What exactly is disinformation – or misinformation? How does one define it? Apparently, disinformation is whatever the left-wing establishment media and the phony fact-checkers on social media platforms say it is. But when The New York Times finally came clean about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, conservatives were not only vindicated but their worst fears were confirmed: the labeling of anything as disinformation has nothing whatsoever to do with truth and facts and has everything to do with political narratives and winning elections.
The very large amount of evidence that Joe Biden’s son has been involved in or connected to some shady business deals is not hard to find for those willing to seek out the truth. Indeed, much of it has been written about in the pages of Liberty Nation. In broad strokes, the story began with a laptop seemingly abandoned at a computer repair shop in 2019. The contents of the laptop’s hard drive concerned the shop’s owner enough to prompt him to hand it over to the FBI. Details from some of the emails found on the laptop began swirling on social media. These details suggested the younger Biden had made a lot of money selling himself as something of a political powerbroker and a man who could open the right doors while his father served as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Pre-Election Cover-up
In 2020, by the time it became clear that Joe Biden would win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the left began to panic. Establishment media organizations – including The New York Times – put their loyalty to the Democrats on full display by spreading the notion that the whole laptop story was a hoax; that it was, in fact, disinformation likely fabricated by the Russians.
Certain social media platforms joined this partisan campaign by suspending or banning almost anyone who raised questions about Hunter Biden. When the New York Post ran a story about Biden’s laptop in late 2020 – just weeks before the presidential election – its Twitter account was suspended.
A massive disinformation campaign was indeed being run. The left-wing media claimed they were committed to debunking it but, in fact, they were the ones running it. The claims that the laptop rumors were disinformation were themselves disinformation. Are you following?
We Told You So
On March 17, the Post Editorial Board took The Times to task for its duplicity. “In the heat of the presidential race of 2020,” Post editors wrote, “the Times never missed a chance to cast doubt on the laptop, saying the information was ‘purported’ and quoting a letter from former Democratic officials who claimed — with no evidence — that it was Russian disinformation. As recently as September 2021, The Times called the laptop ‘unsubstantiated’ in a news story.”
But they weren’t done there. The Post editorial soon got to the very heart of the deception – and touched upon the reason why the Hunter Biden laptop issue turned out to be an even more consequential disinformation op than the Trump-Russia collusion hoax invented by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016:
“Readers of the Times have discovered in March 2022 that Hunter Biden pursued business deals in Europe and Asia, and may have leveraged his father’s position as vice president to do it. Hunter also may not have properly registered with the government or declared all his income. All legitimate topics of discussion about a presidential candidate’s family, no?”
Hunter Biden (Photo by Handout/DNCC via Getty Images)
The editorial concludes with some well-deserved snark: “Readers of The Post have known this since October 2020. We also have a much better sports section. We’ve authenticated it.”
Dangerous Motives
But the important line from the quote above raises the question of Hunter’s activities being “legitimate topics of discussion about a presidential candidate’s family… “ As Donald Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News, the suppressed story of the laptop would have impacted the 2020 election. “It’s not a question of whether it was criminal or not,” Barr told Fox’s Jesse Waters. “Just the facts alone were shameful. And most Americans would immediately see what was going on and how repulsive it was, and it would have had an effect.”
How much of an effect is hard to quantify, but a Media Research Center survey concluded that 16% of Biden voters would not have voted the way they did in 2020 had they been aware of the laptop story.
Hunter Biden is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice over unpaid taxes and his former business partner is doing prison time for a crime unrelated to Biden. The profoundly disturbing aspect of this whole saga, though, is that the left-wing media, various social media platforms, and even some government officials will readily engage in a massive effort to mislead the American people for political gain. The very word “disinformation” has become one of the principal political weapons of the left and, when one hears this word, one can safely assume the information to which it has been applied is at least worthy of a closer look; it might indeed be false or misleading – or it may be factual information the left considers a threat to its power.
~ Read more from Graham J. Noble.
