Media and big tech joins the Biden campaign
“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it” – Thomas Jefferson
After many on the right thought the mainstream “elite” media could not become any more biased towards Left, all pretense of objectivity has been shedded in the final weeks of the Presidential campaign. Particularly disturbing, and a situation becoming similar to that of Soviet control over news, big tech has jumped in to tilt the scales further toward Joe Biden. The evidence is overwhelming at this point, and if allowed to continue our Liberty is at risk. Let me explain.
The recent case of bias is seemingly unbelievable and involves big tech support. On October 14, the New York Post (NYP) published a bombshell story based on emails from Hunter Biden’s alleged email account. As the article explained, Hunter Biden left his hard drive with a computer shop, but never paid and didn’t came back to pick it up. After 90 days, the drive became the property of the shop, and the owner found extremely disturbing emails. He contacted the FBI, as he believed the emails presented an issue of national security, and the FBI retrieved the hard drive in late 2019. The shop owner also made a copy of the hard drive, and later transferred that hard drive to Rudolf Giuliani’s lawyer. That second drive explains how the NYP received the emails, and also why the US Senate Homeland Security Committee viewed the emails and opened an investigation into Hunter and Joe Biden’s actions.
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The emails are primarily communications between corrupt Ukrainian energy Company, Burisma, and Hunter Biden. They include Burisma’s request for Hunter to use influence with his father, (then) Vice President Joe Biden, as a quid pro quo for Hunter’s high paying job. The emails also evidence Hunter’s leveraging of Joe Biden’s position as US Vice-President, and Joe Biden meeting with Burisma seemingly at Hunter’s request. According to the New York Post: “Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month. ‘Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,’ the email reads. An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for ‘advice on how you could use your influence’ on the company’s behalf.”
Joe Biden did not directly deny the story, though his staff claimed they checked Biden’s official schedule and didn’t find a meeting between Biden and Mr. Pozharskyi. Of course, with the issues surrounding Burisma, including investigations of corruption in the Ukraine and his son’s connections, few would expect such a meeting to be on the “official” schedule. Further emails appear to evidence a similar scheme of Hunter being paid for influence to his father by the Chinese. In this case, Chinese were invited to the White House, and Hunter was paid millions. The emails include attached pictures of Hunter’s drug use and sexual escapades and other such lurid images.
Not only has the mainstream elite media attempted to marginalize and bury this story, outlets like CNN have published preposterous accusations that the whole story is a misinformation campaign by Russians. Business Insider dismissed the story by claiming “red flags”, such as Giuliani’s involvement, and claim the red flags make the story “dubious”. CNN, MSNBC, and other similar outlets have demeaned the New York Post, a newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton and with a national reach of readership.
Most disturbing in this saga has been the actions of Twitter and Facebook in restricting or slowing the story on those platforms. In the case of Twitter, the New York Post’s twitter feed was immediately suspended from forwarding the story. Twitter barred other followers from forwarding the story. It went so far as to ban the US House site from publishing the story (the House published the story due to the complaints of the restrictions), though was forced to back off. Initially, Twitter claimed that the reason for the restriction was of material being illegally obtained. There were two problems with that justification: 1. The hard drive became the legal property of the computer shop after being left over 90 days without payment, so material was not illegally obtained. 2. Twitter did not prevent the President’s taxes from being forwarded, despite that information being admittedly illegally obtained. Twitter and Facebook have now been called to testify before Congress due to this election interference in favor of Biden. Twitter is being sued for in-kind political contributions to the Biden campaign with it’s assistance to Biden by restricting the story.
On Oct 15, both the President and Joe Biden participated in dueling town halls. Many viewers switched back and forth to attempt to see both candidates, and became witness to the stark contrast and media bias. The moderator for Trump’s town hall, Savannah Guthrie, argued with the President about his answers to her questions. She mischaracterized Trump’s prior statements, like her claiming he had never previously condemned white supremacy, and asserted the President didn’t tell the truth when he said he didn’t know about Q Anon. "Savannah Guthrie’s posture toward Trump compared to Lester Holt’s toward Biden is night and day," The Hill media reporter Joe Concha wrote, recalling a previous NBC town hall with the former VP. "Trump went from debating Biden to Guthrie! Not sure whether this is good or bad yet ... but he's definitely debating tonight," CNN commentator Scott Jennings said.
Joe Biden’s town hall was the polar opposite. The moderator, George Stephanopoulos, went straight to questions from the alleged voters (it turned out some questioners were Democratic operatives). Importantly, George never asked Biden about the New York Post Hunter Biden email story that broke wide open the day prior. Biden has refused to answer the question of whether or not he will pack the courts, and was not pressed to do so by George. Unlike President Trump, who has had to condemn white supremacy over and over again at each debate or town hall, Biden was not asked to condemn Antifa, which he refused to condemn at an earlier debate.
Thomas Jefferson wrote about the importance of a free media to our American Liberty: “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” This is why the Constitution’s First Amendment safeguarded freedom of the press as a foundation of our rights. Jefferson also wrote: “I would rather have a free press without government, than government without a free press”. The first and most important mission of the press is to bring transparency. Without it, corruption metastasizes and becomes tyranny.
In media and big tech’s active safeguarding and coddling of Biden, transparency has been the first casualty. Trust is the contingent casualty, and Liberty will come next. In these last weeks of the campaign, the media and big tech need to win back the faith of the American people with fairness, transparency, and honesty. President Trump may win, or Joe Biden may win, but regardless of which candidate wins we all lose if we have lost a free and fair press.
Bill Connor, an Army Infantry colonel, author and Orangeburg attorney, has deployed multiple times to the Middle East. Connor was the senior U.S. military adviser to Afghan forces in Helmand Province, where he received the Bronze Star. A Citadel graduate with a JD from USC, he is also a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Army War College, earning his master of strategic studies. He is the author of the book Articles from War.
