Across the media, journalists have recognized that the Hunter Biden laptop is authentic and, as established early by American intelligence agencies, not “Russian disinformation.” With the authentication of the laptop in the Delaware trial as “real” and untampered, most media has chosen to walk away with a slightly embarrassed shrug. Not the Washington Post. Its columnist, Philip Bump, was one of the most prominent purveyors of what the U.S. government now calls a “conspiracy theory.” This week, Bump ran another column to assure liberals that they were right all along about the laptop story.
In 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”
After Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims, I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, including the laptop conspiracy theory. The Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including the laptop conspiracy theory. That was in August 2023.
Well, Bump is back.
In his column, Bump takes after various people calling the media to account for burying this story before and after the election, including myself. I felt that it warranted a response.
In hitting Sean Hannity for a recent segment, Bump makes a common evasion among those who have long downplayed the laptop scandal. He objected that Hannity “is conflating the laptop presented as evidence at the trial, the one obtained by the FBI in 2019, with the ‘laptop’ that was the source of the New York Post story.”
For those of us who have covered the laptop since the story ran at the New York Post, it is as maddening as it is mendacious.
At the time of the story, some of us noted that the contents of the laptop could be confirmed since these emails and messages involved third parties. Some quickly confirmed the contents as authentic. The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling and special dealing by using Joe Biden’s positions as senator, vice president, and president.
Moreover, as the media was referencing the debunked letter of former intelligence officials on this possible likely Russian disinformation, American intelligence quickly confirmed that there was no such evidence to support that claim.
The media ignored the actual intelligence agencies in favor of former intelligence officials who were organized by Biden campaign operatives to release the letter. Biden then cited the letter to refuse to answer questions about his son’s influence peddling and unlawful conduct.
Bump and others used the question over whether the laptop was an authentic copy or a tampered copy to avoid any serious investigation into the underlying emails. Many simply threw up their hands and said “oh well, what can we do.” To this day, the media has shown little interest in the influence peddling operation. Few people seriously argue that the media would have shown the same limited response if these emails tied Trump children to millions in foreign influence peddling schemes.
But Bump was not done:
After Hannity lamented the media’s silence on the so-called “critical development,” Turley offered a theory for why that silence had ensued.
‘If the laptop is authentic, if those files are real,’ he said, “then you have these detailed accounts of a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation run by the Biden family. Those would also be authentic. But the media just simply doesn’t want to go there.’
Except that we already know that many of those files were real, because we got access to them and verified them. The reason the media ‘doesn’t want to go there’ on breathless claims about a ‘Biden family’ influence-peddling operation is that the material doesn’t prove any such operation. It shows — as has by now been exhaustively explained — work done by Hunter Biden and his Uncle James that involved lots of money but did not demonstrably involve President Biden. The entire point of the House Republican impeachment effort has been to prove Joe Biden’s involvement; they have been unable to do so.”
Once again, Bump makes it sound like the Post vigorously and quickly verified the laptop. The belated acknowledgement did not come until much later. It was not until March 2022 that the Post finally admitted that the laptop was real, but then did comparably little to pursue the corruption and other unlawful conduct detailed on the laptop.
Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid appeared to state the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
For many, the Post has alienated readers who want to see equally rigorous attention to scandals on both sides of the political aisle. Indeed, the Post’s new publisher recently dropped a truth bomb on his writers by telling them “let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
Yet, it is Bump who is insisting this week that it is Fox News (the most watched cable news network) that is being tuned out in his column titled “The right takes a Biden-laptop victory lap around an empty arena.”
In deflecting questions about the coverage of the Biden corruption scandal, Bump simply ignores witness testimony that has proven that President Biden lied about having no knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings and met with his clients both in person and over the phone. More importantly, he ignores that this was a massive influence peddling operation where President Biden was the object. He was the “brand” being sold.
Influence peddling is a form of political corruption that the government continues to denounce worldwide. The fact that millions went to Biden family members rather than the President does not change the fact that this was one of the largest influence peddling operations in history. Just this week, even Politico stated the obvious that seems to escape Bump on this elaborate Biden operation involving not just family but close associates of the President. As I explained in my testimony in the Biden impeachment hearing, federal courts have repeatedly stated that it does not matter if a principal received money as opposed to family members. It can still constitute bribery and other offenses.
In the end, Bump continues to express frustration with those who would question his conclusions, as he did in his interview when confronted by a host asking about disproven claims. Bump exploded at the hubris of the interviewer and suggested that he is all the proof that the interviewer should need on such issues: “I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.”
Update: Notably, after the authentication of the computer in federal court, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, filed a motion on withdraw the lawsuit against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in which claimed that the laptop contained manipulated data.
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It is a dying rag like the mist of them. Since they lost advertising, they have become a home for the cripples.
Global audiences suspicious of AI-powered newsrooms, report finds
June 17 (Reuters) – Global concerns about the use of AI in news production and misinformation are growing, a report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found, posing fresh challenges to newsrooms already struggling to engage audiences.
By: Sheila Dang ~ June 16, 2024
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/global-audiences-suspicious-ai-powered-newsrooms-report-finds-2024-06-16/
Overview and key findings of the 2024 Digital News Report
This year’s report comes at a time when around half the world’s population have been going to the polls in national and regional elections, and as wars continue to rage in Ukraine and Gaza. In these troubled times, a supply of accurate, independent journalism remains more important than ever, and yet in many of the countries covered in our survey we find the news media increasingly challenged by rising mis- and disinformation, low trust, attacks by politicians, and an uncertain business environment.
By: Nic Newman ~ June, 17th 2024
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/dnr-executive-summary
What goes around, comes around … It’s your time Philip Bump, to sing the “Blue Collar Journalism Blues”
The Press Corp is now The Automation Army
WaPo Nostalgia:
Recession Technology Threaten Workers
Blaine Harden 12/25/1982
[Link] washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1982/12/26/recession-technology-threaten-workers/2c43965d-5db9-4d89-b0d1-51dde0bbd33d/
The Typesetters were replaced by the Word Processor – Blame Bill Gates (Microsoft)
The Paper-Distribution was replaced by the Internet – Blame Vint Cerf / ICANN et. al. (The Web)
The Reporters were replaced by Artificial Intelligence [A.I.] – Blame Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
The Middle-Man will be replaced by the Neural Chip – Blame Elon Musk (Neuralink)
and Philip Bump has be replaced by Common Sense – Blame God (The Brain)
“plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose “ – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
“the more things change, the more they stay the same…
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plus_%C3%A7a_change,_plus_c%27est_la_m%C3%AAme_chose
Attn. Philip Bump – Wanted: Front Desk Clerk/Night Auditor, Hurry Up, better get on before all the good jobs are gone!
https://www.6jobs.com/working-with-us
For those of you who are parents, who among us can forget what a mother says to her little boy or girl when mom denies the child something the child very much wants — when the child asks ‘why’ mom says ‘because i’m your mother!’
So when Philip Bump says that his saying so makes it so and how dare you doubt me —- it’s like mom saying because i’m your mother.
To provide cover for the “spies who lie,” the Left asserts that:
“The 51 signatories did not claim there was an [sic] evidence. What they did is put out a warning.”
That “warning” was utterly arbitrary — akin to a pilot warning passengers:
It’s possible we’re going to crash. I have no evidence about this specific plane. But my experience tells me that planes can crash.
If he were a non-DEI pilot, he be removed from the cockpit immediately.
That “warning” was in fact political propaganda (issued by intelligence officers?!) to provide cover for Biden. It was a shameful use of baseless fear to manipulate the American public.
And here’s the list of the 51…
https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2022/03/named-and-shamed-the-51-intel-officials-who-lied-about-the-hunter-biden-laptop-emails/
..paradoxically the title of Bump’s column re: the ‘..Biden-laptop victory lap around an empty arena.” is Spot On if we consider the obvious Reality (..evidenced so well by Prof. Turley..!) that the only ’empty arena’ here is the ’empty noggin’ of the writer… and a sad testimony to WAPO’s decline and utter implosion per the latest ‘real news… ‘
Tuesday I watched two nearly 81 year olds on stage for 2 full hours in Philadelphia – Mick and Keith and the Rolling Stones 2024 Hackney Diamond Tour.
2 hours straight, no intermission – 19 songs. Mick danced and skipped and pranced and ran and jumped and never stopped moving for 2 hours.
No teleprompter,
no one to keep him from falling off the stage.
Not a single stutter,
sounded exactly like he did 60 years ago.
Some 81 year olds are as good as they ever were,
and Some are Biden who had to be corralled by the Italian Prime Minster today as he tried to wander off at the G7
Three quotes:
1) “I’m sitting here and I’m telling you, you’re wrong about these things, and you don’t listen.” Phillip Bump to interviewer.
2) “Take a look at what’s going on, Leslie, and you say that shouldn’t be discussed?…I think it’s one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever seen, and you don’t cover it.”
“Well because it can’t be verified,” Stahl says. “I’m telling you—”. President Trump and Leslie Stahl in 2020.
3) “The Defendant [Trump] widely disseminated his false calims of election fraud for months, despite the fact that he know, and in many cases had been informed directly that they were not true.” Paragraph 12 of Jack Smith’s indictment of Donald Trumpt for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
What do they have in common? The imperoius arrogance of the speakers that they belong to a caste that has the right to define the truth, and to make the rest of us to accept those opinions no matter how absurd they may sound.
The roles of journalism and reality have been reversed. Once journalists felt a holy duty to uncover unpleasant and important aspects of reality. They did not make a lot of money, and got little glory, but did find things out. Now journalists scorn reality. THEY create “reality” through narratives created by Democrats, and “told” to the American people with the aid of the federal government and academia. Only sentimentalists believe in objective reality.
Mass media spins lies that benefit the chosen figureheads like Biden. Unless there is real punishment for a massive lie such as this, meted out by Trump after an electoral victory, we will know and understand, at that point, he too is essentially a figurehead, and the political and electoral contests are deeply fraudulent.
The ownership of the mass media must be punished for many decades of deliberate lying and misinformation. By the way, that ownership is essentially a cabal of interlocking boards of directors and monopolistic trusts including the ETFs run by Blackrock, which is a racketeer influenced organization of the highest criminality. The predicate is criminal anti trust. Blackrock should be dismantled and as many other such organizations prosecuted and smashed to the fullest extent of the law and their racketeer executives locked up as sounds as were the Italian mafiosi that RICO originally targeted.
Without smashing these monopolistic voting trusts and racketeering “Financial” combinations, without punishing them for their lies, there will be no true politics in America.
They will quite simply continue to own us like a bunch of slaves who don’t even know we are not free
Saloth Sar
Biden applauded raising the wages for teenage burger flippers in CA, but today he declined to give junior enlisted service members a pay raise, 250k of whom experienced food insecurity this year.
Sorry, that money went to college graduates.
That Other Letter By Security Officials
On August 8, 2016, a distinguished roster of Republican security and foreign policy officials released an open letter declaring Donald Trump unfit for the presidency.
Below are two key paragraphs from that letter which could easily apply to this year’s election.
***
Mr. Trump lacks the temperament to be President. In our experience, a
President must be willing to listen to his advisers and department heads;
must encourage consideration of conflicting views; and must acknowledge errors and learn from them. A President must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation. A President must maintain cordial relationships with leaders of countries of different backgrounds and must have their respect and trust.
In our judgment, Mr. Trump has none of these critical qualities. He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander-in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-08/50-former-gop-national-security-officials-slam-trump-in-open-letter
Landslide!!!
I certainly hope you’re right but I’ve not discounted the fact that the cabal stole the last election and they’ve had 3+ years to perfect their perverted craft. So let us not count our chickens quite yet.
Trump has gained almost 10pts over Biden since 2020. I know most people think the polls are close – but Trump has the electoral college locked by a large margin. Announced to day was that Maine is now in play – a Republican has not won Maine in almost 40 years.
Some odds have Trump at 66%, even the bookies have Trump over 50% and Biden in the upper 30’s.
The left has “shot its wad” with the “convicted felon” nonsense – and it has FAILED.
You can get a clue how things are going because Trump is now campaigning primarily in BLUE states.
There are possibly 7 blue states in play. Trump may not win a single one – But Biden’s route to 272 requires winning half a dozen states he is currently behind in and NOT losing a single blue state AND not losing the single EC votes he gets in NE and ME. If he loses ONE EC vote – he loses the election.
Regardless, Trump is likely doing several things:
Forcing Biden who can not campaign to defend blue states he can not afford to lose.
Driving up his popular vote lead because that serves double duty in reducing Fraud.
The question is NOT how much Fraud can democrats engage in – it is how much can they get away with.
Re-imagine 2020, with a 50K vote swing in GA, AZ and NV which would have won the election or thrown it to the house.
Now you would have DEMOCRATS yelling “fraud”- except with a razor thin EC loss and a 7M popular vote win.
Absolutely the courts would have heard Biden’s challenges. Partly due to party politics, but importantly because with a large popular vote win – even though ti is the EC that counts the courts would have looked much more favorably on a biden challenge.
Trump is looking to dominate the popular vote. Democrats can not pull off fraud of sufficient scale to flip the election with the current polling without getting caught, and without the courts stepping in.
I truly hope that your assessment is spot on.
But Biden will not be the nominee. Look for a new face right after the debates.
Now let’s hear what these same “national security” officials have to say about nasty Joe Biden making decisions or having his finger on the button. Or being anywhere near the levers of power. They all know how much bribe money Biden has taken over the years. They ALL KNOW how corrupt, incompetent and compromised Joe Biden is.
They all know what a foul mouth Biden has behind closed doors. He’s always been a nasty, vicious SOB.
They can shut up. No one believes a damn word those spooks say anymore.
What’s that got to do with anything? That was those individuals’ opinion eight years ago. There was no particular reason for anyone else to accept that opinion then, and it’s certainly irrelevant now. We no longer have to speculate what a Trump presidency would be like, because we’ve already seen one in action, and we know it was pretty good.
I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, in part because I had similar concerns about him; but I was pleased with how his presidency went, so I did vote for him in 2020.
ATS – why in the name of god would you care what people who have gotten everything WRONG for decades say ?
How well have the prior open letters from former national security officials gone for you ?
How well are Biden’s national security people doing ?
How well has the advice of Government health experts regarding covid gone ?
How well did these people manage Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Iran and the mideast generally ?
The answer is Abysmally.
The presidents hear their advisors out – absolutely. But they are NOT required to do what they say.
The president was elected by the american people to do what HE beleives is in the best interests of the country – NOT what some elite cabal in Washington thinks.
Candidate Obama made a number of campaign promises -regarding foreign policy and national security as well as in some other areas.
The SAME promises that Trump made. What is the difference ?
When Obama took office he Followed the advice of all the people you are citing, and left office with national security issues WORSE than when he took office.
Conversely Trump let all these people speak, and then did what he had promised – and that turned out extremely well.
NO ONE would have predicted that Trump would be the most successful president on foreign policy and national security since Reagan.
And yet that is precisely what happened.
When Trump took office The mideast was a mess, China was ascendant. Iran was threatening. North Korean was engaged in nuclear brinksmanship. Russia was threatening neighbors. The US was getting no assistance from Mexico on our Border. Obama was pushing what was essentially a pro-China trade deal and most of Asia was grudgingly making deals with China because that was US policy.
When Trump left Office – the largest Midest Peace deal EVER was completed, and the first since Carter. Clinton could nto wangle a mideast deal – though he tried hard.
The mideast as a whole was far more peaceful than when Trump took office – Iran was contained and financially strapped, Hamas and Hezbollah had little resources, ISIS was defeated, Afghanistan was winding down, China was contained, Trump had united ALL the nations surrounding China as well as much of the rest of the pacific rim in containing China. The US was opening a new Joint base with Japan in the south china sea, Which is a HUGE deal as that elminates the 900km trimp from Okinawa to anywhere China migh attack and reduces it by 2/3.
That is like placing half a dozen unsinkable aircraft carriers within 300km of China. Jaoan was militarily committed to defending Taiwan, and containing China and was re-arming – Japan now has the 2nd most powerful Navy in the world – right off the coast of China, And Japan is one of only 3 countries in the world with a centuries long Naval Tradition that actually knows how to fight a navy – something that takes hundreds of years to learn.
The US was back at Subic bay – which is HUGE as Subic Bay is possibly the best port in the world for supporting US carrier Battle Groups and it is thousands of miles closer to China than anything else the US has.
Austrailia, New Zealand, Philipines, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, and even India were working together – Much like NATO to contain China.
For the only presidency since Putin ascended to power in Russia – Putin did NOT attack any neighobors, and in fact worked (Badly) with US forces to fight ISIS in the Mideast. The US guaranteed the EU Natural Gas should Russia attempt to blackmail them – which is the ONLY reason the all of Europe did not fold when Russia attacked Ukraine – Because Trump has long started the 3yr process it takes to build LNG infrastructure and as Russia cut off Europe the US was able to keep Trumps committement to provide NG to Europe and Europe is still supporting Ukraine.
Trump also ended the US dependence on Mideastern oil – nearly all US energy came from either the US or Canada or Mexico. Increasingly it is Europe that must deal with the problems in the Mideast.
The Houthis are essentially doing the Barbary pirates thing with the Suez canal – which is screwing Europe, and it is the US and UK that are dealing with the problem. Where is France, Italy, Germany ? The other european nations that are dependant on energy from the mideast ?
Trump implimented hsi Campaign foreign policy. He did so OVER the objections of the very people you are professing as experts.
And he did so with success in foreign policy that we have rarely seen.
If we have to pick between YOUR expects – regardless of party, who have had an abysmal record since Reagan atleast, and Trump.
That choice is trivally easy – For god sakes DO NOT listen to the people who have been WRONG about everything.
In FACT every significant mistake of the Trump administration has been listening to entrenched “deep state” experts who proved disasterous – and who are the same people the Biden is relying on at the cost of his re-election.
Trump listen to the so called national security expects and gave them and extra 2 years to get out of Afghanistan.
That was a mistake. As a result the lasts steps ended up being completed by Biden who then botched them.
Trump listened to Fauxi on Covid and that cost Trump re-election.
I would note there are excellent reasons why Govenrment experts are nearly always wrong.
It has nothing to do with Party politics, and everything to do with the incentives and intramural politics that the are educated with and that are in play as they hold power in the Federal National security establishment.
While James Buchanon’s nobel prize winning work focused on the failure of those in government primarily in the economic domain The incentive problems that drive bad government economic policies are the same ones that drive bad policies throughout govenrment.
I would suggest a deep dive into “Public Choice Theory”. Which most simply boils down to when you take the processes that work well in the free market – and Add FORCE to them, with an isolated clearisy that does not IMMEDIATELY reap the consequences of mistakes, what you end up with is a systme that is virtually guaranteed to get it wrong.
I would note that you can find a slightly independently derive version fot he same thing in the work of Nasseem Talib and “The Black Swan”
But a trivial example is that Anheiser Bush pissed on its customers – and withing about 6 weeks that company had lost 1/4 fo its market share and 1/4 of its value, and it has not recovered. That is how markets punish bad decisions. Government is HIGHLY unresponsive to backlash when it makes errors.
Though Biden’s current approval rating as an incredibly strong indication that at the next opportunity voters ARE going to punish his bad choices.
My hope and expectation for Trump’s 2nd term is that he has already assembled not just the best people he eventually found in his first term – but many many more – as he went through a large number of bad choices in his first term. The fact that MAGA owns the GOP right now and Trump is for now the leader of MAGA, means that Trump will NOT have to placate NeoCon’s and others in the Republican party, that he will be able to appoint a highly compentent people who will transform government into something that works – atleast for a while.
Though the MOST important people will be the small circle that is close to him in the WhiteHouse.
With a few exceptions the most important and successful polices of the Trump administration were run from the Trump WH and involved only a handful of people.
There are a number of commentaries and analysis of how the Trump administration actually worked.
One interesting aspect was that foreign policy and national security were done entirely from the WH.
Trump contracted – esentially out of petty cash, with a growing body of private companies made up of mostly ex-DOD or CIA or NSA that are now providing global intelligence services on the free market. These were the people who first and correctly established North Koreas actual Nuclear and ICBM capabilities. The fact that they are in the free market means they have far better incentives to get things right.
Regardless, Trump was aware as he came into office that CIA, NSA and the rest of the “deep State” had stabbed him in the back over the Collusion delusion. He did not trust the intelligence they provided, as a result he left them alone and as YOU say “ignored” their advice, instead relying on privately contracted intelligence services from FORMER CIA people – NOT the administrators and politicians, but the people who actually did the real work.
Si the answer is Absolutely Trump listened to National Security experts – just not the ones who had stabbed him in the back.
Regardless, we need MORE of that – and not just in national security.
Anonymous, were these the same security officials who declared that the laptop was Russian disinformation? I’m surprised that you would bring up their words again after they have been proven to be lying scoundrels in their first letter. All we need to weigh your words is a micro scale.
I can’t tell the Nony Mice apart, so I don’t read anything any of them write anymore.
Donald Trump is the greatest American who ever lived!
No kidding. Greatest political comeback of all time.
Trump LOVES this country above all.
There is not one man in all of Washington DC that could have withstood all the incoming Trump has taken
and still be standing, fighting back, ready and willing…to Make America Great Again…
to lead the Re-founding of America.
What a time to be alive.
Oh no, the spastic idiot non savant benson doesnt read what i write. What shall i do???
Biden berated a reporter today who dared to go off script, at the press conference with Zelensky.
“I wish you guys would play by the rules”
What the fvxk is this, the Soviet Union??
I’d swear that him and Lawrence O’Donnell are twins. Fraternal, but still twins.
I feel like its going to be JD Vance
I don’t hate it, but…
I say Burgum. We need Vance in the Senate.
Or possibly Dr. Ben Carson.
Trumped slipped today and said that the person was “likely” in the room today. Vance was right behind him at the podium
Trump is not “slipping” – he is not going to announce until at or very near the convention.
VP Speculation is Good news for him. – event he left wing nut press is going to cover it.
Trump is going to drop conflicting hints until the convention.
Thanks for always sharing your opinion
Did you see the interview?
Fifty one former intelligence agents improperly interfered in an American election. They had no proof that the laptop was Russian disinformation but their letter was used by Joe Biden in a Presidential debate. There was disinformation alright but it came from people who believed themselves to be American patriots. I say, treason from the highest positions in the nation. Bump and his like will say anything to be allowed to kiss the hem of king Biden’s rob. Dare say. What poison have they consumed.