The unprecedented cover-up of Joe Biden is finally seeing sunlight.
Critics of the legacy media have long accused news organizations of shielding the 46th president from bad press, particularly when it came to revelations of his family's shady financial dealings as well as his cognitive decline, which was put on full display at last year's CNN debate resulting in his exit from the 2024 presidential race.
Efforts to cover up for Biden began as early as May 2019 as the primary race for the 2020 Democratic nomination was underway. Last week, former Politico reporter Marc Caputo shed light on a report he had written at the time that stemmed from opposition research from the campaign by one of Biden's Democratic rivals. The report involved a "tax lien" on Biden's son Hunter pertaining to his work at Ukrainian energy company Burisma. At the time, the former vice president held a substantial lead over Democratic candidates in the polls.
"And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.' That story was killed by the editors. And they gave no explanation for that either," Caputo said on the "Somebody's Gotta Win" podcast.
Fast-forward to October 2020. Biden had secured the Democratic nomination and maintained a narrower lead in the polls against then-incumbent President Trump. The New York Post published its bombshell report on Hunter Biden's laptop, offering unprecedented insight into his overseas finances and their potential ties to his father.
"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," Caputo said.
Caputo, now with Axios, called out Politico's one and only story about the laptop, which he referred to as the "ill-fated headline" that read "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." The report cited an open letter signed by 51 intelligence officials declaring that the material from the laptop had "all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation."
Then-candidate Biden cited the open letter while dismissing the laptop revelations as a "Russian plant" during the second presidential debate with Trump.
Politico wasn't the only one that was caught turning a blind eye towards Hunter Biden's laptop. A leaked audio recording obtained by Project Veritas showed top CNN executives directing staff not to cover the controversy.
"Obviously, we're not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden," CNN political director David Chalian said during a conference call on Oct. 14, the same day the Post published its first story on Hunter Biden's emails. Chalian later insisted the report was "giving its marching orders" to the "right-wing echo chamber about what to talk about today."
"The Trump media, you know, moves immediately from – OK, well, never mind – the [Michael Flynn] unmasking was, you know, found to be completely nonsensical to the latest alleged scandal and expects everybody to just follow suit," then-CNN president Jeff Zucker told his staff on Oct. 16. "So, I don't think that we should be repeating unsubstantiated smears just because the right-wing media suggests that we should."
Several CNN stars echoed their bosses' dismissive stance on the brewing scandal to their viewers.
"There's a lot about this story that does not add up," CNN's Brian Stelter told his viewers at the time. "And, I mean, for all we know, these emails were made up, or maybe some are real and some are fakes, we don't know. But we do know that this is a classic example of the right-wing media machine."
"The right wing is going crazy with all sorts of allegations about Biden and his family. Too disgusting to even repeat here," Jake Tapper said during a segment. "I mean, some of the ones I've seen from the president's son and some of the president's supporters are just wildly unhinged."
Much of the legacy media either offered minimal coverage rejecting the scandal or offered zero coverage altogether. ABC News' George Stephanopoulos completely avoided mentioning the laptop during a Biden town hall he moderated. Social media giants blocked users from sharing The New York Post's reporting on their platforms.
NPR public editor Kelly McBride addressed a listener's question about the news outlet's blackout of the Hunter Biden story. After claiming that the Post's reporting had "many, many red flags," including its potential ties to Russia, NPR apparently determined that the "assertions don’t amount to much."
"We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions," NPR managing editor Terence Samuel told McBride. "And quite frankly, that's where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event, and we decided to treat it that way."
Last year, veteran NPR editor Uri Berliner came forward suggesting that the decision not to cover the laptop was politically motivated.
"The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump," Berliner wrote in a tell-all essay about NPR for The Free Press.
Berliner was later forced out of NPR and has since joined The Free Press as an editor.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald similarly blew the whistle on The Intercept, the news outlet he co-founded, alleging "repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity" from its editors aiding Biden's campaign just days before the 2020 election.
"The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression," Greenwald wrote in October 2020.
Even after Biden won the presidency and was sworn into office, reporting about his scandal-plagued son was still being slow-walked, at least according to former Politico reporter Tara Palmeri, who broke the story of Hunter Biden's gun incident that led to a felony charge for lying about his drug use on a gun form.
"I spent three months on it, I went to the laptop shop, and I did all of the reporting in Delaware, and I did all of that. But yeah it had, it had to be like much- it had to be 100% nailed down," Palmeri told Caputo on the podcast. "I had everything, you know, the police reports… I’m a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have, if it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type of story."
Speaking with Fox News Digital, Palmeri expanded on how her bosses dragged their feet before running her story.
"I certainly had to push very hard to get that reporting published. Like, it was a constant, 'Hey, when are we going to do this? Hey, when are we going to get this out there? Hey, when we're going to do this?' Because it was so difficult. Like it was kind of a known feeling that like, it's gonna be difficult to report stuff that's really tough on the Biden administration and family. It's just like a culture." Palmeri told Fox News Digital last week. "And I think when the culture is that a reporter has to push so hard that it just creates a feeling that there's not an interest in that type of reporting. And ultimately, you know, we work to be published and to get our editors to support our work."
Palmeri, now with Puck News, said she first obtained the police report shortly after Biden's inauguration in January 2021, but her story wasn't published until late March 2021.
"I just think if it was a Trump kid, it would have been published much sooner," Palmeri said. "I just had to work really hard to like- you're like 'Hey, what's going on with the story? Hey, what's going on with the story? Like, what's going on with the story?' We gave the White House a lot of time, like a week or so to respond. I don't know if that would have been the case for a Trump story."
The former Politico journalist went on to cite the "honeymoon phase" of the Biden administration as being a factor behind the slowed pace of her story. She also suggested her bosses wouldn't run the story unless she was able to link it to a federal agency.
"It had to be about the fact that the Secret Service was involved," Palmeri told Fox News Digital. "The blanket fact that he lied on the gun form, which I had. I had the gun form and I pointed out that he lied on it. But in the piece, we downplayed it and said, ‘Although many people lie on gun forms and are not prosecuted for it’ which is true, by the way. But it's not like the headline wasn't ‘Hunter Biden lies on gun form,’ which is a felony. That was not the headline even though I had the gun form in which he lied."
It wasn't until 2022 that the media began conceding legitimacy to the controversies surrounding Hunter Biden. Several news organizations that dismissed the laptop like Politico, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News and CBS News ultimately verified the laptop.
The shielding of Joe Biden evolved to encompass not just questions about his family's finances but about the president's own health. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Biden was having "good days and bad days" for White House staff to deal with as early as spring 2021.
"Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes," the Journal wrote.
It appears White House staff weren't the only ones aiding Biden. Former ESPN host Sage Steele revealed her March 2021 interview was "scripted" by network executives.
"That was an interesting experience in its own right because it was so structured," Steele told Fox News Digital in April 2024. "And I was told, ‘You will say every word that we write out, you will not deviate from the script and go.’"
"To the word. Every single question was scripted, gone over dozens of times by many editors and executives. Absolutely. I was on script and was told not to deviate," Steele said. "It was very much ‘This is what you will ask. This is how you will say it. No follow-ups, no follow-ups. Next.' … This went up to the fourth floor, as we said, where all the bosses, the top executives, the decision makers are, the president of our company, the CEO, where they all worked."
Two other Biden interviewers, on the condition of anonymity, previously spoke with Fox News Digital about their experience with the president's frailty.
"I was left with the impression that he is old, and it's impossible not to notice this and be focused on it. His voice is so soft," one interviewer said. The other said "I will say he was careful not to go on at length with answers. It was clear he was trying to edit himself, possibly because he’d been coached to keep answers short." Both noticed his "stiff" physical presence.
The media's efforts to dismiss concerns over Biden's mental decline went into high gear in 2024, particularly when he became the presumptive Democratic nominee. News organizations seethed after the February release of Special Counsel Robert Hur's damning report on Biden's handling of classified documents that described him as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
The New York Times went with the "Republicans pounce" framing when covering Biden's reported memory issues, Jeffrey Toobin returned to CNN to insist Hur made "unnecessary points" about Biden’s advanced age, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gushed that everything is fine because Biden still "rides a bike."
Later in the year, the media ran the White House's talking points that accused conservatives of peddling "cheap fakes" when moments that showed Biden wandering or freezing up went viral.
"Experts have warned that while advanced technology like generative artificial intelligence can spread misinformation, so-called cheap fakes that often use only minor or selective editing can be more effective at spreading false narratives," NBC News wrote in reaction to one viral moment.
The Washington Post similarly elevated the term "cheap fakes," telling readers such "deceptively edited videos… misrepresent events simply by manipulating video or audio, or by leaving out context" and that they've "become staples of Republican attacks against Biden."
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace condemned the "highly misleading & selectively edited videos" while refusing to show the raw footage to viewers. CBS News released a report sounding the alarm on "cheap fakes" and their impact in the upcoming election, echoing the White House's claim that Biden is "victim to a simpler version of ‘deepfakes.’"
The Associated Press ran its own fact-check on the video showing Biden standing still at his star-studded LA fundraiser until former President Obama was seen grabbing his wrist and guiding him off the stage with his hand behind Biden's back.
"CLAIM: Biden froze onstage during his fundraiser in Los Angeles on Saturday night and had to be led away by Obama," AP wrote at the time. "THE FACTS: Biden paused amid cheers and applause as he exited the stage with his predecessor following an interview moderated by late-night host Kimmel."
Notably, actor George Clooney, who attended the LA fundraiser that the AP fact-checked, came clean in the now-infamous New York Times op-ed revealing the Biden he saw just weeks prior "was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
In June, just weeks before the CNN debate, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report about Biden's "signs of slipping" behind closed doors. It was met with strong hostility from liberal pundits. MSNBC's "Morning Joe" declared the report was a "Trump hit piece on Biden." Then-CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy accused the paper of "playing into a GOP-propelled narrative" and that it "owes its readers — and the public — better."
It wasn't until after Biden's disastrous debate performance and his exit from the 2024 race that journalists began expressing regret over their lack of coverage of his cognitive decline.
New York Times correspondent Peter Baker suggested journalists broadly need to do some "soul-searching" on how they handled covering Biden.
"It's very personal. Anybody who's had a father or mother whose age and you talk to them by taking away their keys, these are not easy issues… And how do you write something in the appropriate way, balanced and yet tough," Baker said in September during a panel discussion at the Texas Tribune Festival. "I can sit down and make the case that we did too little about it. I can make the case we did too much. I can play it either way. But the truth is, it's an important issue."
"We weren't relentlessly covering, the way some of my peers were, Biden's age necessarily, even all the way up until the debate," PBS NewsHour's Laura Barrón-López said in the same panel. "It is and was a valid question. Many times when I was on the trail, even before the debate, voters would bring it up. Almost every single voter I spoke to would bring it up, even if they were planning to vote for President Biden."
The Guardian's David Smith, also on the panel, conceded the possibility of bias: "There was perhaps, even on an unconscious level, the notion that if you focus so much on Joe Biden's age, you are somehow helping Donald Trump."
In December, ex-CNN editor-at-large Chris Cilizza offered an "apology" for not pushing hard enough to question Biden's mental health, admitting he felt guilty of "age shaming" by the president's allies.
"While I did ask the question from time to time… I didn't really push on it, if I'm being honest," Cillizza said in a video message. "I probably should've pushed harder on the Biden age stuff because, in retrospect, it's clear that the people close to him knew that at best, he had some good days and some bad days."
"And so I think it's a lesson that we have to learn going forward. Because again, Donald Trump will be the oldest person ever to hold office if he serves for four years, and I will be mindful of that. Because again, asking those questions isn't a partisan thing. Asking those questions is a journalism thing, and I should have pushed harder and not been as willing to accept the 'Nah, he's fine. Look at him when he's in public' campaign," he added.
I know it's a long read and some would prefer to just let Old Joe slide into the Sun Set. But, it's important to remember how the Woke Press and the Dem. Leadership twisted the truth, out right lying. The Press wonders why so many Americans no longer trust or believe what they put out in print and in their news programs. If, for no other reasons than supporting the lies coming from the WH and other leading Dems.
------------------ Rams Learning most of life's lessons the hard way. . You are only young once but, you can be immature indefinitely.
Don't you remember the "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and the Merry Pranksters?
NO BODY DIED
it was a book by a novelist not a documentary
the acid test was passed by many [ lsd is non-toxic ]
unlike Christianity that has killed or harm so very many for far too long and has a goal to end life on earth a very evil nasty cult proven to be very toxic with a stated goal and record of destruction of all other beliefs [ie the old beliefs and pagan gods] and long history of wars based only on cult beliefs that did kill millions
A friend of mine spent five years in his bedroom, afraid to go out, because he thought he was an orange and if anyone touched him he would turn into orange juice.
'Fun' can have consequences.
[This message has been edited by olejoedad (edited 02-04-2025).]
Originally posted by olejoedad: Nontoxic is not the same as harmless.
A friend of mine spent five years in his bedroom, afraid to go out, because he thought he was an orange and if anyone touched him he would turn into orange juice.
'Fun' can have consequences.
want to count the effects of religion on the world vs LSD ? I think jim jones kool aid was just a minor event in a remote place vs the THIRTY YEARS WAR IN CENTRAL EUROPE THAT KILLED MILLIONS
''The "Thirty Years' War" was a devastating conflict that took place primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, initially sparked by religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants within the Holy Roman Empire, but eventually evolving into a broader power struggle among European nations, causing widespread destruction and millions of casualties; it is considered one of the most destructive wars in European history. ''
ALL CHRISTIAN WAR that one
vs some beatles songs and your odd story I do not believe
Interesting how you avoid mentioning the #1 fact that he was a cult leader... or does that perhaps hit a little too close to home?
... Patrick, all socialists leaders are cult-leaders.
(patiently waits while Patrick defends socialism, or passively rejects it since I just called him out... but now he's torn on what to say since I just invaded his thought process, and now he'll just make a snide comment because I busted him)
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]: ... Patrick, all socialists leaders are cult-leaders.
(patiently waits while Patrick defends socialism, or passively rejects it since I just called him out... but now he's torn on what to say since I just invaded his thought process, and now he'll just make a snide comment because I busted him)
PUFFERY and HYPE will not work long term for the rump cult
look at the faces about to be eaten by leopards they like you have no idea what is about to happen
... Patrick, all socialists leaders are cult-leaders.
If you say so.
It's rather noticeable in your tepid response that you're not feverishly denying Donald Trump's role as a cult leader. This is a small yet significant step in your journey to self-enlightenment.
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 02-05-2025).]
Originally posted by Patrick: It's rather noticeable in your tepid response that you're not feverishly denying Donald Trump's role as a cult leader. This is a small yet significant step in your journey to self-enlightenment.
It's rather noticeable in your tepid response that you're not feverishly denying Donald Trump's role as a cult leader. This is a small yet significant step in your journey to self-enlightenment.
I don't at all think of this as a cult. I view this as the rightening of a ship... the United States has been on the wrong course for so long. Looking back, the last time I ever really felt like the country was on a good path was under Bill Clinton. Since then, it's been a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Trump is a duly elected President, who's had 4 years to plot all the things he wants to do in the first 100 days. That's not a cult... that's a well-thought-out strategy.
I submit to you, DOGE as an example of how insanely thought-out each one of his executive orders has been researched and defined:
''example of how insanely thought-out each one of his executive orders has been researched and defined:''
sure
that gaza prison deal is a sure winner
for the genocidal team
rest of the world is NOT impressed
btw who is jailing the ISIS crazys now as e-or cut fund that paid the guard staff is that ''example of how insanely thought-out each one of his executive orders has been researched and defined:''
or just insane
be nice if the fool would stop lying about everything
Originally posted by ray b: that gaza prison deal is a sure winner
for the genocidal team
ray b ray b ray b, what should be done about Gaza ?
quote
Originally posted by ray b: rest of the world is NOT impressed.
Oh yes they are. In the sense that now they need to have some solutions. Who will rebuild there for the Palestinians nobody wants ?
Did you know that Yasser Arafat, previous leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization , was from Cairo Egypt but was expelled ? Everybody in Gaza is not wanted elsewhere.
Oh yes they are. In the sense that now they need to have some solutions. Who will rebuild there for the Palestinians nobody wants ?
Did you know that Yasser Arafat, previous leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization , was from Cairo Egypt but was expelled ? Everybody in Gaza is not wanted elsewhere.
GO BACK TO THE 1940'S BORDERS BEFORE THE WAR GIVE THE NATIVE ARABS THEIR LANDS BACK NO EXPORTING THE NATIVE ARABS THEY NEED THEIR COUNTRY BACK AS IT WAS STOLEN FROM THEM GAZA IS A SMALL CORNER OF THE NATIVE PEOPLE'S LANDS THE AGE OF EMPIRE IS OVER
BTW THE JEWS AND THE NATIVES ARE EXACTLY THE SAME DNA/RACE/PEOPLES
ONLY DIFF IS THE EVIL FAIRYTALES SO EVERYTHING YOU SAY ABOUT THEM IS TRUE FOR THE JEWS ALSO INC TERROR AND BOMBS
GO BACK TO THE 1940'S BORDERS BEFORE THE WAR GIVE THE NATIVE ARABS THEIR LANDS BACK NO EXPORTING THE NATIVE ARABS THEY NEED THEIR COUNTRY BACK AS IT WAS STOLEN FROM THEM GAZA IS A SMALL CORNER OF THE NATIVE PEOPLE'S LANDS THE AGE OF EMPIRE IS OVER
Hmm, well if that's the way you feel, then the place you call home should be returned to some tribe of Indians. Pack your bags Rayb, you're going to need to move (somewhere). Not sure where though, every piece of dirt on this planet was (at one time or another) claimed by someone other than who currently claims it.
