We’ve noted how the Media Research Center is a leader is promoting pro-Trump talking points on the impeachment process, even as it (rather lamely and hypocritically) attacks the “liberal media” for allegedly promoting Democratic talking points on impeachment (a complaint that its itself a pro-Trump talking point). It seems the MRC is looking to cut out the middleman of laundering those talking points in its house style and just resorting to pushing them directly.
MRC execultive Tim Graham wrote in a Nov. 3 post:
Democrat presidential front-runner Joe Biden granted an interview to PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff for Friday night’s program. The Trump campaign sent around an e-mail decrying “Two Big Lies” in the interview.
Let’s not be optimistic that the “independent fact-checkers” like PolitiFact will evaluate these. PolitiFact just gave Biden a “Mostly True” for stating he was one of the poorest senators and poorest vice presidents (that’s a comparison of high-income people). PolitiFact acknowledged the Bidens reported making $15 million in 2017-2018.
Graham did try to frame thing as a fact-check he claims other fact-checking orgs don’t do, but at no point does Graham closely examine the Trump propaganda he’s repeating.
One of the things Graham says the Trump campaign apparently claimed was a “big lie” (Graham doesn’t supply the email in question, so it’s unclear what the exact claim is) was when Biden said he “didn’t know” his son Hunter was on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma:
Biden confirmed on CBS’s 60 Minutes that he told his son Hunter “I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing” after learning he’d joined Burisma, and said “What I meant by that is, I hope you’ve thought this through.” Biden claiming that he never discussed business with family members is very hard to believe, especially because foreign companies would hire Biden’s relatives as a way of gaining influence with Biden.
So Graham is simply speculating that Joe Biden is lying when he said he “never discussed business with family members,” saying only that it’s “very hard to believe” without providing any evidence it’s true.
Graham used to complain about “stenographers” in the media — now he is one.