he had scant background in private equity.”

 

 

JoltinJoe Biden Has Been Given A Pass To Pretend That Trump Is Gunning For Hunter

thehill |  The former vice president was asked in an interview on the progressive political podcast "Pod Save America" released Saturday why he hasn't highlighted concerns that the Trump family is profiting off the presidency, a charge Trump has made against Biden's son.

"It's a specific decision, and I just think it's crass," Biden said.

"I'm running against Donald Trump, not his children, and the American people want to hear about their families, not about Trump's family or my family, although I'm very proud of my family," he said. "It's just not how I was raised. It's that basic. It's Donald Trump."

Critics have long raised concerns about Trump's family profiting off his presidency, with Democrats maintaining that his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner holding positions as senior White House advisers presents conflicts of interest with their businesses.

Ivanka Trump has brushed off such criticisms, saying last year that her father ran for office after making his money in real estate.

“His wealth, and our wealth, collectively and independently, was created prior to government service and prior to anyone in our lives having run for elected office,” she told The Associated Press then.

“Most people do create their wealth post service. We created ours prior,” she added.

 

Huntergate Has Always Only Ever Been About Joe Biden's Political Corruption

NYPost |  What might the Bidens’ foreign benefactors have expected in return for all this largesse? We can’t say. But some may see a correlation between that foreign money and Joe Biden’s policy posture toward the sources of that money.

Consider the case of the Penn Biden Center, a D.C. think tank named after Joe Biden. According to the Center, its mission is to “Address Threats to the Liberal International Order.” The Center analyzes the threats of “Russia” and “climate change” in detail. But China — the largest violator of basic human rights on the planet — does not make the list. Why?

Perhaps we now know why.

The New York Post broke news last week that Joe Biden himself may have benefited from his son’s dealings. The Post quoted a cryptic message from one of Hunter’s partners, saying that “10 [percent] held by H for the big guy?” The recipient of that message, Tony Bobulinski, says “there is no question” that “H” stands for Hunter and the “Big Guy” is Joe Biden.

We gain further insight into the operations of Biden Inc. in emails provided to us by Bevan Cooney, a former business associate of Hunter Biden. Cooney, who is currently in prison for his role in the Indian Bond Scheme that is sending Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer also to jail, shared 26,000 emails that show what Hunter’s role was in their business ventures. The Biden name was considered “currency” for their foreign business ventures, and was a “direct…pipeline” to the Obama-Biden Administration. Deals involving Hunter benefited from the “Biden lift,” the help that the name would provide in overseas dealings.

After first dismissing the gathering scandal as a “conspiracy theory,” the Biden team shifted to the position that Joe had never talked with his family about their business dealings, then shifted again to the position that he’d never met with his family’s business partners. Now, with the latest document revelations, Joe Biden unveiled his latest defense in the recent debate: “I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever.”

Team Biden points to Joe and Jill Biden’s tax returns as evidence that Joe did nothing improper. It is worth noting that the family members upon whom foreign entities showered money are not required to disclose their finances.

Uniform Mainstream Complicity With The Biden Crime Syndicate

theatlantic  |  For those trying to follow along at home, the emails produced by Tyrmand are not the same emails that originally appeared on a laptop that Hunter Biden supposedly left at a Delaware computer-repair shop, the laptop that then became a story in the New York Post (and whose contents, according to a report in Time, were circulating previously in Ukraine). This is a different cache, one that is even more tangential to the U.S. presidential campaign and even harder to understand. In order to even make sense of the messages’ content, the reader must learn the backstories of a whole new cast of characters, not just Cooney but two other convicted fraudsters named Devon Archer and Jason Galanis; the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, Yelena Baturina; and Chris Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson, who broke away from the group; as well as their relationships, their jokes (they refer to Baturina as the “USSR woman’s shot put champion”), and the rules of the ugly world they inhabit. In order to link them to Joe Biden, you have to turn somersaults, do triple flips, and squint very hard.

Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff. Judging by what has been published, the very worst thing that Tyrmand’s email cache could reveal (if it is authentic) is that some unattractive people sought to use Hunter Biden’s surname and connections to get business deals or score a visit to the White House for their clients. But we already know about Hunter Biden’s involvement with unattractive people, and his struggles with addiction; we also know that, under normal circumstances, dozens of people visit the8 White House every day. On the grand scale of misdeeds committed by politicians and their relatives, this kind of thing barely registers. Compare that with, say, the Trump family’s well-documented hotel deal with an Azerbaijani business family linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Or the Trump family’s blatant use of its status to funnel money to its own companies. Or the Trumps’ illegal abuse of their charitable foundation. Or the president’s secret Chinese business bank account. The Trump family is a living, breathing, walking conflict of interest—so much so that much of Donald Trump’s foreign policy is most easily explained through the lens of his personal greed and his hotel investments, not as the emanation of any kind of American national interest.

But this, of course, is not the point. In releasing the 26,000 emails, Tyrmand and his collaborator, the Breitbart News contributor Peter Schweizer, are not bringing forth any evidence of actual lawbreaking, or an actual security threat, by either Hunter or Joe Biden. They are instead creating a miasma, an atmosphere, a foggy world in which misdeeds might have taken place, and in which corruption might have happened. They are also providing the raw material from which more elaborate stories can be constructed. The otherwise incomprehensible reference in last night’s debate to “the mayor of Moscow’s wife,” from whom Joe Biden somehow got rich, was an excellent example of how this works. A name surfaces in a large collection of data; it is detached from its context; it is then used to make an insinuation or accusation that cannot be proved; it is then forgotten, unless it gains some traction, in which case it is repeated again.

Great Reset's Intersectional Hijacking Of Non-Whydte Wymyn Victim Vectors

strategic-culture |  People living in the western world are in the greatest fight for the future of pluralist and republican forms of governance since the rise and fall of fascism 75 years ago. As then, society had to be built up from a war. Today’s war has been an economic war of the oligarchs against the republic, and it increasingly appears that the coronavirus pandemic is being used, on the political end, as a massive coup against pluralist society. We are being confronted with this ‘great reset’, alluding to post-war construction. But for a whole generation people have already been living under an ever-increasing austerity regimen. This is a regimen that can only be explained as some toxic combination of the systemic inevitabilities of a consumer-driven society on the foundation of planned obsolescence, and the never-ending greed and lust for power which defines whole sections of the sociopathic oligarchy.

Recently we saw UK PM Boris Johnson stand in front of a ‘Build Back Better’ sign, speaking to the need for a ‘great reset’. ‘Build Back Better’ happens to be Joe Biden’s campaign slogan, which raises many other questions for another time. But, to what extent are the handlers who manage ‘Joe Biden’, and those managing ‘Boris Johnson’ working the same script?

The more pertinent question is to ask: in whose interest is this ‘great reset’ being carried out? Certainly it cannot be left to those who have built their careers upon the theory and practice of austerity. Certainly it cannot be left to those who have built their careers as puppets of a morally decaying oligarchy.

What Johnson calls the ‘Great Reset’, Biden calls the ‘Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution & Environmental Justice’. Certainly the coming economy cannot be left to Boris Johnson or Joe Biden.

How is it that now Boris Johnson speaks publicly of a ‘great reset’, whereas just months ago when those outside the ruling media paradigm used this phrase, it was censured by corporate Atlanticist media as being conspiratorial in nature? This is an excellent question posed by Neil Clark.

And so we have by now all read numerous articles in the official press talking about how economic life after coronavirus will never be the same as it was before. Atlanticist press has even run numerous opinion articles talking about how this may cut against globalization – a fair point, and one which many thinking people by and large agree with.

Yet they have set aside any substantive discussion about what exists in lieu of globalization, and what the economy looks like in various parts of the world if it is not globalized. We have consistently spoken of multipolarity, a term that in decades past was utilized frequently in western vectors, in the sphere of geopolitics and international relations. Now there is some strange ban on the term, and so we are now bereft of a language with which to have an honest discussion about the post-globalization paradigm.

JoltinJoe Has Compassion For Hunter But Put Black Crackheads Up Under The Jailhouse

pjmedia  |  Moreover, what other presidential candidate has refused to provide his position on key issues, including whether he would pack the Supreme Court? When has any other candidate haughtily waved off questions of debate moderators and reporters with the sophomoric dodge that, “Trump just wants you to focus on this issue (instead of what an SOB he is)”?

Adding insult to injury, when has the media ever let any candidate off the hook like this, which is a scandal of unprecedented proportions? Obviously, the media disrespects the electorate as much as the Biden campaign does.

If anything is indisputably the media’s job, it is to bring out the candidates’ positions on important issues, and packing the Supreme Court and the Biden scandals are exceedingly important — and relevant — issues. What would the media’s reaction be if Trump refused to answer such questions?

The media dutifully promoted the canard that the Russians — yes, the Russians again — were behind the emails found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. But how will these crooked conspirators explain away the bombshell revelation of Hunter’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, that the “big guy” referred to in Hunter’s email is Joe Biden himself? How will they handle Bobulinski’s assertion that Joe Biden was offered 10% interest in a Chinese business deal?

But for my money, even these cover-ups don’t hold a candle to the media’s scandalous concealment of Joe Biden’s declining mental acuity. In his current state, Biden clearly is not fit for office, yet the media ignores it while raising bogus questions about the uncannily vibrant Trump’s capacity. Reality has finally trumped George Orwell’s imagination.

Where is the perennial finger-wagger Bob Woodward when you need him?

The American public knows everything there is to know about Trump, as they’ve scrutinized every molecule of his being and business dealings and dug up every conceivably negative morsel about him during the last four years.

 

A WHOLE CLOSET Of Bright Red Chinese Jimmy Choos Fell On Joe Biden's Head This Week

baldingsworld |   Lost among the salacious revelations about laptop provenance is the more mundane reality of influence and money of major United States political figures. Ill informed accusations of Russian hacking and disinformation face the documented reality of a major Chinese state financial partnership with the children of major political figures. A report by an Asian research firm raises worrying questions about the financial links between China and Hunter Biden.

Beginning just before Joe Bidens ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was travelling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures would ultimately become his investors.  Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who’s who of Chinese state finance.

It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place. Most investment in specific projects came from state owned entities and flowed into state backed projects or enterprises. Even the deals speak to the worst of cronyism. The Hunter Biden investment firm share of a copper mine in the Congo was guaranteed with assets put at risk by the larger copper company to ensure deal flow to Hunter’s firm.

In another instance, Bank of China working on an IPO in Hong Kong gave its share allocation to the BHR investment partnership. They were able to do this because even though the Hunter Biden firm completed no notable work on the IPO, it is counted as a subsidiary of the Bank of China. The Hunter Biden Chinese investment partnership is literally invested in by the Chinese state and a subsidiary of the Bank of China owned by the Chinese Ministry of Finance.

The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government. The innocuous names like Chinese People’s Institute for Foreign Affairs exist to “…carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government.”

Interestingly the CPIFA is under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the investment partnership was struck in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was Yang Jiechi. Yang would have been very familiar with Hunter Biden from his days in Washington as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 during which he met regularly with Joe Biden chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Today the same individual who oversaw institutions helping shepherd Hunter’s investment partnership as the Minister of Foreign Affairs is Xi Jinping’s right hand man on foreign affairs and member of the powerful Politburo.

Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family.  Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion.  While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all.  A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter’s stake being worth in excess of $50 million.

According to Hunter’s attorney, he did not invest his $400,000 in the company until 2017. Even assuming the veracity of this statement, this raises a major problem. Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.

The difficulty in eluding these concerns is their documentability by anyone who cares to look.  There is no potential for hacking because it is all public record in China. Any journalist who wishes to look can go review IPO prospectuses, news reports, or corporate records. There is no secret method for discovering this data other than actually looking. There is simply no way to avoid the reality that Hunter Biden was granted a 10% stake worth far in excess of what he paid for a firm that is literally operated and owned by the Chinese state.

I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and have significant concerns about his policies in areas like immigration. Having lived in China for nine years throughout the Xi regimes construction of concentration camps and having witnessed first hand their use of influence and intelligence operations, the Biden links worry me profoundly.

Whether Joe Biden personally knew the details, a very untenable position, it is simply political malpractice to not be aware of the details of these financial arrangements. These documentable financial links simply cannot be wished away.

 

Here is the report if you missed the previous links

Knowing What We Now Know - Do You Find It Hard To Imagine What It Was Like To Be Trump This Year?

That Big Bobulinski China Shoe Dropped On The Bidens Yesterday

NYPost  |  Wait until Scranton hears about this.

One of Joe Biden’s ways of contrasting himself with President Trump has been to declare the election a battle of Park Avenue values vs. Scranton, Pa., values.

Now we learn that Biden has secretly been playing footsie with China.

The statement Wednesday night asserting that the former vice president was a willing and eager participant in a family scheme to make millions of dollars by partnering with a shady Chinese Communist firm is a singular event in a presidential race already overflowing with drama and intrigue.

The dynamite assertion, believable because it aligns with earlier information we know to be true, came in a statement by Tony Bobulinski, who describes himself as a former partner of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and Joe’s brother Jim in the China scheme. Bobulinski unloads his bill of accusations in blunt but precise language and detail.

He confirms that he was one of the recipients of the May 13, 2017, email published by The Post eight days ago. That email, from another partner in the group, laid out cash and equity positions and mysteriously included a 10 percent set-aside for “the big guy.”

Sources have said the “big guy” was Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden text exchange from June 2017 obtained by #FoxNews ranting to his business partners about not wanting to "sign over my family's brand", "the keys to my family's only asset" to Tony Bobulinski. Warning: foul language. pic.twitter.com/8gn1KuVOBu

— Mike Emanuel 🇺🇸 (@MikeEmanuelFox) October 22, 2020

In a matter-of-fact manner, Bobulinski states that the “email is genuine” and that the former vice president and the man leading in the 2020 race is indeed “the big guy.” 

My name is Tony Bobulinski. The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive. I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine.

This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.

I am the grandson of a 37 year Army Intelligence officer, the son of a 20+ year career Naval Officer and the brother of a 28 year career Naval Flight Officer. I myself served our country for 4 years and left the Navy as LT Bobulinski. I held a high level security clearance and was an instructor and then CTO for Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. I take great pride in the time my family and I served this country. I am also not a political person. What few campaign contributions I have made in my life were to Democrats.

If the media and Big Tech companies had done their jobs over the past several weeks I would be irrelevant in this story. Given my long standing service and devotion to this great country, I could no longer allow my family’s name to be associated or tied to Russian disinformation or implied lies and false narratives dominating the media right now.

After leaving the military I became an institutional investor investing extensively around the world and on every continent. I have traveled to over 50 countries. I believe, hands down, we live in the greatest country in the world.

What I am outlining is fact. I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.

Hunter Biden called his dad “the Big Guy” or “my Chairman,” and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

The Johnson Report connected some dots in a way that shocked me — it made me realize the Bidens had gone behind my back and gotten paid millions of dollars by the Chinese, even though they told me they hadn’t and wouldn’t do that to their partners.

I would ask the Biden family to address the American people and outline the facts so I can go back to being irrelevant — and so I am not put in a position to have to answer those questions for them.

I don’t have a political ax to grind; I just saw behind the Biden curtain and I grew concerned with what I saw. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.

Coincidence Theory: Does Ghislaine Maxwell's Deposition Distract From The Sordid Drip Of Huntergate?

 slate |  On Thursday morning, a federal court released a 2016 deposition given by Ghislaine Maxwell, the 58-year-old British woman charged by the federal government with enticing underage girls to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein. That deposition, which Maxwell has fought to withhold, was given as part of a defamation suit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges that she was lured to become Epstein’s sex slave. That defamation suit was settled in 2017. Epstein died by suicide in 2019.

In the deposition, Maxwell was pressed to answer questions about the many famous men in Epstein’s orbit, among them Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew. In the document that was released on Thursday, those names and others appear under black bars. According to the Miami Herald, which sued for this and other documents to be released, the deposition was released only after “days of wrangling over redactions.”

It turns out, though, that those redactions are possible to crack. That’s because the deposition—which you can read in full here—includes a complete alphabetized index of the redacted and unredacted words that appear in the document. For example, after cracking the redactions, we know that Maxwell was asked about an email that Dershowitz allegedly sent to Epstein. In that email, Dershowitz reportedly wrote that he was “working on several possible articles about unfairness in the legal process that allows false charges to be inserted into legal documents.”

Here’s how to deduce the redacted words, using former President Bill Clinton as an example.

 

What Domination Of The Genetic Lottery Looks And Sounds Like...,

It's Not What's Been Said, Rather, It's What's Been Left Unsaid...,

When asked local Wisconsin TV station WISN if there was any legitimacy to comments by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that Hunter "together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name," the former Vice President replied "None whatsoever," adding (without finishing the sentence) "This is the same garbage Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman..."

"It's the last ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family."

Except, Hunter admitted he profited off his family name!

"If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?" asked ABC News' Amy Robach in an October 15, 2019 interview.

"I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect," said Hunter. "I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden," he added, "because my dad was Vice President of the United States."

"There’s literally nothing, as a young man or as a full-grown adult that — my father in some way hasn’t had influence over."

j|onathanturley  |  The convergence of law and politics is a common occurrence in Washington. While law is used to ascertain truth, politics is often used to obscure it.

That is why the truth is rarely evident in looking at a scandal straight on. Rather it requires peripheral vision or analysis – often what is not evident is what is most enlightening.

This most famous example of such reasoning was found in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “Silver Blaze,” on Sherlock Holmes’s investigation of the disappearance of a racehorse.

The local inspector asked if there was “any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes responds, “To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

When the inspector objects, “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” Holmes replies, “That was the curious incident.”

There is always something a tad curious of Washington legal scandals in what has not occurred. That is why the latest Hunter Biden scandal is so curious.

When the story broke in the New York Post, the Biden campaign was faced with thousands of emails that purportedly showed clear support for allegations that Hunter Biden was given millions as part of an influence-peddling scheme related to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.

There was ample reason to be skeptical about the sketchy account of a computer being left by Hunter Biden at a computer store with a man who cannot see beyond a couple of feet.  And then there is the timing of disclosure just weeks before an election.

The problem was the absence of “barks” from the Biden camp. The computer files revealed a host of embarrassing pictures of Hunter Biden using drugs or exposed in other embarrassing ways. The emails contain dates and addresses that match up with confirmed records.

If they are fabricated, there were three barks that we would have expected within hours of the release.

Bark 1: This was not Hunter Biden’s computer

The most obvious response would be that this is not the computer of Hunter Biden.  After all, the computer store owner John Paul Mac Isaac who is legally blind said that he could not recognize the person who dropped off the laptop.

However, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has now stated, as a fact, that “the laptop was left by Hunter Biden, in an inebriated, heavily inebriated state with the merchant.”  That does not purport with what Isaac said.

However, there remains the question of a laptop with a “Beau Biden Foundation” sticker on it with highly incriminating files.

Someone in the campaign must have called Hunter Biden and he had to have told them whether or not it was his laptop.

The response on ownership has been crickets for days.

Bark 2: These were not Hunter Biden’s photos or emails

Even if the campaign cannot deny that the computer was Hunter Biden’s, it could deny that these incriminating pictures and emails were his.

Again, crickets.

Note that if these are fabricated emails or pictures, this would be a serious federal crime and the basis for legal action.

The Biden camp has no shortage of lawyers. Indeed, they have been signing up lawyers in droves in preparation for election challenges.

Yet, there is not a single allegation of fraud or fabrication after days of a brewing scandal.

Bark 3: This is defamation

Perhaps this bark is the most telling. If these emails or pictures are fabricated, it is a clear case of defamation and other tort actions.

It would seem that one of the hundreds of lawyers currently lined up by the Biden campaign would fire off an “intent to sue” letter.

Truth is a defense to defamation, so the letter might start with the earlier bark and deny that this was Hunter Biden’s computer and these were Hunter Biden’s file.

One big difference between the legal and political worlds is that in the latter there is no protection for the right to remain silent. In politics, scandals can be managed but not silently.

Instead of these obvious barks, the public heard something closer to a whimper: that the campaign could not find any notation on Vice President Biden’s official schedule that he met with a Ukrainian figure connected to the payments to his son Hunter Biden.It would be a curious sight in itself for Biden’s official schedule to include “meeting with Ukrainian connected to Hunter.” Many meetings are not part of an official schedule that staffers know is subject to official records laws for preservation and review.

That is what is so curious about the Hunter Biden story and, to move from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Lewis Carroll, it is becoming “curiouser and curiouser.”

 

Rudy Cold Busted: Thought He Was Fitna Get It In....,

guardian  |  Although unfortunate, the circumstances of the set-up appear consensual, with Giuliani led to believe he was being courted. Bakalova, 24, is highly plausible in the sting, despite also having to pretend, for the benefit of viewers, to be a feral child posing as a far-right journalist.

In a radio interview after news of the scene broke, Giuliani claimed that he was only trying to take off his microphone and tucking in his shirt.

“I had to take off the electronic equipment,” Giuliani told WABC. “And when the electronic equipment came off, some of it was in the back and my shirt came a little out, although my clothes were entirely on. I leaned back, and I tucked my shirt in, and at that point, at that point, they have this picture they take which looks doctored, but in any event, I’m tucking my shirt in. I assure you that’s all I was doing.”

He added that he had believed the interview with Bakalova was entirely legitimate. “At one point she explained to me some problems she had. I actually prayed with her,” he said. “And then I had to leave. I had my jacket on. I was fully clothed at all times.”

Later on Twitter, Giuliani derided the film as “a complete fabrication”.

“At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar,” he added.

Why Say "China" Since The FBI Has Been Holding The Kompromat All Along?

justthenews  |  Giuliani dismissed suggestions that filing a police report as Trump's private attorney two weeks before Election Day should be deemed political.

"The conduct falls under the mandatory reporting requirements for child endangerment," Giuliani said. "If I was the U.S. attorney or the mayor or Bernie was still the commissioner, it would have been a crime for us not to report what we had."

The Delaware Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act mandates reporting by "any person, agency, organization, or entity who knows or in good faith suspects child abuse or neglect."

The police report is the latest drama to unfold from the week-old Biden laptop revelations, news about which influential social media sites choose to block from public view, including stories from The New York Post, purportedly because of "potential harm." Facebook and Twitter did not disclose any details of the "potential harm." Conservatives have pointed out that the FBI has possessed the computer materials for a year. Giuliani said the FBI's apparent inaction factored into his decision to report the matter to local police.

"The FBI has had this for a long time," Giuliani said. "No indication they did anything about this, so I went to the local police and said, 'What are you going to do about this?'"

Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings was a protege of the vice president’s late son Beau Biden, who served as the state's attorney general from 2007-2015. She began her tenure as state prosecutor in 2011 and was named Delaware's top law enforcement officer in January 2019. Jennings' Chief Deputy Attorney General is Alexander S. Mackler, who was Vice President Biden's deputy legal counsel.

Why Say "Russia" If China's Holding All The Kompromat?!?!

churchmilitant |  A whistleblower is claiming there are multiple videos on Hunter Biden's laptop showing him raping and torturing underage Chinese girls, and that the Chinese Communist Party is using these videos as blackmail against Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden.

DingGang Wang, a member of Miles Guo's team, which has worked with Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani for many months, said in a Sept. 24 broadcast for Lude Media — two weeks before the New York Post bombshell — that he has reviewed the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.

"So what about Hunter Biden? Sex tapes, pedo tapes, one by one — Hunter Biden," said Wang. "Extremely disturbing and obscene ..."

Indicating extreme abuse, he continued, "Not treating the Chinese as human beings."

"Who filmed these?" he asked. "The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did it!"

Wang indicates there is much more compromising material on the laptop, and that the CCP is using the child porn videos as blackmail against Joe Biden, whom they hope is elected president. 

"The message of the CCP is: Don't ever think I don't have your secrets in possession," Wang explained. "To give you this hard drive is to let you know that, don't forget, we have evidence of your crimes. You have to win this election."

Sexual blackmail is a classic tactic of the communists, and was routinely used by the KGB. In addition to the famed "honeytrap," wherein female KGB agents seduced American men and caught their misdeeds on tape, there is evidence General Secretary Yuri Andropov created pedophile rings in order to blackmail businessmen and political leaders.

The tactic is also used in communist China.

"The CCP was accused in 2015 of using attractive women to seduce spies from the British MI6 intelligence agency and lure them into honeytraps to obtain state secrets," writes Joshua Philipp. "A top-secret MI6 memo obtained by the UK's Mirror news outlet said Chinese spies were 'aggressively' targeting spies and their families."

The New York Post confirmed porn was found on Hunter's laptop: "A computer camera roll of nearly 25,000 images is loaded with sexually explicit selfies and porn (which The Post is not publishing) ... ."

 

Hunter Biden Has Been A Longtime Victim Of Joe Biden's Corruption And Greed

brucewilds  |  Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category. One thing is clear, whenever we are talking about the involvement of huge sums of money, foreign players, officials holding high public office, or family members of politicians a few eyebrows should get raised. With this in mind, the Biden problem extends well past Hunter but also into how other family members have profited from Joe's time as Vice President such as his brother's involvement in a huge government contract in Iraq.

The issue of Hunter Biden receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and China surfaced during the first Presidential debate and Biden claimed it was a story already discredited by authorities. This narrative was destroyed when the Washington Times acknowledged the Treasury Department records confirm Hunter Biden received a wire transfer for $3.5 million from the Mayor of Moscow’s wife. It is difficult to find anyone that holds Hunter in high esteem and the fact the United States suspects the woman sending him this money built much of her wealth through corruption does little to improve his standing. For those of us cynical of all the so-called public servants that seem to line their pockets and hold the attitude they are above the law this is a big red flag. 

If the veil of secrecy surrounding Hunter's career is lifted we will most likely find Hunter's dad did share in the spoils bestowed upon not only his son but others in the Biden family. I contend Joe Biden's cozy relationship with corruption is why former President Obama did not rush to endorse Biden when he announced he planned to run. To be clear, we are talking about, millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars or more. For us cynics, we see this as what may be only the tip of the spear when it comes to public officials throwing the American people under the bus for fun and profit. As a voter, this dovetails with my concern about Biden's relationship and attitude towards China which I consider a major issue. 

Let's Consider A Little History Of Huntergate's Degenerate Father-Bagman Son Relationship

NYPost |  Rather than set up shop in New York City, the financial capital of the world, Rosemont Seneca leased space in Washington, DC. They occupied an all-brick building on Wisconsin Avenue, the main thoroughfare of exclusive Georgetown. Their offices would be less than a mile from John and Teresa Kerry’s 23-room Georgetown mansion, and just two miles from both Joe Biden’s office in the White House and his residence at the Naval Observatory.

Over the next seven years, as both Joe Biden and John Kerry negotiated sensitive and high-stakes deals with foreign governments, Rosemont entities secured a series of exclusive deals often with those same foreign governments.

Some of the deals they secured may remain hidden. These Rosemont entities are, after all, within a private equity firm and as such are not required to report or disclose their financial dealings publicly.

Some of their transactions are nevertheless traceable by investigating world capital markets. A troubling pattern emerges from this research, showing how profitable deals were struck with foreign governments on the heels of crucial diplomatic missions carried out by their powerful fathers. Often those foreign entities gained favorable policy actions from the United States government just as the sons were securing favorable financial deals from those same entities.

Nowhere is that more true than in their commercial dealings with Chinese government-backed enterprises.

Rosemont Seneca joined forces in doing business in China with another politically connected consultancy called the Thornton Group. The Massachusetts-based firm is headed by James Bulger, the nephew of the notorious mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger. Whitey was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, part of the South Boston mafia. Under indictment for 19 murders, he disappeared. He was later arrested, tried, and convicted.

James Bulger’s father, Whitey’s younger brother, Billy Bulger, serves on the board of directors of the Thornton Group. He was the longtime leader of the Massachusetts state Senate and, with their long overlap by state and by party, a political ally of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

Less than a year after opening Rosemont Seneca’s doors, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were in China, having secured access at the highest levels. Thornton Group’s account of the meeting on their Chinese-language website was telling: Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden).”

The purpose of the meetings was to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity.” Curiously, details about the meeting do not appear on their English-language website.

Also, according to the Thornton Group, the three Americans met with the largest and most powerful government fund leaders in China — even though Rosemont was both new and small.

The timing of this meeting was also curious. It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit.

 

No Greater Love Than This - But Groping Joe Has Used Hunter As A Bagman....,

Slate  |  Last week, the New York Post began publishing reports on a series of photos, emails, and documents allegedly taken from a laptop hard drive that belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. As it became increasingly clear that the Post was using hacked, unverified information that may have been manipulated by a foreign entity for the purposes of influencing the upcoming presidential election, social media companies started to ban or otherwise attempt to reduce the spread of the Post’s initial story. But the tabloid continued printing information from the hard drive, a copy of which it says it received from disgraced Donald Trump associate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Given that Giuliani and Steve Bannon were the Post’s two sources of information about the hard drive, the provenance of the Rupert Murdoch­–owned paper’s information is more than a little suspect. Giuliani, for one, has said that there’s a 50-50 chance he worked with a Russian spy to dig up embarrassing material about the Biden family. And the computer repair shop owner who allegedly obtained the hard drive and turned it over to Giuliani’s lawyer doesn’t exactly seem like a trustworthy fellow either. So it is with a massive grain of salt that we consider the contents of the hard drive itself. One of the stories contains an alleged text exchange between Hunter and Joe Biden from two months before Joe announced his presidential campaign. It began with a text Joe sent around 7 a.m. to Hunter, who was residing in a rehab facility. “Good morning my beautiful son,” the text reads. “I miss you and love you. Dad.”

Whether or not the hacked material is accurate and complete, the father-son text exchange does the exact opposite of what Giuliani and Trump have been trying to do. For years, Trump and his allies have attempted to paint Hunter as the beneficiary of (Trump-style) nepotism and a shameful sleazeball who reflects poorly on his father. Yet, in the text conversation, Biden comes off as loving and concerned. Hunter certainly admits to struggling with addiction and the pressures of living under intense public scrutiny, but there is nothing politically damaging about the exchange—only a sad, humanizing portrait of a family working through a difficult time.

What Universe Do These Unfounded And Unvetted Claims Come From?!?!?!

msdnc  |  It must've seemed like a good idea at the time. Rudy Giuliani and his allies apparently thought they could package an anti-Biden smear, hand it to a media ally, and watch as the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential race focused on their "October Surprise." It'd fundamentally change the trajectory of the election and put Donald Trump in a position to hold onto power.

It's not quite working out that way.

As we've discussed, Giuliani and Steve Bannon delivered an anti-Biden smear to the New York Post, and the conservative tabloid ran its literally unbelievable story last week. The article was filled with convoluted details involving a Ukrainian gas company, Hunter Biden, his alleged laptop, some of his alleged emails, and an unnamed shop owner in Delaware. Of course, the underlying premise of the allegations was discredited quite a while ago, which is why most major news organizations had the good sense to steer clear of the Post's reporting.

As scrutiny of the scheme intensified, we learned that many inside the tabloid disagreed with the decision to publish the anti-Biden article. But more importantly, they're not the only ones with concerns.

The entire mess is now being investigated by federal authorities as potentially being part of a hostile foreign influence operation illegally targeting our election. Indeed, Politico published this report overnight:

More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden's son "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."

These dozens of former officials added that their extensive national security experience has left them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand at work.

Wikipedia Proclaims Huntergate Already Been Debunked Or Where The Cocaine Cigarettes At?!?!?!

wikipedia  |  Robert Hunter Biden (born February 4, 1970) is an American lawyer and investment advisor who is the second son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. He is a founding partner of Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment and advisory firm.

Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a major Ukrainian natural gas producer, from 2014 to 2019. He and his father have been the subjects of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies concerning Biden business dealings and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.^[1]

Naval career

In May 2013, Biden's application for a position in the U.S. Navy Reserve was approved.^[73] At age 43, Biden was accepted as part of a program that allows a limited number of applicants with desirable skills to receive commissions and serve in staff positions.^[74] He received an age-related waiver and a waiver due to a past drug-related incident, and was sworn in as a direct commission officer.^[73] Joe Biden administered his commissioning oath in a White House ceremony.^[3]

The following month, Biden tested positive for cocaine during a urinalysis test and was subsequently discharged administratively.^[75][76] Biden attributed the result to smoking cigarettes he had accepted from other smokers, only later suspecting they had been laced with the drug.^[3] He chose not to appeal the matter as it was unlikely that the panel would believe his explanation given his history with drugs, and also due to the likelihood of news leaking to the press, though it was ultimately revealed to The Wall Street Journal by a Navy official who provided information to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.^[3][73]

 

.45's Gut Instinct, Dumb-Luck, And Kayfabery Is The Equivalent Of "Strong In The Force"

technologyreview |  The news: When Twitter banned, and then unbanned, links to a questionably sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, its stated intention was to prevent people from spreading harmful false material as America heads into the final stretch of the election campaign. But thanks to the cycle of misinformation—and claims from conservatives that social-media platforms are deliberately censoring their views—Twitter managed to do the opposite of what it intended. 

According to Zignal Labs, a media intelligence firm, shares of the Post article “nearly doubled” after Twitter started suppressing it. The poorly-thought-through ban triggered the so-called Streisand Effect and helped turn a sketchy article into a must-share blockbuster. And then on Friday, the Republican National Committee filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against Twitter, claiming that the ban “amounts to an illegal corporate in-kind political contribution to the Biden campaign.” 

The ban: Twitter blocked shares of the story under its policy against hacked materials, in part because of the dubious sourcing by the New York Post, the company said. The article also contained screenshots of emails with the addresses unredacted. Federal investigators are now looking into whether they are tied to a foreign intelligence campaign, according to NBC News. 

But on Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that blocking the URL was “wrong,” and that the company has changed its policy and enforcement procedures in response to the outrage over this decision.

Huntergate: What Comes Next?

revolver  |  What is the most incriminating thing on the hard drive? Rudy has suggested illegal things, and as Revolver reported, the FBI person tasked with the hard drive is associated with the child pornography division. Could you give more insight into how bad it is we’re talking about?

Mr. Bannon: Joe Biden is a liar, a fraud, and compromised by Chinese cash. In short, he is a national security crisis. The hard drive combines emails and text messages that show a massive involvement with companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Also, there are 25,000 images that show a drug-addled, depraved lifestyle — one that decent hardworking Americans will not want near the White House.

Revolver: The FBI has been holding onto the hard drive for almost a year? Any sense of why? Was there any indication that they were seriously interested in a criminal case, assuming that there is, in fact, illegal material on there? If not, why would the FBI simply hold onto information like that?

Mr. Bannon: The President must confront the director of the FBI on why the information housed on this hard drive was not moved on immediately. If the content of the hard drive had been released when received in November 2019, there would have been no impeachment of Trump, and Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic Party nominee. This confrontation should take place this weekend in the Oval Office. If Wray doesn’t have a bulletproof reason he should be fired in the room.

Revolver: What are your best estimates on how many foreign entities may have obtained possession of the hard drive? Chinese intel?

Mr. Bannon: It’s the actions represented on the hard drive that the American people must understand our enemies know about. The cash and equity given for access to Biden, the favors done for that cash, the drugs, the depravity. The CCP, Russian Intel, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Intel Services — they know the Bidens are for sale.

Did The FBI Conceal Huntergate In Order To Control Preznit Joe Biden?

americanthinker  |  It didn’t surprise the informed, and understandably a bit cynical, to hear that the FBI sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop instead of seeking justice. The bureau was previously involved in an illegal plot to take down Donald Trump, after all, and its Deep State elements would assuredly love to see Joe Biden succeed him in January. So why would they reveal damning information on their establishment hope? Yet suppressing Huntergate perhaps provided a secondary benefit:

The information could be used against Biden once he was in office.

This wouldn’t be anything new. It’s believed that longtime, legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used “dirt files” on politicians for leverage; for one thing, it’s said, this enabled him to remain bureau head for as long as he wished. William Sullivan, once the number three official under Hoover, put it this way: From the moment the director got damning information on a senator, the man would be “right in his pocket.”

So not only could suppressing Huntergate get Biden in office, but then maybe it’s, “Nice presidency you’ve got there, Mr. Biden — I’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

Since the criminality in question could, apparently, put Hunter in prison along with destroying China Joe, the leverage is profound. It could not only be used to control Biden but also his wife, Jill, in the unlikely event she for a time is able to pull off an Edith Wilson (who supposedly ran the show when Woodrow Wilson became incapacitated). She wouldn’t want to see her stepson in the hoosegow and her family’s reputation ruined, after all.

DNI Ratcliffe Shut That Russian Disinformation Operation Shit DOWN This Morning....,

pic.twitter.com/YZlLZfUr01

— OBX (@OBX) October 19, 2020

caitlinjohnstone |  Fight it all you want, but there’s nothing you can do. “The emails are Russian” is going to be the official dominant narrative in mainstream political discourse, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Resistance is futile.

Like the Russian hacking narrative, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian bounties in Afghanistan narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that simultaneously advances pre-planned cold war agendas, is politically convenient for the Democratic party and generates clicks and ratings, the narrative that the New York Post publication of Hunter Biden’s emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus. 

This will happen regardless of facts and evidence, up to and including rock solid evidence that Hunter Biden’s emails were not published as a result of a Russian operation.

This is happening. It’s following the same formula all the other fact-free Russia hysteria narratives have followed. The same media tour by pundits and political operatives saying with no evidence but very assertive voices that Russia is most certainly behind this occurrence and we should all be very upset about it.

“To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work,” Russiagate founder and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is heard assuring CNN’s audience.

“Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda,” begins and eight-part thread by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who claims the emails are “Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.”

“It’s not really surprising at all, this was always the play, but still kind of head-spinning to watch all the players from 2016 run exactly the same hack-leak-smear op in 2020. Even with everyone knowing exactly what’s happening this time,” tweets MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

“How are you all circling the wagons instead of being embarrassed for peddling Russian ops 18 days before the election. It’s not enough that you all haven’t learned from your atrocious handling of 2016 — you are doubling down,” Democratic Party think tanker Neera Tanden tweeted in admonishment of journalists who dare to report on or ask questions about the emails.

 

NBC/MSDNC Amp Up Anti-Constitutional Pandemic Lockdown Lies And Disinformation

jonathanturley |  For four years, I have written about the alarming loss of neutrality and objectivity in journalism — a trend that is reflected by many polls showing that the majority of the public no longer trusts the media for fair and honest reporting. While I have regularly criticized President Donald Trump, I have also objected to unrelentingly biased reporting as well as embarrassingly soft coverage of former Vice President Joe Biden. Now, Stanford Communications Professor Emeritus Ted Glasser has publicly called for an end of objectivity in journalism as too constraining for reporters in seeking “social justice.”

In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.”  Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Dressing up bias as “advocating social justice,” does not remove the taint of yellow journalism.  It is the same rationalization for shaping the news to fit your agenda and treating readers as subjects to be educated rather than informed.

While other professors in The Stanford Daily disagreed, Wesley Lowery, who has served as a national correspondent for the Washington Post, also rejects objectivity.  In a tweet, Lowery declared “American view-from-nowhere, “objectivity”-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment…The old way must go. We need to rebuild our industry as one that operates from a place of moral clarity.”

These are major voices in media.  Glasser is a Stanford Department of Communication professor emeritus and served as the director for Stanford’s Graduate Program in Journalism. He is also the former president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

 

Brow Furrowed In Mock Concern - The WaPo Composes Disinformation Operation Details

WaPo  |  U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter.

The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would expose corrupt acts by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and conversations.

The warnings to the White House, which have not previously been reported, led national security adviser Robert O’Brien to caution Trump in a private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia, one of the former officials said.

The message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine,” this person said. Officials wanted “to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid,” particularly since he was facing impeachment over his own efforts to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens.

But O’Brien emerged from the meeting uncertain whether he had gotten through to the president. Trump had “shrugged his shoulders” at O’Brien’s warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about his lawyer’s activities by saying, “That’s Rudy.”

Officials’ warnings about Giuliani underscore the concern in the U.S. intelligence community that Russia not only is seeking to reprise the disinformation campaign it waged in 2016, but also may now be aided, unwittingly or otherwise, by individuals close to the president. Those warnings have gained fresh urgency in recent days. The information that Giuliani sought in Ukraine is similar to what is contained in emails and other correspondence published this week by the New York Post, which the paper said came from the laptop of Hunter Biden and were provided by Giuliani and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top political adviser at the White House.

The Washington Post was unable to verify the authenticity of the alleged communications, which concern Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China.