By Tim Graham, via The Daily Signal | June 14, 2023
The networks that have obsessed 24/7 for years about how to “close the walls in” on Donald Trump and ruin him profess some fatigue with conservatives who ask about the Biden scandals.
On “CNN This Morning” on Monday, guest host Phil Mattingly complained about the cover of the New York Post. He said: “It will be familiar for those of us who live in Washington because we’ve been kind of living in this world throughout the course of any investigation of former President Trump since President [Joe] Biden took office. It says, ‘What About the Bidens?’—talking about Hunter Biden, talking about Joe Biden.”
He asked CNN reporter Sara Murray, “Is that a fair analogue?”
Murray said no, it’s not “apples to apples,” but it’s fair to ask where the government is headed on the Hunter Biden probe. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, no softy on Trump, then unleashed about the lethargy at the Justice Department.
“This is preposterous,” he said. “This has been pending, according to our reporting at CNN, since 2018, five years,” all about some tax questions and whether Hunter lied on a gun form. “I mean, that’s a five-week investigation. And this spans the Trump administration and the Biden administration. Someone has got to make a call on this case. I don’t know what is going on, but it’s beyond anything I’ve seen before.”
But CNN’s daily take on the Biden scandals is “What Biden scandals?”
I played a game and just put “Biden scandals” into a Nexis search of CNN transcripts for the past month. There was only one result, and it wasn’t really a result. It was a sound-bite medley of Trump played on the Sunday show “Inside Politics with Abby Phillip.”
First came a sentence from Nov. 2, 2020: “We’ve been hit by fake, fake investigations, fake scandals, fake impeachments.” And then from March 25: “The Biden regime’s weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponent is something straight out of Stalinist Russia.”
As these clips played, the text on screen was lurid: “WashPost: Trump’s Positions, Rhetoric Have Grown More Extreme, Less ‘Tethered to Reality’ Since 2020.”
So, the only way a search engine can find “Biden” and “scandals” is scattered in sound bites CNN implies are a psychotic break with reality. CNN has zero shame about this, despite its regular talking heads comparing Trump to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, you name it.
I tried a second Nexis search of CNN transcripts over the past month, for “Burisma.” There were two results. On June 6, liberal Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y., mentioned it—to say it was nothing.
On Saturday morning, June 10, CNN weekend host Michael Smerconish echoed Honig: “It’s inexcusable that such an uncomplicated case is still unresolved. And it’s true that legacy media show zero appetite to pursue questions about possible financial entanglements between Hunter and the president.”
Smerconish added: “House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is currently looking at the claim of an FBI informant that the head of Burisma paid both Hunter and the then-vice president, $5 million each. The president flatly says that’s ‘malarkey.’”
This man is the only one at CNN who could mention the FBI informant saying Joe and Hunter Biden took 5 million smackers apiece—which means he’s right that “legacy media showed zero appetite,” including the people who pay him.
The media’s extreme apathy underlines why Miranda Devine at the New York Post wrote: “Audacity is Joe Biden’s magic power. When the walls are closing in, he laughs in your face and dares you to come after him.”
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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
