Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long been obsessed with destroying Hunter Biden as a means to destroy President Biden, and Republicans taking control of the House in the midterm elections had it licking its chops at the prospect of investigations designed to further smear him and, by association, the president. Which means it spent a lot of time after the election complaining that people were pointing out this Republican bloodlust. A Nov. 20 post by Kevin Tober lashed out at an ABC reporter for noting this:
After spending the past year cheering on Congressional Democrats in their seemingly never ending quest to investigate former President Donald Trump and his actions on and leading up to the January 6 riots, including the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and presumably prosecute Trump, suddenly investigations and oversight are bad since it’s the GOP’s turn to conduct them.
The leftist media’s blatant and shameless hypocrisy was on full display during Sunday’s This Week on ABC when fill-in host Jon Karl interviewed former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about his take on politics and his new book which outlines solutions to America’s fiscal problems.
Karl fretted to Ryan that his book “which looks at the financial issues facing the country,” was “not part of this campaign.” Yet if it were part of the 2022 midterms, Karl would’ve tried his hardest behind the ABC News anchor desk to demonize his policy solutions just like the media did in 2012 when Ryan was the GOP Vice Presidential nominee.
Instead, Karl bemoaned how Republicans are talking about oversight investigations into Hunter Biden’s corruption and other reportedly illegal activities by the Biden crime family.
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Karl then jumped in to smear the GOP once more before the show ended: “those that are saying hell no, they won't vote for Kevin McCarthy, they like chaos. I mean, that's not an argument against it. I mean, they want chaos.”
Tober didn't disprove anything Karl said.
Mark Finkelstein spent a Nov. 22 post trying to legitimize GOP probes of the Bidens after MSNBC host Joe Scarborough "suggested that today's Republicans are making a similar mistake in investigating what he repeatedly called "Hunter Biden's laptop.'":
That was a blatant mischaracterization. As Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House oversight committee that will be conducting the investigation has made clear, this is an investigation of Joe Biden. The question is whether Biden was indeed "the big guy" who was skimming a share of the ill-gotten proceeds that Hunter obtained through his influence-peddling schemes.
Scarborough told Republicans "they're going to waste two years and lose big in '24."
It's through that lens that we therefore have to ask: why is the liberal media so intent on trying to dissuade the Republicans from investigating Hunter Biden's dealings and the possible connections to Joe Biden? One thing is certain: it's not out of MSM concern that by investigating, the Republicans will be hurting themselves politically! We all know that old adage about not stopping an enemy when he's in the process of destroying himself!
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Note: as for Scarborough's claim that Republicans are exclusively focused on "Hunter Biden's laptop," to the exclusion of addressing issues of concern like crime, inflation, and the border. Comer made the point that Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time, and that the great majority of House Republicans are not on the Oversight committee and will be addressing those other issues.
Alex Christy was similarly defensive in a Dec. 7 post: "House Republicans have not even taken the gavels yet and CNN’s Inside Politics warned them Wednesday not step out of line with voters by investigating Hunter Biden or wokeness. If only CNN had this segment when Democrats were pursuing Donald Trump’s taxes.
Finkelstein returned for a Dec. 12 post attacking "Morning Joe" again for questioning the validity of the investigation:
Mika Brzezinski broke out her violin, lamenting that Republicans are "going after Joe Biden's remaining son," and skeptically saying, "we've gone through this. Haven't we gone through this?"
Scarborough claimed "Every time they go down this path, and they want to investigate the investigators, they want to attack the FBI, they want to attack the CIA, they want to attack the intel community. It never pays off for them." So what Team Scarborough is doing now is just mocking the investigators, facts be damned.
Democrat apparatchik Adrienne Elrod even claimed that Hunter Biden's laptop is a "frivolous" and "meritless" matter and claimed Biden's approval rating will go up because he's "delivering for the American people." Question for Adrienne: if the Hunter laptop matter is so "frivolous" and "meritless," why have your fellow Democrats brought in slime merchant David Brock to threaten members of the Republican committee investing the matter with dishing dirt on them?
So, go ahead, liberal media. Keep trying to whistle past the graveyard of Hunter Biden's laptop. We'll see who's laughing when the investigations are done.
Yes, the MRC has previously complained that Brock is fighting back on Hunter's behalf. And if those committee members have nothing to hide, why is Finkelstein complaining about Brock investigating the investigators when it loudly cheered GOP special counsel John Durham for doing basically the same thing?
Apparently remaining in flip-flop mode over polls, Toberhyped one that fit the narrative in a Dec. 15 post:
According to a Fox News poll released late Thursday evening, voters in both parties support an investigation by the Justice Department into Hunter Biden's business dealings with foreign governments.
According to Fox News Digital, "Recent revelations about social media companies tamping down the story in the run-up to the 2020 election have not changed voters' opinions — just as many feel it is important to investigate Hunter Biden now as they did this past August."
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The question remains, will the networks eventually cover this poll? Probably not considering the narrative that's been set that only Republicans care about Hunter Biden's crimes. This poll has set another leftist media narrative crumbling to the ground.
As we've documented, the MRC hyped numerous narrative-advancing polls prior to the midterm elections -- despite libelously accusing the media of fabricating polls in the 2020 election -- as evidence that "leftist media narratives" were being crumbled, only to have the midterms reveal much reduced support for Repubican narratives then it thought. And, no, it's not accusing those pollsters of fabricating their numbers like it did in 2020.
