May 16, 2023

"The brilliance of the Biden team was that it invested the media in this scandal at the outset by burying the laptop story as 'Russian disinformation' before the election."

"That was, of course, false, but it took two years for most major media outlets to admit that the laptop was authentic. But the media then ignored what was on that 'authentic laptop.' Hundreds of emails detailed potentially criminal conduct and raw influence peddling in foreign countries. When media outlets such as the New York Post confirmed the emails, the media then insisted that there was no corroboration of the influence peddling payments and no clear proof of criminal conduct.... Now that the House has released corroboration in actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because there is no direct proof of payments to Joe Biden.... [T]he media’s demand of a direct payment to President Biden is laughably absurd. The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling. The House has shown millions of dollars going to at least nine Bidens like dividends from a family business. As a long-time critic of influence peddling among both Republicans and Democrats, I have never seen the equal of the Bidens...."

Turley illustrates his piece with this fabulous old cartoon:


Here's a discussion of that cartoon at the subreddit r/PropagandaPosters, where we see that it's a 1910 Puck Magazine cartoon by Louis M. Glackens. Here's a page full of work by Glackens (at Wikimedia).

54 comments:

gilbar said...

this is no scandal because there is no direct proof of payments to Joe Biden....

hmm
payoffs went to his brother
payoffs went to his son
payoffs went to his daughter
payoffs went to his daughter in law
payoffs went to his sister
payoffs went to his wife
payoffs went to his wife's brother
payoffs went to his bank account
BUT!
there is no direct proof of payments to Joe Biden....

certainly going to have to remember this strategy

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Goalposts on wheels like this are much easier to move when needed.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"In my studies of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is ...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A variety of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."

- Theodore Dalrymple

Why should the MSM stop lying now? In for a penny, in for a pound.

Gunner said...

Is he going to be impeached or not? That is all I care about. I know he could kill someone and not one Democrat in the House would vote for it, but doesn't this satisfy the moderate Republicans?

rehajm said...

Turley wants to award a Pulitzer for non writing while we marvel at the brilliance of the Biden crimes. Your next President…

gahrie said...

Biden will go down in History as our most corrupt and ineffective president ever. Presidents Carter, Grant and Buchanan all thank you.

Aggie said...

Turley just can't help himself, I guess. Yes, the Biden team has 'brilliantly managed' the media all throughout its various difficulties, using shrewd tactical footwork and adroit maneuvers, so forth. But let's face it - the media is eminently amenable to being managed in the first place, however brilliantly, since about 2009 when it upped the ante by giving gold-plated valet tongue-bath service to anything with a (D) after its name.

gahrie said...

It doesn't need to be said, but it needs to be said:

What would have happened if that laptop had belonged to Donald Trump Jr?

After what we have seen the last twelve years, the Democrats owe Nixon an apology.

Leland said...

One of the things that give me hope for the future is the clear evidence of this level of corruption in the past, as illustrated by the graphic. Use of the media to sow disinformation for one political party, yeah we’ve suffered it before and survived.

wendybar said...

And we as a country are too dumb and too scared to do a thing about it, except move on to the newest, brightest penny that they will do the same to.

Dave Begley said...

A law needs to be passed making it a crime to pay money to any immediate family members of Congress, POTUS and VP.

Immediate family members means children, spouse and grandchildren.

But this law will never pass. Too many in on the grift.

Narr said...

Warp speed goalpost moving on the part of The Organs and their trained seals. But some folks still have trouble parsing it out.

Sad.

Enigma said...

Biden became the 2020 Party nominee only because he was a proven greased-palm politician and eager to sell out. This dates back decades to his senatorial dealings in Delaware (home to numerous tax-dodging businesses).

Following the comical circular-firing-squad Democratic debates, the Party cut an obvious back-room deal: Joe would be the puppet nominee because he was an old "safe" White guy going up against another old White guy. However, he agreed to be controlled by Clyburn (Congressional Black Caucus) for the domestic equity agenda, Bill Gates for green/EPA agenda, Michael Bloomberg for the "protect the 1% and Chinese businesses" contingent, and various activists groups (e.g., anti-gun, LGBQTA) to buy enough votes to win. Pelosi and Schumer consciously sold their souls to defeat Trump, as neither is a fool.

Pyrrhic victory I say. The Party must now keep many lies and contradictions straight, and hosts nothing but internal corruption and hornets who put personal goals first. The media doesn't try to report anymore, as their jobs depend on the patronage of Party oligarchs (Bezos at WP, Gates at Slate, etc.).

This will collapse slowly and then all at once. Faster without Trump, slower with Trump.

Wa St Blogger said...

If you believe in accountability for government vote straight (R). Then at least the media will be suspicious and investigative. (Just make sure you assume that most of it is a lie until proven otherwise.) If you prefer corruption, vote (D).

Sebastian said...

Turley is of course correct in calling out the Biden corruption and the implied sell-out to foreign interests.

He is also correct about the Dem/deep-state/MSM collusion in suppressing inconvenient information, though the mobilization of the state media may not have needed much "investing."

But he hasn't made explicit the connection and meta-collusion: that Biden was and is a foreign and prog tool at the same time. In Joe, the interests of our nominal adversaries and our domestic overlords converge.

Not Sure said...

I'm not sure that "brilliance" is a synonym for brazen, persistent, transparent lying.

"Lawyering," OTOH, works pretty well in that regard.

Original Mike said...

"The House has shown millions of dollars going to at least nine Bidens like dividends from a family business."

The press is reprehensible, but surely our Attorney General is a criminal for looking the other way.

PM said...

And....?

n.n said...

The fourth leg of a fascist state.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, so has Jonathan Turley managed to convince you that the writers and editors at the New York Times are no longer the great and noble journalists of the days of your mis-spent youth, but have evolved into a pack of mindless hacks and toadies who will write whatever the Democrat leadership tells them to write?

Big Mike said...

And BTW, it doesn’t take much “brilliance” when the dupes are preconditioned to be duped.

Michael K said...

The corruption of both parties will result in the collapse of The American Experiment soon. The Democrats have been taken over by the oligarchs; the Republicans by similar people who are less obvious about it. The credentialed class has chosen servitude.

Drago said...

Turley is correct of course and, like many long time readers of Althouse, I await Douglas Levene's call for Trump to be prosecuted for this Biden family corruption.

We wouldn't want to break pattern now after 7+ years.

cubanbob said...

Jonathan Turley is being disingenuous. Back in 2004 ( I forget the name) at Newsweek admitted the Democrat always starts with a fifteen percentage advantage due to the press. Unless the people involved in all these Clinton-Obama-Biden scandals go to prison and are broken by the process, especially those at the top, then this will never end and indeed will become more open and brazen. Indeed that is one of the purposes, we can do what we want and there is nothing that can be done to us.

Meade said...

Manufacturing Consent

John henry said...

Fascism straight up.

Right out of mussolini's playbook "the doctrine of fascism"


John Henry

Sebastian said...

Example of the meta-collusion I asserted:

Durham via Power Line: “It is extremely concerning that the FBI failed to deal with the prior unresolved counterespionage case on Danchenko. Given Danchenko’s known contacts with Russian intelligence officers and his documented prior pitch for classified information, the Crossfire Hurricane team’s failure to properly consider and address the espionage case prior to opening Danchenko as a CHS [confidential human source] is difficult to explain, particularly given their awareness that Danchenko was the linchpin to the uncorroborated allegations contained in the Steele Reports.”

So, for the purpose of going after Trump on behalf of Hillary and the Dems, the FBI was fine with using Danchenko even as Danchenko had known and previously suspect Russian connections.

Was the Russia collusion claim the actual Russia collusion?

Drago said...

Enigma: "This will collapse slowly and then all at once. Faster without Trump, slower with Trump."

This level of naivete is adorable.

It won't collapse at all unless the dems make the positive decision to rid themselves of Biden. They are in complete control of all levers of the federal govt and 98% of the media. They can and do operate with impunity.

Which is why Garland removed the IRS investigative team handling Hunter's clear crimes. It's like the old Ma Bell joke commercials:

We don't care. We don't have to. Bell Telephone

JK Brown said...

Of course, it is the Democrat's most devoted supporters the "educated strata" who most eagerly consume the media's prostituted "news".

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength


As I've commented before, we are see a war of the "intellectuals" or rather those who positioned themselves to sell the State's legitimacy. The publishers and "journalists" were gatekeepers for near a century but have no lost their stranglehold on what the public sees. Hence their cries for censorship of these non-standard speakers.

=============
For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the “intellectuals.” For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the “opinion-molders” in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear.

It is evident that the State needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident why intellectuals need the State. Put simply, we may state that the intellectual’s livelihood in the free market is never too secure; for the intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men, and it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are generally uninterested in intellectual matters. The State, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus; and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the State rulers, of which group they now become a part.
--Murray Rothbard, 'The Anatomy of the State'

Dave Begley said...

The American public has outrage fatigue.

The President has been bribed with $10m? Who cares?

The FBI helped rig the election? Old hat!

n.n said...

Emanations from the penumbra of a Weimar Republic.

JPS said...

Stephanie Ruhle, of MSNBC:

"You're also facing something personal. And while there's no ties to you, your own son could be charged by your Department of Justice."

I just love "while there's no ties to you." It's beautiful. My guess is the White House staff told her to add that when they returned feedback on the interview questions she submitted in advance.

wendybar said...

The brilliance of the Biden machine is that they are ALL Obama sycophants, fundamentally destroying America as Obama promised

rcocean said...

Brilliance? Well it was easy for The "Biden team" to be brilliant when Twitter, Facebook, Google. Youtube, and every major Radio/newspaper outlet except the NY Post, and every TV network except Fox (maybe) wanted to bury the story. And when the NY Post TRIED To report on it, they got banned by Twitter!

THe "51 Intelligence officials" who said it was "Russian Disinformation" were the same ones who lied for 4 years about Trump and Russiagate. Not to mention AG Barr refusing to tell the truth. And the FBI trying to hide the truth until AFTER the election.

I vaguely remember Trump trying to bring up the "Hunter laptop" and being shut down instantly by Wallace or whoever.

I suppose the "Brilliance" by the "Biden's Bright boys" was that he needed to give the MSM the right hook. They desparately wanted to bury the story. They just needed the right excuse. And saying it was Russian Disinformation had a goofy official sound to it. Maybe some dimwits and midwits actually believed it. Anyone who was paying attention, knew "Russian Disinformation" was lying Bullshit. Like always.

rcocean said...

Someone upthread spoke the truth. The MSM Only reports on Democrat scandals when it has too. Clinton's lies about "sex with that women", his prejury, and witness tampering only saw the light of day because of Matt Drudge and the internet.

Had the scandal happened in 1994, it would've been buried. Just like JFk,LBJ, FDR scandals got buried by a friendly press.

Anthony said...

For many years I and others were saying that the legacy media should just come out and say they're the propaganda arm of the Democratic party (and government) since, you know, they were.

I guess this is about as close as they'll come.

Original Mike said...

"Now that the House has released corroboration in actual money transfers linking many in the Biden family, the media is insisting that this is no scandal because there is no direct proof of payments to Joe Biden.... [T]he media’s demand of a direct payment to President Biden is laughably absurd. The payments were going to his family, but he was the object of the influence peddling. The House has shown millions of dollars going to at least nine Bidens like dividends from a family business. "

I used to submit conflict of interest and ethics reports for outside consulting work I did while a University employee. The law was very explicit; you couldn't hide payments by having them go to family members instead of yourself. For obvious reasons.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Well, when the vice president does it, that means that it is not influence peddling"

Michael said...

Not a single sentence about Durham in todays NYT.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

" But let's face it - the media is eminently amenable to being managed in the first place,"

Exactly. And they're amenable to everyone. Just look how they rolled over onto their backs and showed their bellies to Trump and the Republicans.

Yancey Ward said...

The D.C. press is quite happy sucking Biden's withered and limp cock. I would have thought Turley would be unsurprised by this, but there it is.

Yancey Ward said...

The only way any of this Biden corruption is ever prosecuted is if the DoJ can find some way to indict Trump for all of it.

Night Owl said...

"And BTW, it doesn’t take much 'brilliance' when the dupes are preconditioned to be duped."

Was going to say something similar. No brilliance is required when the media is covering-up for you, and the doj will never bring charges against you.

Maynard said...

@Althouse, so has Jonathan Turley managed to convince you that the writers and editors at the New York Times are no longer the great and noble journalists of the days of your mis-spent youth, but have evolved into a pack of mindless hacks and toadies who will write whatever the Democrat leadership tells them to write?

I assume it is a rhetorical question, Big Mike. The answer is too obvious.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Now our corrupt Obama-Biden DOJ is shutting down any FBI investigation into Hunter.

Bruce Hayden said...

“The press is reprehensible, but surely our Attorney General is a criminal for looking the other way.”

Apparently the DOJ just ordered the IRS to shutdown its investigation of Hunter’s tax evasion. All of the IRS employees involved, including a whistle blower were reassigned. And the House committee investigating it is left with zip.

wendybar said...

Sharyl Attkisson
@SharylAttkisson

8h
·
There's no bigger story in our time that our intel agencies (and other fed agencies) weaponized against a political figure and leader... and many citizens and journalists in the process... and has been doing that for decades BTW.
Who will stop it?

Michael K said...

“The press is reprehensible, but surely our Attorney General is a criminal for looking the other way.”

You mean like his head is spinning around and he's vomiting green pea soup? That AG who is acting the role of Wormtongue in LOTR ?

Kevin said...

As a long-time critic of influence peddling among both Republicans and Democrats, I have never seen the equal of the Bidens...."

And this is a man who lived through the Clintons.

Narayanan said...

where can I read about stuff that Pulitzer blacked out?

Enigma said...

@Drago: "This level of naivete is adorable.

It won't collapse at all unless the dems make the positive decision to rid themselves of Biden. They are in complete control of all levers of the federal govt and 98% of the media. They can and do operate with impunity."


Hmmm. I'm not naïve, but you reveal ignorance of history.

You apparently do not know that civil war England, revolutionary France, USSR Stalinism, and Chinese Maoism all collapsed despite periods of even greater one-party control. Bullies in power always turn on each other when they lack an external opponent. It happens like clockwork.

Trump was an external and hostile "drain the swamp" figure who thereby generated establishment unity. Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Liz Cheney jumped on board with the Democrats publicly, and plenty of other Republicans wanted Trump gone too. McCain refused to end Obamacare when there was a chance under Trump. There's now no push from the Reps to revisit Jan 6 either.

It may take a generation for Democratic unity to disappear, but the screw always turns and allegiances always change. Five years of unity is easy, 10 years is not too hard, but achieving 20 years on the same page is very difficult.

wendybar said...

Michael said...
Not a single sentence about Durham in todays NYT.

5/16/23, 1:10 PM


Probably because....

Yancey Ward said...
The D.C. press is quite happy sucking Biden's withered and limp cock. I would have thought Turley would be unsurprised by this, but there it is.

5/16/23, 1:14 PM

Drago said...

Enigma: "You apparently do not know that civil war England, revolutionary France, USSR Stalinism, and Chinese Maoism all collapsed despite periods of even greater one-party control. Bullies in power always turn on each other when they lack an external opponent. It happens like clockwork."

I agree with all of that and more. I just think our situation, although driven by humans just like the others because of course it is, has sufficiently different boundary conditions such that the timelines, processes etc that will lead to our eventual demise (demise of the republic at a minimum) will be categorically distinct from the others.

I did not make that clear.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

...has Jonathan Turley managed to convince you that the writers and editors at the New York Times are no longer the great and noble journalists of the days of your mis-spent youth...

Two observations. (1) Walter Duranty was a long time before Althouse was born and (2) TBH she has recently devoted a lot of her time to highlighting the Old Gray Lady's obtuse and malleable application of the King's English to the stories they choose to cover. Let's encourage her not... well whatever this is. I guess one way of saying what I mean is to point out that your insinuation that Althouse needs "convincing" of your point says more about you than her, and makes you more like the NYT than your usual good takes. My hunch is no one here believes in the "great and noble journalist" myth so loved by Hollywood because we've all been paying attention for a long time. Althouse does find their writing "interesting" still, but God bless her, she at least reads (the writes about) stuff I don't have the stomach or time for and I appreciate it. And you're one of my favorite Mikes around here so please don't imagine any unkindness within my gentle disagreement.

I like our side to do better. That's why I've been hard on Hooker and Dave lately. They have better game than they bring lately when Trump's on the menu.