Somebody had better tell Joe Biden: The talking points about his involvement in his son Hunter’s international wheel-and-deal business have changed. Amtrak Joe can quit denying that he ever spoke to his son “or anyone else” about the political-access-for-foreign-cash racket Hunter was running — The New York Times has decreed that Joe’s elbow-rubbing with Hunter’s associates has “long been known.” No bombshells or developments here, I guess. Time to talk about Trump!
“It has long been known that the elder Mr. Biden at times interacted with his son’s business partners,” the Times printed matter-of-factly in the third-from-last paragraph of a Monday night article, after Hunter’s former close associate Devon Archer told lawmakers he’d witnessed Joe join Hunter’s business meetings via speakerphone at least 20 times.
Joe Biden’s interaction with foreign oligarchs via Hunter has long been known to those of us who get our news from more honest sources than the Times, but it’s a fact legacy media outlets have long been working to downplay, along with other evidence of Joe Biden’s participation in Hunter’s bribery scandals.
For example, when evidence that Joe Biden had met Hunter’s associate Vadym Pozharskyi of corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma emerged from an abandoned laptop of Hunter’s in 2020, the Times framed it as part of “unsubstantiated” allegations from Republican oppo research hacks, and buoyed the Biden camp’s claims that “this purported meeting never happened.” After former Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski claimed to have met with Joe Biden and that Joe was involved in Hunter’s business, the Times threw cold water on his allegations, framing them as desperate claims from a disgruntled ex-associate.
Along with other corporate outlets, the Times waited more than a year to admit the laptop — and the evidence of wrongdoing it contained — was authentic. When it did, the admission was quietly slipped into the 24th paragraph of an article about how poor Hunter was still dealing with federal investigators even though he’d already paid his outstanding tax bills.
[RELATED: 10 Media Hack Factories That Pooh-Poohed The Biden-Burisma Scandal As A Conspiracy Theory]
For his part, Joe Biden has repeatedly issued irritated denials of ever speaking business with Hunter — that is, until his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre updated the talking point to “the president was never in business with his son.”
Now the talking points have undergone another facelift. In Monday night’s piece, NYT congressional reporter Luke Broadwater repeated Democrats’ new line that sure, good ol’ Joe chatted it up with Hunter’s business partners, but the busy then-vice president was only discussing inconsequential things like the weather — in all of the 200-plus interactions he reportedly had with Hunter’s buddies.
“Hunter may have put his father on the phone with any number of different people, and they never once spoke about any business dealings,” claimed Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman on Monday, before suggesting the interactions were limited to “casual conversation, niceties, the weather.” The suggestion that mountains of evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement amount to nothing more than meteorological pleasantries is more than ridiculous — nevermind the fact that merely getting Joe on the phone, no matter what he talked about, was enough to prove to foreign oligarchs the “access” at Hunter’s disposal.
After the entire media cabal stumbled over itself for years to downplay, obfuscate, and ignore piece after piece of evidence tying Joe Biden to Hunter’s overseas shenanigans, it wants to now tell you that yes, some of that evidence might be true, but it really isn’t anything newsworthy or anything you didn’t already know. It’s really just a story about a proud, loving father who “stands by” his son. Nothing to see here, folks.
Now — like Joe Biden and all of his shady foreign meet-and-greet buddies — let’s talk about the weather.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
Comments are closed.