Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has spent years treating Hunter Biden as a partisan punching bag with impunity -- and it has gotten mad that people are starting to fight back on his behalf. Mark Finkelstein whined in a Dec. 11 post:
Liberal slime merchant David Brock has emerged from the woodwork again. This time, he's leading a counter-attack on the GOP-majority House committee that will be investigating Hunter Biden's influence-peddling schemes and the possible connections to his father the president.
They call their new group "Facts First USA." Did that verbiage work to make CNN sound less partisan?
Brock appeared on MSNBC's The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart. The host claimed maybe he's watched too much House of Cards and is a big Scandal fan, but when he heard Brock say that he is going on "offense" he wondered just how far Brock would go, and whether it would include "focusing in on the people who are leading [the investigations] and running them?"
Brock assured him:
"We're going to go on offense. Are we going to expose some of the Republicans on the committee? Sure we are."
Translation:Brock and his Democrat buddies will be turning up their anti-Republican scandal-mongering machine to 11. Capehart sounded thrilled: "You're going to have to come back to the Sunday Show and tell us, preview what you got!"
Finkelstein didn't explain how these tactics are any different from standard Republican (or even overall political) opposition research, or even exactly what Brock did to receive that "liberal slime merchant" title.
A post the same day from Tim Graham similarly complained that Brock's group is fighting back on Hunter's behalf:
The Page One story at top left of the Sunday Washington Post was headlined "Hunter Biden allies set to battle accusers: Some urge counterattack defense as GOP prepares to launch investigations." Political reporters Matt Viser and Michael Scherer quote from a mostly anonymous pile of Democrats debating how to respond to the heightened visibility of Hunter Biden's global buckraking off his father's name. And whether his father got a "cut."
Democrat groups feel the urgent need for a "counter-narrative," which is mildly amusing since they've all been quiet as church mice for two years until the Republicans retook the House. Behind the scenes, Hunter Biden and his pal Kevin Morris -- who they noted gave Hunter $1 million to pay some of his unpaid taxes -- are meeting with partisans who are aiming to discredit any Republican fact-finding mission.
You may point and laugh that they're going to call it a "partisan exercise." And somehow, the last two years of the Pelosi-Picked Panel on January 6 was never partisan.
[...]
Somehow this vast left-wing conspiracy is run by "Democratic-leaning groups." Leaning? They all tell themselves it will be find that swing voters see this as "political stunts." Democrats never pull those?
Graham didn't mention that his MRC was part of the right-wing noise machine that tried to discredit the January 6 committee, nor did he explain how those efforts are any different from what Brock is doing.
Graham also whined about this in his Dec. 12 podcast.
Finkelstein and Graham seem a little upset that their days of bashing Hunter Biden without consequences appear to be over -- and they're not happy about the impending realization that what goes around comes around.
(Disclosure: We used to work for Media Matters, which Brock founded.)
