The MRC's Hunter Biden Derangement: The End(?)
The Media Research Center continued to rage about Hunter Biden receiving a pardon -- and was still angry that initial claims about the laptop from right-wing partisans were reasonably discounted.
The Media Research Center predictably raged about Hunter Biden getting pardoned for his alleged crimes. The third day of this kicked off with a Dec. 4 column by Tim Graham:
No one should be surprised that Joe Biden lied when he said he would not pardon his corrupt son Hunter before wandering out of office. As much as journalists want to pretend this is just a Dear Old Dad rescue scenario, Hunter Biden enriched most of the Biden clan in his foreign influence-peddling projects, including Joe and Jill.
No one’s surprised that Biden would commit this outrage and then fly to Africa to get out of the earshot of reporters. His entire presidency seemed designed to avoid reporters, and never mind that about 95 percent of them are Biden voters.
The surprising occurrence was people on the Left complaining now that Donald Trump has been re-elected that the Hunter pardon ruins all their talking points about nobody being above the law. It “muddies the water” of their anti-Trump crusades. How did these supposedly smart people figure this scandal was going to end?
New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker wrote the pardon would “make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes.”
At this late and ridiculous juncture, Baker and other journalists are still engaged in the fiction that the Biden Justice Department wasn’t used for political purposes, and certainly not like Trump, who wants “retribution.”
From there, he went into apologist mode for Capitol rioters:
Just start with the Biden Justice Department’s oppressively overwrought prosecution of the January 6 riot at the Capitol. More than 1,000 Americans have been convicted (a large chunk of them in plea deals), and about 350 trials are still pending. Almost four years later, the FBI is still hunting down suspects. It’s easy to categorize this aggression as “retribution” for challenging Biden’s election certification.
Take 72-year-old “Praying Grandma” Rebecca Lavrenz, who’s now serving six months of home confinement in Colorado after being found guilty in August of this year. Her “crime”? Lavrenz watched other rioters breach barricades and overrun a police line on the Capitol’s Rotunda steps, prosecutors said. She then spent approximately ten minutes inside the Capitol.
Prosecutors sought ten months behind bars. Ten months for ten minutes. Anyone who doesn’t think this sounds ridiculously overwrought probably watches MSNBC 12 hours a day. This is the kind of “January 6 criminal” that the leftists are already protesting might be pardoned by Donald Trump next year. How does Grandma compare to Hunter Biden’s tax evasion and gun crimes?
Graham is lying by suggesting that MSNBC focused only on the Lavrenz case “12 hours a day” — you know, like the MRC and Fox News and other right-wing media obsessed over Hunter. The fact that Lavrenz may have been peaceful doesn’t negate the fact that she violated laws by entering the Capitol the way she did; playing follow-the-leader is not a sound legal defense. Graham also curiously omits the fact that Lavernz was actually sentenced to six months home confinement, which undercuts her victim narrative (as does the fact that she continues to deny what she was clearly guilty of doing). Apparently, Graham believes that right-wingers deserve a pass for their crimes if they are done in service of Donald Trump. He concluded by ranting:
All the reporters who lecture us about the perils of disinformation and misinformation ruining democracy are the same ones who still pretend that the Biden Justice Department is the pristine antonym of a partisan agency. To use their own formulation, “there is no evidence” that either the Justice Department or their pom-pom squad in the press have acted in a nonpartisan manner during the Biden presidency.
The Hunter pardon doesn’t muddy the waters. The leftist press have been churning mud into the waters this whole time.
You mean like how Graham is trying to muddy the waters by baselessly injecting Lavrenz into the conversation?
Comedy cop Alex Christy huffed again at late-night hosts talking about the pardon:
CBS’s host of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel were displeased on their Tuesday shows that some people are still criticizing President Joe Biden for pardoning his son, Hunter. For both men, the re-election of Donald Trump makes such criticisms moot.
For his part, Colbert focused on the intra-party squabbles, “Now, some of Joe’s fellow Democrats are also a little upset. Colorado Senator Michael Bennet tweeted, ‘President Biden’s decision to put personal interest ahead of duty and further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.’”
Colbert was unmoved, “Okay, not sure how much interest Americans have in the idea of justice right now. After all, we had an election, and we did just re-elect a guy whose slogan was ‘Like my crime? Then hit me, baby, one more time.’”
[…]
Meanwhile, over at ABC, Kimmel focused on the GOP response, “Back home in Washington, Republicans are absolutely exploding with pretend outrage after President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter. One of those who expressed righteous indignation is Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who warned us of the long-term perils associated with a situation like this.”
In a clip, Cornyn proclaimed, “It’s a terrible example. Because without any accountability for people breaking the law, getting a pass, in other words, there is no deterrent effect or no accountability that teaches our young people and others that, yes, you need to follow the law. And yes, there are consequences if you don’t.”
The CSPAN clip was then edited to show footage of an audience laughing at Cornyn. For his part, Kimmel, clearly alluding to Trump, responded, “And you know what? People say politicians have no sense of humor. These guys have seriously got to be kidding with this. I don’t think I can take it—they do it with a straight face over and over again.”
Back in 2021, Kimmel did a gushy interview Hunter where he made light out of the idea Hunter’s only qualification for various jobs, like Burisma, was his last name and the laptop.
What Colbert and Kimmel don’t get is that the Hunter pardon is not an attempt by Biden to apply Trumpian standards to his son, but the continuation of a swampy tradition that predates Trump, which makes all the Trump criticism look like a one-sided power play.
Don’t expect Christy to hold Trump to the same standards he’s imposing on Biden.
Curtis Houck raged at “leftist commentator Leigh McGowan” for saying things that didn’t conform to his right-wing agenda (while identify MRC fave Scott Jennings only as a “conservative”):
McGowan then waged this cockamamie drivel that the President genuinely changed his mind about not pardoning his son because “we have now have a president coming into office who’s talking about firing squads, who’s talking about running people around the country and making sure that everyone who’s his enemy is going to be punished and Hunter Biden lied about his drug use on a government forum when he was buying a gun and he failed to file and pay taxes when he was a drug addict.”
Representing the sane part of America, this caused Jennings to role his eyes and throw his head back in disgust, triggering a lifetime of memes (and even led to Jennings changing the banner photo of his X profile).
Taylor was thrown through the fire for the transgression of pointing out Hunter received an 11-year “full and unconditional pardon” for all the things on his laptop, including drugs and sex and possibly “hundreds of crimes.”
Amid shouts from [Jamaal] Bowman, McGowan, and [CNN host Abby] Phillip, Taylor pointed to the fact that the pardon started in “January 2014, just when, of course, he joined the board of Burisma, so, in my opinion, I think you’ll see more pardons” of those “actually tied to some of the things that potentially showed that Joe Biden benefited from monies that were coming out of” his business dealings.
Phillip clutched her pearls in her pathetically shocked voice, declaring Taylor was “losing” her “because the Trump administration had an opportunity to investigate it. They could not verify the things that you’re alluding to.”
Jennings jumped in for an assist to help Taylor: “They tried to, and he got impeached over it. They impeached Donald Trump over the investigation that Hunter Biden has now gotten a pardon for.”
No, Curt (and Scott), Trump wasn’t trying to investigate Hunter — he was trying to blackmail the Ukrainian leader in order to obtain dirt to use against Biden in an election.
Nicholas Fondacaro had a friendly-enough guest to tout during his daily hate-watch of “The View”:
The liberal ladies of ABC’s The View faced rare criticism of their antics to their faces during Wednesday’s edition of the show. In open defiance of moderator Whoopi Goldberg, radio host Charlamagne Tha God went there and called out President Biden for damaging himself by lying about not pardoning his son Hunter. He also noted that the media would not tell the truth about Trump during his second term and used The View’s own legal notes as evidence.
When asked by Joy Behar for his reaction to the reaction to Biden’s pardon, Charlamagne explained that “all of the criticism is valid because, you know, Democrats stand on this moral high ground all the time, and, you know, they act so self-righteous.”
“The reality is, he didn’t have to say anything in regards to whether or not his son wanted to be pardoned,” Charlamagne proposed. “So, when he kept saying things like, ‘ah, you know, nobody is above the law, I respect the jury’s decision in regards to my son.’ He didn’t believe that. But he didn’t have to volunteer that lie to begin with.”
[…]
Still unable to understand why people wanted to hold Biden to his and the media’s shtick about being the most decent man in politics who was fighting for the soul of America, Goldberg wanted someone to “explain to me why it is that when Joe Biden does something, everybody clutches their pearls.”
Fondacaro would never hold Trump to his word on, well, anything.
The MRC finally started to get bored with the story after that. Alex Christy whined at a liberal-leaning commentator in a Dec. 7 post:
Of all the bad takes on President Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter, MSNBC host and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart had the worst on Friday’s PBS News Hour. In Capehart’s mind, Biden was justified because Kamala Harris lost and Democrats need “to stop bringing a melon baller to a knife fight.”
Host Geoff Bennett ran down the list of reasons why people have criticized Biden’s pardon, from his pledge not to, to his claims that he would protect Justice Department independence, and asked, “Jonathan, in your view, was it justified, and what’s the lasting impact?”
Capehart responded and claims that the situation has changed, “Yes, it was justified. When the president said that he would not pardon his son, wouldn’t grant clemency, the facts on the ground were completely different. It’s the middle of a presidential campaign. He was the candidate for president, didn’t want to be viewed as interfering. He’s no longer the candidate. His vice president is the presidential nominee.”
But the facts of Hunter’s case have not. Still, Capehart continued, “I am almost, 99 percent certain, that President Biden was hoping that Vice President Harris would win and that this would not be an issue. But when the person who won the race won the race by vowing a campaign — through a campaign of retribution, revenge, naming the Biden family in general and Hunter Biden, in particular, as someone or people, groups of people, he wanted to go after if he won election, of course, the president looks at the facts, says, that ‘I cannot allow that to happen to my son.’”
Christy then went the whataboutism route:
Of course, Joe Biden’s pardoning of family members is not some attempt by him to play by Trumpian rules. Rather, it harkens back to a Clintonian tradition that predates Trump. Claiming it is, is how you get people believing there is one set of moral standards for Trump and another for Democrats.
But according to the Axios item Christy cited, Trump pardoned more friends and relatives (4) than Clinton (2), so it’s hardly a “Clintonian tradition.”
The complaining continues
A week after Hunter Biden was pardoned, the Media Research Center was still raging about it. Rich Noyes went on a whataboutism exercise in a Dec. 8 post:
The liberal media have exhibited great compassion for President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, convicted of multiple federal crimes. “The President came to believe that raw politics had infected the process…he saw how political opponents of his — the President’s — were trying to hurt his son….He thought that the treatment of his son had been cruel,” CNN White House correspondent MJ Lee empathized during breaking news coverage December 1.
“The White House concedes that Donald Trump was a factor here,” ABC’s Mary Bruce helpfully added during Monday’s World News Tonight. “The President was concerned that he wouldn’t let up, that a Trump administration would go after Hunter.”
But in 2007, the liberal networks were much harsher after then-President George W. Bush offered clemency — not a pardon — for ex-Cheney aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted earlier that year of lying during Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into who exposed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame four years earlier, in July 2003, to columnist Robert Novak.
Noyes ignored the fact that Libby was a government official and Hunter is … not.
The same day, Jorge Bonilla gushed sloppily over his favorite CNN right-wing talking head:
During the panel portion of the most recent broadcast of CNN State of the Union, conservative commentator Scott Jennings absolutely unloaded on the Biden administration over their duplicity with regard to the pardon of Hunter Biden, and called the media out over their seeming unwillingness to hold The White House accountable.
Watch as Jennings nukes Biden from orbit:
[…]
What would the media’s reaction have been had a pardon under similar circumstances been issued from Donald Trump to Don, Jr.? We’d be talking DEFCON One across the dial, with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in front of every cable news camera, calling for impeachment. But Hunter? Things are (D)ifferentl, you see. In light of the pardon of Hunter Biden, media reaction has been…muted at best, sycophantic at worst.
Jennings rightly calls out this hypocrisy, as well as the hypocrisy and lack of transparency shown by the Biden White House, both with the Hunter pardon and with the prospective pardons of Anthony Fauce [sic] and members of the House January 6th Committee.
“Nukes Biden from orbit”? Seems like violent rhetoric that should probably be looked into further. It’s worth noting that the MRC apparently never put Bonilla’s post in a featured slot on the NewsBusters front page that would include an image of Jennings, presumably to keep from having to display the headline “NUKES Biden From Orbit” so prominently displayed. Of course, we can eaily screencap the headline with or without the image.
Christian Toto spent a Dec. 14 column whining that non-right-wing comedy shows didn’t mercilessly mock Hunter like his right-wing buddies do:
Hunter Biden is a gift late-night comedians refuse to open.
The bedraggled First Son’s life could fuel endless monologues. Consider the accusations lobbed against him in recent years:
Addiction
Sex trafficking
Tax evasion
Funneling millions to “The Big Guy”
Heck, he even allegedly peddled poop paintings to balance his wobbly budget. What more could late-night satirists want?
Had the 50-something Biden had an “R” next to his name Colbert and co. would spend countless hours mocking him.
Instead, they mostly ignore him … except when they’re excusing his pappy’s pardon that covered far more than the crimes he’s accused of committing.
[…]
Enter New Media.
Comedian Remy uncorked a funny song parody tied to President Joe Biden’s ill-received pardon for his troubled son.
Sung to the tune of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Son,” “Pardon My Son” blends quirky laughs with real elements of the Hunter Biden saga.
This isn’t the only case of new media platforms doing the job “Saturday Night Live” and friends won’t.
[…]
New media platforms happily tell the jokes and break the stories, that their mainstream peers won’t.
Toto won’t tell you that those “new media platforms” would never criticize or mock Trump — he’s their meal ticket, after all.
The MRC also published a Dec. 9 anti-Hunter column by Larry Elder that whined: “This raises a question. When will Biden pardon the rest of his family members and himself? Stay tuned.”
One final (?) whine
The MRC’s meltdowns over him didn’t stop after his father left the White House. In a Jan. 24 post, Jorge Bonilla complained when Politico reporters discussed how they refused to promote the story when it first came out:
It is one thing to look at the awful suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential election and imagine what happened. It is entirely another to watch reporters confirm these suppressions and talk about them openly.
Watch as former Politico reporters Tara Palmeri and Marc Caputo discuss the lengths to which Politico avoided the Hunter Biden laptop until The Dirty 51 published their letter[.] […]
“Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop.”Everybody suspects that this is standard M.O. for the elite Acela media which, in fairness, suppresses Democrat-adverse stuff all the time. But how often are reporters left hanging by their editors?
Curiously unmentioned by Bonilla: As ConWebWatch detailed way back when, the New York Post, which first reported the laptop story, refused to offer any independent verification to overcome the fact that it’s a highly partisan right-wing pro-Trump outlet. Nevertheless, Bonilla continued to whine:
The laptop story is proof evident of censorship at Politico. You have their political reporters assigned to Biden on the record saying that they did not write any stories about it until Natasha Bertrand, who previously promoted the Russia Hoax, took the Dirty 51 letter and ran with it. Editor decisions drove these omissions, which our own data show helped swing the election to then-Former Vice President Joe Biden.
When considering the extent to which the media’s credibility has been destroyed, it is important to consider their silence over these suppressions in comparison to the collective mea culpa over their coverage of the 2016 presidential election.
By contrast, the MRC has completely censored the story of how boss Brent Bozell’s son, “Zeeker,” took part in the Capitol riot — an attempted insurrection his father endorsed — and committed vandalism while there. We don’t see Bonilla fretting about the MRC’s credibility as a result of suppressing the story because it makes the boss look bad.
Graham ranted about this in his podcast the same day:
Two Politico alums — Tara Palmeri and Marc Caputo –dropped a bombshell about how their old employer mandated bias by omission on Hunter Biden in 2020. Their “cowardly editors” made “dumb decisions”!
On the podcast hosted by Palmeri (now at the media-news site Puck), Caputo explained “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”
They only touched it once it was time to follow the Biden campaign’s orders and that piece came from Natasha Bertrand (now at CNN), under the headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” These are the 51 officials organized by the Biden campaign, Democrats and Trump-hating Republicans. This group was organized by Antony Blinken, who became Secretary of State after this helped Biden get elected.
[…]
The media worked hand in glove with Democrats to suppress facts, not report them. Reporters don’t win prestigious prizes like the Pulitzer for exposing Democrats. Newspapers won Pulitzers by attacking Donald Trump and his taxes, or Trump and unfounded allegations of Russian collusion to win in 2016.
What, exactly was “unfounded” about allegations of Russian collusion? Trump and his associates met dozens of times with Russian operatives, which seems pretty darn founded. And Graham similarly ignored the fact that there was no independent verification of the laptop story until forensic examinations were performed months later. And he’s certainly not going to mention how he and his co-workers were paid to suppress the story of Bozell’s son’s criminality.