Mainstream Media Propaganda at Work

Not a "whiff" but a hurricane

This is a story of media dishonesty in a mundane setting. It is all the more dangerous because its very commonplace aura camouflages the nefariousness of the lie.

THE MEDIA’S DEFENSE STRATEGY

When the mainstream media are finally forced to acknowledge lies, crimes or simple inappropriate conduct by a prominent Democrat, they will often mount what the Army calls a “defense in depth.”  The first line of defense often is “Republicans Pounce!”  This defense ignores the substance of any misdeeds but attacks any Republican response; the Republicans are the evil ones for refusing to move on, for talking about Lunch Bucket Joe’s family instead of issues that matter, etc. The second line of defense may be the “No Big Deal” defense: “Yeah, maybe this was wrong, maybe someone made a mistake or misspoke, but it doesn’t matter; it is just Joe being Joe; voters don’t care.” If these and other defenses are not sufficient, the main line of resistance becomes to lie, deny, and ignore all contrary evidence.   

CNN – THE DEFENSE STRATEGY AT WORK

CNN gave us a recent example of these multi-layered defenses in a routine broadcast culminating in the lie, deny and ignore strategy. The show featured one of CNN’s celebrity hosts, Jake Tapper, together with another CNN reporter, Jeff Zeleny, and two guests, Kristen Anderson and ­­­­Andy Levin. Levin is a former Democrat representative from Michigan.  Politico described him as “metro Detroit political royalty.” 

Anderson is a putative Republican “pollster, television personality and writer,” whose work has appeared The Daily Beast, Politico, and HuffPost. Her CNN performance would confirm that, like the ersatz conservatives Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post and David Brooks at the New York Times, Anderson apparently was there to provide a phony front of fairness and balance.

Tapper’s CNN report was so routine as to pass almost-unnoticed.  Although it was featured on Real Clear Politics, that platform only provided a video of the segment with a short article describing what was said, without any analysis. But propaganda can be at its most dangerous when it is so routine as to pass unnoticed.  We deplorables are most vulnerable when we don’t even know that we are being misled. That is the case with CNN here.   

TAPPER ADMITS THAT BIDEN’S STATEMENTS DURING THE DEBATE WERE FALSE

Tapper teed up the segment by noting that Zeleny was reporting that anonymous White House staff had leaked that “President Biden might have a blind spot, according to people around him when it comes to his son Hunter Biden's legal troubles.” Zeleny says it is now “verboten” for anyone on the White House or campaign staff to “talk about Hunter Biden.”

Tapper then noted that in the 2020 presidential debates Joe Biden had denied Trump’s allegations that his son had made “a fortune” from China, but that, in fact, Hunter had reported over $4 million in income in 2017 and 2018, “most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests.” The CNN excerpts of the debates showed these exchanges:

Biden: “My son has not made money in terms of this thing about what are you talking about, what are you talking about, China.”

Trump: “He made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow –"

Biden angrily denied it: “That is simply not true.”

The video snippets of the debates that Tapper showed are here (beginning at 1:40).

Tapper concluded by saying what Biden and the Democrats in Congress have tried to deny and hide for years: “Trump was right … and Joe Biden was wrong.” 

In fairness, let us give the devil his due:  Tapper admitted that Hunter Biden reaped enormous financial rewards from the Chinese and from Ukraine. But precious little credit is due to Tapper for that grudging admission.  Hunter had admitted the payments in federal court, so like the story of the laptop from hell, given the publicity surrounding the cratered plea deal, Biden’s false statements could no longer be ignored. But after acknowledging the obvious, Tapper and his panel immediately went into defense mode.  

CNN’s DEFENSE IN DEPTH

First, they deployed the “Republicans Pounce” line of defense:  Anderson was first out of the gate.  You might think that as the ostensible Republican on the panel, she might begin by noting that it was not so much a blind spot, but that Biden had been caught in repeated false statements and the problem was that the White House had not yet figured out how to deal with his blatant falsehoods. You might think that a real Republican advocate might point out that Biden’s falsehoods were part of a pattern and give other examples.  No, Anderson’s opening shot was, “It's a problem, one, because Republicans aren't going to let it go, that's for sure.”  She added that it would be a continuing problem “and Republicans are just harping on it.” I wonder why that is?   

Zeleny also advanced a version of “Republicans Pounce.”  He argued that the President’s advisors don’t discuss Hunter with the President because they are “probably right” that voters don’t care about it, but that “this is going to be a central piece of the Republican debate and Republican talking points next week and beyond.”

Tapper’s deployed the “No big deal” line of defense immediately after pointing out Biden’s untruths: “I don't know that he was lying about it. He might not have been told by Hunter.” Well, Jake m’boy, the reason you don’t know that he was lying is that neither you nor anyone else at your network has attempted to find out.  As this author has previously pointed out, if this administration “will lie to us about small things, then they will lie about big things.”  Tapper would do well to keep that in mind when considering anything Joe Biden says.

Finally, the main line of resistance was manned by former Democrat representative Levin.  Levin was not as bashful as Anderson in defending his party’s terrain. He quickly called in the defense’s final protective fires with the deny, lie, and ignore mode: “But nothing has tied the President to any of Hunter Biden's dealings. There's no whiff of him being involved or him being implicated in it.” 

“Nothing.”  “No whiff.” What a whopper!  There is a wealth of evidence that Joe Biden is involved in his son’s business and financial dealings up to his ears.  But the most noteworthy thing for this article was not that a Democrat told a falsehood – we got used to politicians of all stripes lying long ago – but that not a one member of the CNN panel, including the supposed Republican, uttered a single syllable to contradict this “no whiff” lie. None even gently pointed out to Levin that there was somewhat more than a “whiff” of evidence tying Joe to “Hunter Biden’s dealings” and to his  still-unexplained harvest of millions from the Chinese and the Ukrainains.    

IS THERE A WHIFF OF JOE BIDEN’S CORRPUTION?

An exhaustive list and discussion would swell this limited article to unacceptable proportions, but consider just a few examples of the “whiffs” that Levin, Tapper, Zeleny, and Anderson all ignored:

• For starters, what of the evidence that showed that 10% of the equity of a company to be formed in collaboration with the Chinese was to be held by Hunter for the “Big Guy.” Is that a whiff?

• How about Tony Bobulinski, who testified that Joe was the “Big Guy,” that he was Hunter’s business partner in dealing with the Chinese, and that contrary to Joe’s denials Bobulinski had personally been present when Joe and Hunter discussed the family business.  Whiffs, anyone?

• For that matter, what about Hunter’s email to his daughter complaining that he had to give half of his income to “Dad?” No evidence of Joe’s involvement, Mr. Levin?

• Hunter texted that he had been paying bills for his father for eleven years.  Is that one or eleven whiffs?

• What about Hunter’s representations to the Chinese whom he was shaking down, that Joe was sitting in the room next to him and joining in the demand for immediate millions. Enough for a whiff?

• Any whiffs in the recent testimony by IRS whistle blowers implicating Joe Biden?

• It is well documented that Joe flew Hunter to China and other countries on Airforce One and Two to conduct his business there. Do those whiffs count?

• What of the unexplained transfers of millions traced through various business accounts to Biden family members, including grandchildren, under what may be described as suspicious circumstances.  Are these enough of a whiff to create even a slight breeze?

• Was the then-Vice President’s braggadocio about blackmailing the Ukranians into firing the prosecutor who was investigating his son’s corrupt company possibly a stronger breeze?

A reasonable observer might say that these – and others – are more than whiffs. More like a gale, shaping up to be a typhoon, really.  And let us not forget that a bribe doesn’t have to go to Joe.  If he supplies goodwill or other services to the Chinese, the Ukrainians, or whomever, in exchange for money that flows to, say, multiple bank accounts set up for various LLC’s owned or controlled by other family members, even a Democratic meteorologist might predict that there’s a storm a-comin’ in. 

This CNN broadcast is just one small example of how the mainstream media continues to mislead voters daily.  Multiply it by thousands and the collaborative grand strategy will begin to come into focus. It is a lie in service of a strategy intended to sway the election, and “fundamentally transform the United States of America” by continuing to drag us into a progressive utopia if the media’s desire to elect more such “progressives” is realized: lockdowns, loss of livelihoods and resulting dependency on the state, loss of fundamental freedoms, the right to worship and the right to travel freely, elimination of combustion engines, 15-minute cities, an increasingly socialist qua communist economy….  And on and on….