After spending the summer cheering the collapse of a plea deal involving Hunter Biden and being unsure whether the appointment of a special prosecutor was a cover-up of some kind, the Media Research Center went into the fall months with renewed hatred and determination to continue to destroy Hunter’s life as a gotcha to his father, the president. A Sept. 6 post by Kevin Tober cheered that the Hunter obsession slipped into right-wing media:
On Wednesday afternoon, special counsel David Weiss revealed in a new court filing that he planned to file felony charges against President Joe Biden’s crackhead son Hunter due to his illegal firearm purchase and intentional lying on a background check form. The news was so big that even the “big three” evening news networks were forced to cover the story.
In total, the three networks ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News & NBC Nightly Newsspent a combined 4 minutes and 50 seconds somberly reporting the indictments. ABC spent the most time on the news with a grand total of 2 minutes and 3 seconds. While CBS spent 1 minute 35 seconds, and NBC spent 1 minute and 12 seconds.
Tober is inventing a lot here, purporting to read the minds of the networks by claiming the reported this news “somberly” without demonstrating that was done any more or less “somberly” than any other news story. He also misled in the headline by portraying the indictments as have already happened.
The MRC then bided its time with more Hunter obsession:
- James Comer Subpoenas Mayorkas for Hunter Biden Records, Nets Ignore
- Morning Joe Buries Looming Hunter Indictment, Rips ‘Howling’ Republicans
- NBC’s Chuck Todd Frets Trump Trying to ‘Muddy the Waters’ With Hunter Biden ‘Questions’
- Brooks Alleges Republicans ‘Don’t Really Have Anything’ On Joe, Hunter Biden
When the expected indictment of Hunter finally dropped, Tober returned in a Sept. 14 post to read the minds of non-right-wing outlet, claiming without evidence that they “bitterly” and “somberly” reported on it:
On Thursday afternoon, a federal grand jury in Delaware indicted Joe Biden’s crackhead son Hunter Biden on three felony charges of lying on a gun background check form. Despite trying their hardest to ignore each new development in the rolling crime spree known as Hunter Biden, all three networks were forced to cover this massive news. In fact, they each lead with the story.
“The President’s son Hunter Biden indicted. Three felony gun charges,” ABC’s World News Tonight anchor David Muir somberly reported the news to his audience. “Accused of lying about his drug use when he bought a firearm in 2018. And then illegally possessing that weapon for 11 days,” Muir added.
Tober also played a little Trump whataboutism:
Meanwhile, on NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt whined that the indictment of Hunter will give Republicans “wide avenues of political attack for Republicans who have been investigating Hunter Biden and the legality of some of his business dealings.”
Did Holt ever complain that the numerous indictments against former President Donald Trump by Soros-backed Democrat prosecutors and rigged juries would give Democrats ammo to attack Republicans?
Tober didn’t mention that the gun charge is one rarely charged, especially without an accompanying drug-related charge, and seem to be happening because right-wing congressmen have been aggressively attacking Hunter for years.
Alex Christy spent a Sept. 15 post being angry that a commentator dared to show a tiny bit of sympathy for Hunter and his father:
CNN political director David Chalian joined the Thursday edition of CNN News Central to discuss Hunter Biden being formally indicted on three gun charges and to wax poetic about “this unbelievable Biden story” as it relates to President Joe Biden’s life.
Chalian tried argued that for Biden, “There’s the political for him and then there’s the personal. The political, obviously, this is an unwelcome development for any White House. As we said it’s the first time ever a president’s child is indicted on criminal charges. Nobody would want that. It’s an unwelcome development for this campaign season getting under way. It’s a distraction from what the White House and his team want to focus on.”
[…]Wrapping up his thoughts, Chalian repeated himself, “There have been more emotional ups and downs for this family, and this is now another day where the president is going to suffer an emotional down that his son is under these criminal charges, so I know—I am certain he’s not just viewing this through a political lens, but obviously, he is somebody so identified with his children and his grandchildren as at the very center and core of his being.
Naturally, the idea that Joe Biden was something other than a heartbroken, empathetic father when it comes to all of Hunter’s “troubles” was something Chailian never considered.
The same day, Mark Finkelstein whined that someone pointed out that questions can be raised about the indictment:
The once-fierce pit bull has lost his bite! As Robert Mueller’s closest aide during the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation, Andrew Weissmann earned the moniker, “the pit bull,” for his hyper-aggressive approach to prosecution. But now that Weissmann has become an MSNBC analyst, and asked to comment on the indictment of Hunter Biden on gun charges, the pit bull has suddenly become a Biden lap dog.
On today’s Morning Joe, Weissmann said of the indictment: “This really strikes me as an abuse of the enormous discretion that a prosecutor has.” He said special counsel David Weiss “obviously can do it, there is probable cause that a grand jury found — but should you be bringing the charges?”
The panel also focused on alleged Republican hypocrisy in hailing the indictment under a federal statute whose constitutionality they have challenged on Second Amendment grounds. But no word from the Morning Joe crowd on the mirror image: the hypocrisy of Democrats in challenging a gun control law, passed by a Democrat Congress, that they have vigorously defended.
[…]The bottom line is that Weissmann, and the entire Morning Joe crew, circled the wagons around Hunter, doing their best to undermine the case against President Biden’s son.
Is that like how Finkelstein’s MRC crew circled the wagons around Trump over his multiple indictments? He didn’t want to talk about that.
Curtis Houck irrationally raged in a Sept. 18 post that someone else said nice things about the Bidens:
NBC’s chief Biden tool and apple polisher Mike Memoli hit send Sunday on a puketastic item with colleagues Carol Lee and Monica Alba that painted President Biden with nothing but sympathy from the get-go in “Biden allies worry son Hunter’s indictment could strain the president’s 2024 focus”.
The trio did its best in the first paragraph to make one’s eyes roll 180 degrees to the back of their head: “During the period between his vice presidency and presidency, Joe Biden was often asked about the campaign he didn’t run. In explaining why he passed on a White House bid in 2016, Biden would describe how the death of his eldest son, Beau, weighed heavily on him and his family.”
Like concerned family members, Memoli and co. fretted that while Biden wanted another term, “people close to the president are increasingly worried about how the legal troubles of his remaining son, Hunter, could divide his attention at a time when he needs to be fully focused on what’s expected to be a razor-close election.”
[…]Cue the laugh tracks for this zaniness from former Biden aide Michael LaRosa, who surmised that the President likely “wakes up and thinks about his deceased son and probably cries every day” about Beau and Hunter’s life of ruin.
They also made Biden seem like, yes, a child “The president relies most heavily on his wife at these moments, and they were apart for about a week with her Covid diagnosis and his trip to India and Vietnam, which came hours after the news that Hunter would be indicted by the end of the month.”
Yes, someone as devoid of basic human empathy as Houck (and most other MRC employees) would find it “puketastic” that Biden might continue to grieve for his deceased son.
As the MRC is prone to do, a Sept. 18 post by Tober expressed new outrage that Hunter is committing the offense of fighting back against his critics (though he switched from smearing Hunter as a “crackhead” to merely a “drug addict,” despite providing no evidence of a current addiction):
President Joe Biden’s drug addict son Hunter Biden launched a frivolous lawsuit Monday against his father’s own IRS due to the agency allegedly releasing his tax records during a whistleblower report against the agency.
While ABC’s World News Tonight ignored this escalation from Hunter Biden’s team, the CBS Evening News chose not to simply report on it. Instead, they touted Hunter “going on the offensive” against the IRS. In a random act of journalism, NBC Nightly News played it straight and reported the facts of the story.
“Tonight Hunter Biden’s legal team is going on the offensive, filing a lawsuit against the IRS for the alleged unlawful release of his private tax details,” CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell hyped in her biased report.
“Attorneys claim two agents violated Biden’s privacy rights when they disclosed his tax information during media interviews including with CBS News,” O’Donnell added.
By contrast, on NBC Nightly News, left out the editorializing of Hunter Biden “going on the offensive.”
Toer didn’t explain how he decided Hunter’s lawsuit was “frivolous” or why Hunter should not even be allowed to respond to his critics.