The Media Research Center gets triggered any time Hunter Biden defends himself. When he took a fight with Republican congressional investigators — who want him to testify in private, then will selectively leak out-of-context snippets of that testimony to further their right-wing narratives, as they usually do — to the next level by showing up in the audience of a hearing about him, effectively daring them to swear him in (which they didn’t), the MRC didn’t take it well at all, desperate to dismiss it as a “stunt.” Alex Christy complained in a Jan. 10 post:
As Hunter Biden showed up for his publicity stunt on Capitol Hill on Wednesday where he briefly sat in on the House Oversight Committee hearing on a vote to hold him in contempt both CNN News Central and MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Reports claimed that the move proves that Hunter defying his subpoena is actually proof he’s willing to comply with that same subpoena.
CNN Congressional reporter Melanie Zanona recalled that, “Now, it’s all fluid now, but this is the expectation that he is going to show up and it is similar to what he did when he was scheduled to appear for a closed door deposition in December.”
Closed door testimony was par for the course when Democrats were conducting the initial stages of their impeachment of Donald Trump, but neither network cared to remember that.
Christy didn’t mention how it’s well-documented that House Republicans selectively leak out-of-context testimony from those closed-door sessions — the fate Hunter is trying to avoid.
In his writeup of the Jan. 10 White House press briefing, Curtis Houck noted there were “a smattering of questions about Hunter Biden’s latest D.C. stunt as he appeared in-person for a House Oversight Committee hearing to discuss holding him in contempt of Congress” to “testify[] about his life of ruin.” Christy returned to comedy-cop mode for a Jan. 11 post to grumble that Jimmy Kimmel talked about it:
When it comes to Republican battles with Hunter Biden, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel knows which side he’s on. As Hunter showed up at his contempt vote at the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Kimmel claimed that the stunt showed that it was Republicans who “were the ones on crack.”
Kimmel began by feeling the need to provide some background information, “The backstory is a MAGA-happy gang of Republicans, they made it their mission to paint Hunter Biden — you’re familiar with the crackhead Hunter Biden—okay, as some kind of criminal mastermind who’s charged with bringing money into the family. So they served him with a subpoena, they ordered him to testify, as part of this manufactured impeachment query they’re doing and Hunter said, ‘All right, I’ll testify, but only if I can do it in public.'”
Of course, closed door testimony is how Democrats began their 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump, but Kimmel thinks a different set of rules should apply now, “He wanted to do it on TV, presumably so we can see what a joke this is and they said, no, no, we have to do it in secret so we can spin it however we like afterwards and Hunter says no deal either we do it in public or we don’t do it at all. So, this morning, the Oversight Committee meets, with cameras rolling, for a hearing on whether to hold Hunter in contempt for not showing up. And guess who shows up? Hunter Biden.”
Preparing to play some video clips from the proceedings, Kimmel declared “It was incredible. It was like when the polar bear showed up on Lost. It was like C-SPAN meets The Maury Povich Show. They didn’t know what to do. They were planning to do a big grandstanding routine where they give the little speeches they hope will get on Fox News, but instead they ended up looking like they were the ones on crack.”
[…]If Kimmel alleges that Republicans were only trying to get on Fox then Hunter was only trying to get on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Kimmel was happily to oblige.
A Jan. 11 post by Houck whined that non-right-wing outlets didn’t frame Hunter’s actions in the right-wing “stunt” narrative:
Regarding the latest network coverage (or lack thereof) Wednesday night and Thursday morning concerning Hunter Biden’s life of corruption, we’ve got some good news and we’ve got some bad news. The bad news? ABC, CBS, and NBC saw no problem with Hunter’s shameless stunt appearing before the House Oversight Committee as they debated a contempt of Congress resolution.
The good news was Thursday’s CBS Mornings became the first newscast to do a deep dive calling out Hunter’s shady, shadowy Hollywood bankroller.
[…]Nobles explained Hunter opposed an initial closed-door deposition because of a fear “Republicans would selectively leak what he said” and his presence triggered “shouting matches and chaotic moments with Republicans accusing him of taunting them.” Nobles being in Los Angeles meant a full segment on Thursday’s NBC Nightly News and an overall coverage tally of two minutes and 25 seconds. During his report, Nobles fretted about how naked photos of Hunter Biden became public (via his laptop, which Nobles omitted):
Houck omitted that that main way naked photos of Hunter Biden became public was through right-wingers posting them online (which caused the MRC to whine that accounts posting them were being suspended because they violated policies against posting of non-consensual nude images) and displaying them in congressional hearings, neither of which Hunter caused to happen.