Former CNN and MSNBC executives sat down with Michael Smerconish and were pressed on their lack of coverage for the Hunter Biden story prior to the 2020 election.
“[There’s a] controversy that you may think is bullsh*t,” Smerconish said. “Let me give you an example. I believe — they know this, because I talked about it on air. I think that the Hunter laptop was worthy of more airing than it received right before the election. Either of you agree with me on that? Do you regret? How about — if I ask you this way, specifically, do you regret not dealing with it before the election?”
“Well, I mean, I think — I think we — the question is, we did deal with it,’ former CNN chief Jeff Zucker respondedd. “But to the degree that, you know, you would have thought was appropriate. I think the answer is in the final two weeks, you know, it was looked at. We did not know enough about it. There was not, you know, there was not within two weeks of the election, the ability when the messenger on that story was Rudy Giuliani, okay?”
“No, I mean — but I mean, that’s the problem,” Zucker went on. “It’s like, you’re going to give a lot of legitimacy to Rudy Giuliani delivering, you know, he’s got the goods. So part of the issue with that story was who was delivering the goods?”
“Okay, that’s one,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean that we didn’t look into it. We did. We did look into it. But first of all, you know, with regard to the son of the candidate, you know, he was the son of the candidate. He wasn’t the candidate.”
“The question that you’ll come back with is, well, but what role did the candidate play in his business dealings?” he asked. “You know, frankly, with ten days or two weeks to go, it was looked at by very credible organizations, including The Wall Street Journal — Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal — and they found nothing at that time. Okay. So my point is, it’s easy to say we should have spent more time on that. Listen, do I think it’s legitimate to look at? Sure. Do I think that, like, it’s a legitimate criticism to say that in the ten days, 14 days prior to the election, you didn’t spend enough time on it? Not really.”
“What do you think?” Smerconish asked ex-MSNBC chief Phil Griffin.
“He was never arrested,” Griffin said. “The Justice Department was looking into it, never reported it until he is the son of a candidate. I don’t think it’s a main story until that happens. Now, we looked into it. You know, NBC News did, Tom Winter and Ken Dilanian did a great job. They met with Rudy. He brought a couple of pages printed out from the so-called, from the — from the computer. They asked for a digital copy of it. They didn’t get it. But I don’t think it was a big story before the election because he was never found — he was never charged.”
“And Michael, let me ask you, in the two weeks before the election, when that came out, I don’t know the exact timing —” Zucker added.
“Yeah, I think 11 days before,” Smerconish noted.
One of the New York Post reporters that helped break the story, Emma-Jo Morris, now at Breitbart News, remarked on the executives’ feigned innocence in squelching the story prior to the election.
Let’s check in on what CNN and MS have learned https://t.co/qfHQAEJKd8
— Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC) October 14, 2022
“This time two years ago today, all social media platforms in unison banned the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell,” she noted. “Let’s check in on what CNN and MS have learned.”
Not much, sadly. These excuses would not fly with journalists or the broader American audience if damning evidence of illicit foreign transactions were found to be tied to Donald Trump Jr., raising questions about his presidential father’s potential knowledge and benefit.
CNN and MSNBC never failed to seize on any far-flung conspiracy theory that appeared damaging to Donald Trump. So, the double standard doesn’t fly. And when networks and social media platforms work together to “black out” the most disturbing revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop, it goes beyond mere journalistic negligence into active collusion to rig an election for their preferred candidate, even if it means disastrous consequences for the country.
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