The MRC’s Winter (And Early Spring) Of Hunter Biden Derangement

Posted on June 20, 2023

The Media Research Center’s Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome continued into March and April of this year the way the year started — with lots of whining that the story hasn’t quite escaped the right-wing bubble and lots of complaining about the lack of actual evidence being pointed out:

The MRC also continued to lash out at anyone who pointed out the holes in Hunter-haters’ logic. Tim Graham whined in a Feb. 2 post:

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler runs their shop called “The Fact Checker.” But often, they’re just expressing hostilities – and tossing the Pinocchios – at Republican opinions they don’t like. They should just be honest and call themselves “The Opinion Checker.” 

Kessler’s latest attack is a “Three Pinocchios” analysis of Senators Ron Johnson and Ted Cruz for their opinion that a 2014 Hunter Biden email sounds sophisticated enough to suggest he was getting a Ukraine briefing from his vice-president dad or affiliated staffers. Kessler implies that’s basically lying Pinocchio-land:

For nine years [2002-2010], The Fact Checker was diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post.I’ve seen my share of backgrounders, State Department cables and even the odd classified document. Far from being especially sophisticated, Hunter Biden’s email appears to be largely the product of diligent reading of recent newspaper and magazine articles.

So it’s opinion vs. opinion. Not fact versus falsehood. 

Then Kessler’s guesswork gets a long workout: “Let’s take a tour through the first 11 of 22 enumerated points in the email and see if the main facts in them could be found in news reports of the time.” That’s NOT a fact check.

Actually, it’s educated opinion vs. partisan opinion, and Graham is not going to admit that Johnson and Cruz are too partisan for their opinion to be taken at face value. Instead, he complained further that Kessler pointed out that neither Cruz nor Johnson offered factual evidence to support that partisan opinion.

Curtis Houck used a March 17 post to sputter rage that Hunter is fighting back:

Hunter Biden and his family’s team of high-powered attorneys amended their lawsuit Friday, against the former Delaware computer repair shop owner at the center of Hunter’s laptop scandal that exacerbated and illustrated for the world the First Son’s life of ruin. 

Not surprisingly, the liberal media — ranging from ABCNews.com to Delaware’s top newspaper to The Washington Post — were so favorable in covering this filing against John Mac Isaac that they rhetorically camped themselves inside Hunter’s colon.

And seeing as how we’ve repeatedly shown that the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC have displayed barely any interest in the story on their flagship AM and PM shows, this provides a glimpse into how they’d report on it if they were forced to.

ABCNews.com’s Lucien Bruggeman was shameless in her acceptance of Team Hunter’s framing:

[…]

Bruggeman added that the new filing was “the latest turn in an increasingly offensive legal tack” for Hunter as he had “until recently…largely avoided public confrontations about his business dealings.” 

Gee, wonder how he was able to duck “public confrontations”?!

Houck and Graham, of course, are on Team Hunter-Hater.

Kevin Tober spent an April 23 post getting overly excited (headline: “IT’S HAPPENING!”) that one non-right-wing show referenced “the bombshell revelation from an IRS whistleblower that the Biden administration is allegedly giving Hunter Biden preferential treatment and has tried to stonewall the investigation into his alleged tax and business related crimes.” Still, he grumbled that “ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press & CNN’s State of the Union never mentioned this week’s revelations about the Hunter Biden tax fraud investigation.”