With the conclusion of the first year of the Biden Administration, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain sought to end on a high, or at least higher, note by retweeting a column saying that 2021 was not “all bad.” It was like bragging that a first date told you that the evening could have been worse. However, what really stood out in the column by Albert Hunt was the key rationale: the first year was “scandal free.” Calling 2021 “scandal free” is not merely an example of blinkered commentary, it is an exercise of willful blindness. This is why magicians often make audience members part of the illusion. Houdini did not actually make his 10,000 pound elephant Jennie disappear. It was there the whole time but the audience did not want to see it. That’s the trick.
At his inauguration, President Biden promised the return of good government and newspapers like the Washington Post heralded the end to Trump’s “scandal-plagued single term.” Now, at the end of the first year, readers are being asked to “think back four years ago: The Trump administration looked more like ‘The Godfather’ — without the skill.”
There is ample reason for the White House and many in the media to celebrate the lack of scandals in the Biden Administration because it was a collective effort.
Of course, four years ago, the media was all-in on the Russian collusion allegations. The media was doing non-stop coverage of the Steele dossier with little scrutiny or effort to uncover those who funded it. The dossier was later discredited and American intelligence warned that Russian intelligence may have used it to plant disinformation. While the Clinton campaign repeatedly denied funding the dossier, it was revealed (after the election) that not only did the Clinton campaign fund and push the dossier but also allegedly lied to Congress, the media, and the FBI. Clinton campaign chair John Podesta allegedly denied such funding to congressional staff. According to reports, sitting next to him was Clinton attorney Marc Elias (who was later found to have funded the dossier through the Clinton campaign’s legal account).
The only thing more impressive than the relentless coverage of Trump scandals in 2017 was the relentless avoidance of Biden scandals in 2020. The media did give passing coverage to the host of Biden false claims and stories that range from saying that he was “arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela” to his evolving Amtrak claims to reinventing his positions on foreign wars like Afghanistan. There were also federal violations by Biden officials and allegations of improper presidential influence on pending investigations. However, when it came to scandals that could implicate the President in more serious misconduct (or contradict his past denials), the media was thoroughly uninterested.
Consider just three of the Voldemort scandals of 2020, or those scandals which must not be named by the media:
The Hunter Biden Laptop:
The successful effort to bury the Hunter Biden story is the single greatest political achievement in modern politics, but it took a concerted effort by reporters and columnists in Washington. What was most impressive is that the Biden campaign and family never denied that the laptop was authentic. The laptop details potential criminal acts by Hunter Biden from extensive drug use to hiring prostitutes to alleged financial and tax violations. It also included his admission that prior files were likely in the hands of foreign intelligence to use for blackmailing him and his father. There is also the “red flag” gun controversy involving Hunter Biden. Not only did social media companies blackout references to the laptop, but the media has steadfastly continued to refuse to pursue these potential criminal acts. The laptop was seized by the FBI in an ongoing federal investigation into possible tax and financial wrongdoing.
Biden Family Influence Peddling:
Influence peddling has long been associated with the Biden family but only sparingly reported, even though both President Biden’s brothers Frank and James are accused of openly hawking their ties to him. Hunter’s laptop added evidence of hundreds of emails on transactions by Hunter Biden, his uncle James Biden, and Joe Biden. The emails magnify earlier allegations that the Biden family engaged in open influence peddling when Joe Biden was Vice President with an assortment of foreign figures and countries. Some of those dealings continued into the Biden presidency. Hunter Biden admits that he was a hopeless drug addict well into his father’s presidential campaign. However, these foreign figures continued to give Hunter millions and Hunter openly assisted in their meetings with his father and linking up with Administration officials. One of the key figures in these dealings has claimed that he met personally with Joe Biden to discuss the deals.
These meetings and dinners directly contradict denials from President Biden, who is referred to extensively in emails concerning payments and meetings as “the Big Guy,” “Celtic,” and other names. President Biden appears to have had bills paid from out of these accounts and his shared card may have been used in some of the most dubious transactions. Some dealings have direct national security implications for the United States. Despite the ongoing federal investigation, there has been no call for a Special Counsel even though President Biden is referenced and potentially implicated in some of these transactions. Nevertheless, Hunter continues to rack in the dough by other means, including art deals that have been denounced as ethically corrupt.
The Ashley Biden Diary:
The latest scandal involves the other first child, Ashley Biden. Like her brother Hunter, Ashley has struggled with addiction and left her diary with some clothes in a house in Delray, Florida. The diary was later sent to Project Veritas, a conservative publication which decided not to run the information. The contents of the diary, however, have been reported on other sites, including allegations against her father involving “inappropriate” contacts. As with the Hunter Biden laptop, the Biden family has not denied the authenticity of the diary or the underlying passages. It also did not sue the other conservative sites for defamation in publishing what they alleged to be passages from the diary. Instead, the family lawyers called upon the Justice Department to get involved the case of a missing diary. The Justice Department’s response was so overwhelming you would have thought that they were investigating the snatching of Lindbergh’s baby rather than Ashley’s diary. It conducted raids on journalists and the seizure of confidential material around the country.
The media was not interested in the use of the FBI to launch a national investigation into the missing diary. Indeed, the raiding of the home of a conservative publisher was barely noted even though the New York Times could also have been raided on the same grounds as Project Veritas. The Times acquired confidential and presumably stolen legal material from Project Veritas and, unlike Project Veritas, published the presumably stolen information. However, the Biden Justice Department was only interested in cracking down on the acquisition or coverage of the Ashley Biden diary.
In reviewing these scandals, ask yourself what the media would have done with a diary from Ivanka Trump with these allegations or foreign influence peddling by the Trump children. You do not have to wonder. They covered every possible foreign influence source from hotel rentals to loans in exhaustive details, including Trump children “influence peddling.” I thought that interest and coverage was warranted. However, when hundreds of emails and transactions showed raw influence peddling by the Biden family (including the involvement of President Biden), neither the media nor the members of Congress could be bothered. There would be no “scandal-plagued single term” for President Biden.
For the media (and Ron Klain) to pronounce the Biden Administration “scandal free” is akin to the NFL once denying that traumatic brain injury was rampant in football. If there is no coverage, there is no scandal. That is certainly an accomplishment worth noting, but hardly worth celebrating.
Turley forgot to tell you all about all the criminal referrals, indictments, guilty pleas and convictions of the Biden administration in Biden’s first year, Biden must have broken Trump’s record by now right?
With an entire right wing media system hell bent on doing everything they can to hurt Biden is is not at all correct to say there is little media oversight. The truth is Biden is just boring, does boring things, and surrounds himself with boring people. They just don’t do scandals like Trump does.
Your right Sammy, it was far more entertaining watching the news when Trump was President, hell almost everyday was indictments, guilty pleas and resignations from the Trump administration.
Why do you assume lack of indictments, guilt pleas and resignations equals scandal and crime-free for Biden’s admin?
“The truth is Biden is just boring, does boring things, and surrounds himself with boring people. They just don’t do scandals like Trump does.”
Thanks for proving the good Professor’s statement on willful blindness. You folks are always providing a chuckle. Did you not read any of the claims? Claims for which we have receipts, unlike the Russia Collusion debacle. But please do keep your blinders on.
This guy isn’t too bright, but he is also known as Anonymous the Stupid, which explains it.
“With an entire right wing media”
ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, academia, Hollywood etc., all that have lied together and created news that didn’t exist. Fox slants to the right, and this turkey wants to blame the vast right-wing media. What an idiot.
The media extended untolled amounts of time and energy “investigating” Trump and his children although there was not even a whisper of smoke, while they totally ignored the bonfires associated with Ashley and Hunter.
“[The elephant] was there the whole time but the audience did not want to see it. That’s the trick.”
An even better trick:
Make the audience see an elephant that in fact is *not* there.
(“Elephant” = “president”)
(I burst out laughing, clever, albeit disrespectful, but thanks.)
“. . . albeit disrespectful . . .”
Out of respect for the *office* of the president, I used to worry about such comments. This, though, is such an obvious fraud that the worry disappeared. Biden makes Caligula’s horse look like a statesman.
If Professor Turley continues exposing the Left to the truth like this….his Life Insurance Carrier is going to become very anxious….as they do not like to underwrite lives at great risk.
We do have to admire his courage, ethics, and adhering to principle when it is so unwelcome within academia, the media, and on social media.
Hand Salute! Good on Ya, Professor…..continue the good fight!
Ralph says:
“We do have to admire his courage, ethics, and adhering to principle when it is so unwelcome within academia, the media, and on social media.
Hand Salute! Good on Ya, Professor…..continue the good fight!”
I presume therefore you saluted Turley when he called upon Congress to censure Trump for what he described as his “reckless” 1/6 speech? I will presume that your silence to my question indicates your approval.
We’ll just see how much you and yours will salute Turley when he does NOT echo the accusations of Trumpists that Trump’s prosecutions are “witch-hunts.” A word which would NEVER occur to him to use.
There is all the difference in the world between a person who is rightly critical of the media and a lying Trumpist which Turley has never been.
One wonders why the viewership of cable networks and the readership of mainline newspapers are dropping?
What is a disgrace is the systematic, coordinated attack in every direction on the family, faith, and public education. The attacks on the basic premises of higher education. The focused attacks on the two freedoms that cost the lives of countless millions in generations over the centuries. The right to legally and responsibly bear arms and citizens to defend themselves and freedom of speech. How dare one think for themselves! How dare one protect themselves and their families!
Our once proud and vibrant cities are becoming progressively more dangerous! It is the duty of government to protect and defend its citizens, look out for their safety, yet the cry is “Defund the Police?”
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that the current President of the United States does not fully possess his faculties. Why else would he use notes, an ear speaker, and teleprompter to answer the simplest of prepared and approved questions? He cannot and will not take open, hard questions from the press. So the million dollar question is, “Who is really calling the shots in the Whitehouse?”
This opens a plethora of further questions that remain unanswered and are quite frankly frightening.
What is encouraging is seeing that at least some of lower bodies of government and judiciary are acting furiously to curtail and contain some of the damage coming out of Washington. One looks to the new year with hope but it will take a collective effort of the common citizen to wake up and do what they can in their corners of influence to slow down the confusion and bring some commons sense back into the equation.
E.M. writes: “He cannot and will not take open, hard questions from the press. So the million dollar question is, ‘Who is really calling the shots in the Whitehouse?'” This question assumes that there are, among the alleged journalists who populate “our” media, any who know what a hard question is, who know how to formulate hard questions, who have any interest in asking them or who work for a media outlet that has any interest in publishing any hard questions and researching any answers.
Only goes to show how irrelevant MSM has become.
Meanwhile, alt-media continues to out pace MSM in viewership, following, likes, and even in subscriptions. Support alt-media figures like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Sharyl Attkisson, Charles H. Smith, and, of course Professor Turley.
The disastrous pull-out from Afghanistan? 18 billion in weapons and vehicles given to the Taliban, soldiers and Marines pointlessly killed, tens of thousands of unvetted Afghanis brought into the U.S. while leaving deserving allies and even citizens behind? Seems like a scandal.
That we’re heading into record-setting inflation, record-setting debt, unheard-of supply-chain issues, and the loss of our (finally) achieved independence on oil from the Middle East? In less than a year. Seems like a scandal.
Political prisoners rotting and abused in DC jail without bail over minor (or no) charges for weeks, months over an FBI/Capitol Police/Democrat-instigated and coordinated fake “insurrection”? Seems like a scandal.
“The disastrous pull-out from Afghanistan? 18 billion in weapons and vehicles given to the Taliban, soldiers and Marines pointlessly killed, tens of thousands of unvetted Afghanis brought into the U.S. while leaving deserving allies and even citizens behind? Seems like a scandal.”
Yep. And it unraveled right in front of our eyes. Another great example of how to make an elephant disappear. Disappeared for Fishwings and Sammy, apparently.
Professor Turley neglects to provide a full accounting of the scandals from the fall of 2016. Two weeks after the 2016 election, Trump agreed to pay $25 million to hundreds of Trump University students who were duped & in some cases bankrupted by Trump’s sham university. Turley regularly mentions that Nicholas Sandmann settled lawsuits with the media & regularly alleges that Hunter Biden received millions of dollars in shady business deals. Yet somehow doesn’t include Trump’s $25 million Trump U. settlement in his history lesson about 2016 scandals.
Turley says the media was all-in on Russian collusion allegations. Three weeks after the 2016 election, Trump told the American public “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” A poll taken 10 months after the election showed that 47% of Republicans believed Trump’s false claim that he won the popular vote & the 2016 election had massive voter fraud. Sound familiar? Every week for the past 13 months, Trump has repeatedly said he won the 2020 election by a landslide & Biden & Democrats committed massive voter fraud.
JT seems entirely uninterested in Trump’s niece, Mary, revealing that Donald & his siblings defrauded her of millions of dollars.
A fine way to usher in a brand new year, JT. Happy New Year.
LvpA
Nice way to totally ignore Turley’s column.
See what I mean when I say lefties love “whataboutism”?
Typical nonresponse by someone who ignores the points made about Biden and tries, desperately, to turn it back to Trump. Everyone already knows the points made about Trump because the press has already exhaustively covered those issues. The major point of Professor Turley’s post is that the Washington press and online social forums suppress any information about Biden and his family’s litany of wrongdoing.
Well said.
By the way, I love your pen name!
In the spirit of debate, sure, okay fine. Democrats are corrupt and Republicans are corrupt. So Mr. Smarty Pants, happy now? I don’t believe your tripe, but we’ll let it slide momentarily. How ’bout the ruination of a once-great country? Is that a scandal? The border, Afghanistan. not eliminating the virus as he promised, lying that the Hunter Biden story before the election was “Russian disinformation”. Does any of this make a big GONG go off in your brain? I’ll wait while you ponder…
That reply represents a sorry lack of knowledge.
Legal, the Trump University suit disappeared and was only brought back by ambulance chasers that figured they could get a settlement due to Trump’s Presidential run.
Trump provided his opinion on voting, and he may have been right. In Wisconsin, 220,000 people voted outside the established regulations. Biden won by 20,000. People can argue on both sides, but using this to bolster your case means your case is weak and dying.
Mary Trump has a lot of emotional problems. The left preys on her emotional well-being. This case was already managed when Fred Trump died. All we are seeing is why she should not have been trusted with the family’s money.
These are what Legal calls scandals.
None are scandals except in the mind of those that wish not to acknowledge Biden’s failed administration in Afghanistan, the southern border, crime, budget, self-dealing with other countries at the expense of American citizens, etc. Keep hiding behind your false beliefs.
It’s all so discouraging. Even throwing the bums out won’t be enough to fix it.
BRAVO to the good professor- for summarizing salient examples of the danger to America when ideologically-dominant media (especially mom-and-pop-audience mainstream media) control the message. One of my undergraduate studies included the old 1960s “The Medium is the Message” by Marshall McLuhan (sp.?) How prescient. I also compliment and thank the vast majority of commenters thus far (@ 10:45?) who are cognizant of this trend-thank you for articulating your thoughts. I have restored faith in America!
(above “anonymous” from lin. I have now figured out that when I enter my email (which I do not “save” on this blog),and hit a wrong key, it is immediately posted as anonymous before I can backstroke to correct. sorry to all!)
I make mistakes like that occasionally too. It’s no big deal. At least you have the stones to come back and say so, unlike a couple of the other ‘posters’.
The most amusing part to me is that the posts of the other ‘Anonymous’ are so similar in tone and content, and so easy to spot, they are actually anything but. They might as well just choose a handle.
Thanks, James, that was nice of you, but the bottom line is that I have to slow down and stop doing this.
Liberals news LOL wouldn’t say anything about Democratic Party’s doings at all just more lies and less credible news !!! Sicking !!! They are criminals for sure
Face it Jon, Democrats are corrupt, and the media is nothing but a Democratic propaganda machine.
If the Dems are corrupt and the Republicans prefer a lying deluded grifter with dismal wretched character and tendency towards authoritarianism whose favorite world leaders are Kim Jong Il, Putin and Xi, then what’s the word for that?
Such foolishness. That is what happens when tweets are your primary source of information. Look at what was accomplished by Trump and compare it to what you see today. Virtually every Trump policy was better for America and its middle-class citizens than Biden policies.
If the Dems are corrupt…
The point of JT’s post isn’t if the corruption is real. It’s how the media has been running cover for their corruption while simultaneously spreading misinformation against Trump.
Your comment is evidence of the effectiveness such propaganda has on a constituent base unable to separate fact from fiction.
Let’s be honest: they are unable to bring themselves to think. Their level of reading is like a first grader’s: you recognize letters and words, and can sound them out, and that’s exciting, but any deeper context attached to words and expression, and the ability to self-contextualize based on both experience and the ability to imagine (which is where empathy comes from), though in progress, has yet to truly develop.
James, you give them credit for being able to sound out letters and words. They would have had to attend schools that taught phonics. Phonics were drummed out of most public schools two generations ago along with history and civics leading to the muddled thinking that exists today.
Biden and scandal go hand in hand. Our lefties keep denying it, but what does one expect from people who forgot where they last put their principles?
How about the open border? I believe that intentionally leaving the border wide open, basically encouraging the world to come here illegally and then secretly shipping said illegals all over the country IS A SCANDAL.
I believe forcing people to either get a vaccine or get tested and then not have enough tests IS A SCANDAL.
I believe that leaving hundreds of Americans and allies stuck in Afghanistan along with 80 BILLION dollars worth of military equipment IS A SCANDAL.
I believe that not having any of the new miracle drugs manufactured and ready to go the day the FDA approved them, a lapse that will actually contribute to hundreds of deaths, IS A SCANDAL.
I believe that trying to enforce an eviction moratorium AFTER the Court said it would be illegal IS A SCANDAL.
I believe that having your Justice Dept go after parents as they label them domestic terrorists IS A SCANDAL.
That’s the thing – the modern left considers all of the things you’ve mentioned to be valiant accomplishments, there is no cognitive dissonance for them. Even in light of that, what the Professor has outlined would be scandalous under any circumstances, regarding anything, fir anyone.
No scandal? Letting two million illegal aliens roam free, flying or busing them all over the USA should be scandalous. But, it’s Biden…so it’s okay and we need not waste time reporting on it. Oh, and 100,000 Americans will die in one year because of fentanyl coming over our open border? Why spend any breath on that? No scandals here, move along now.
No scandal if it’s not reported. And people wonder why faith in the media s so low these days (down to 36% https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx). Long way from Cronkite, Huntley, and Brinkley
Whig98,
You are on the right track but it has gone much further than that. The first step is to ignore the story. The second step is to discredit the story. The third step is to discredit anyone who supports and/or promulgates the story.
To put the point on it – “Oh, my!” I, myself, considered his Afghan Debacle on par with scandal. Or even, to quote the Frenchman, worse. “It was worse than a mistake… It was a blunder.”
Throw rocks!
Throw rocks!
Eee eman you el.
Oh come to me in Israel.
Turkey dog. Is is…
Is a frog.
Consider just three of the Voldemort scandals of 2020, or those scandals which must not be named by the media:
One more: manipulating COVID epidemiological data to create Federal vaccine mandates as weapons against Americans.
Look for a deluge of “whataboutism” from our Lefty posters.
Also repeated references to Turley’s Fox appearances as if that is evidence of guilt.
Our Lefty posters are tiresome people with underdeveloped morals.
May I be redundant? In re: “underdeveloped morals” could this be stricken, to insert “ideologically blinkered, ethically crippled, morally bankrupt – and those are the good points.” Just a thought.