Ex-reporters at Politico: we really wanted to report on the Hunter laptop but our big bad editors wouldn’t let us
And yet those reporters kept silent about it till now, as far as I can tell:
A pair of former reporters at venerable DC-focused outlet Politico slammed “cowardly editors” at their ex-outlet for burying stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop — as well as other major stories — contributing to a false narrative that “misinformation” was being spread about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden before the 2020 election.
Puck News scribe Tara Palmeri hosted Axios senior politics reporter Marc Caputo on her “Somebody’s Gotta Win” podcast for Inauguration Day to discuss their mutual frustration with what they saw as Politico’s mishandling of Biden family coverage.
“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation,” Caputo carped. “Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true.”
“Close to disinformation”? It was a complete lie. Why not say it? And what did Caputo do about it? As far as I can tell, he said nothing, and stayed with Politico till a year after Biden’s inauguration, when he was hired by NBC – another news outlet that had spread the same lies and covered up the same story.
I suppose Caputo probably wanted Biden to be elected rather than Trump. I’m also fairly certain that he wanted to protect his own career, and speaking out at that time would have been a huge no-no.
But Now It Can Be Told.
The other former Politico reporter telling similar stories about Politico editors is named Tara Palmeri. She left Politico in April of 2022 for an outlet known as Puck, described in that link as “a startup newsletter-centric outlet.” As far as I can tell in a quick search, she’s been silent on the topic of the Hunter coverup till now.
Is any of this news? We already knew that just about every news outlet and social media platform actively promoted the lie that the laptop was Russian “disinformation.” We already knew that the lie and coverup almost certainly affected the 2020 election’s outcome and enabled Biden’s becoming president. The only new part is that a few reporters are coming out of the woodwork to say they wrote stories at the time that sort-of told the truth, and editors killed those stories. I’m going to assume that’s true, but those same reporters certainly seem to have kept a low profile about it till now.
Reads like some of what we’re hearing from the House Speaker at the moment. “Yeah daft old fool couldn’t make heads or tails of a sentence…but what was I supposed to do?”
A pox on all their houses.
Oh, sure. They really wanted to report the news but all those bad, bad editors stopped them.
John Guilfoyle:
You seem to think Johnson and the Republicans were part of a coverup of Biden’s decline. I’ve seen that opinion expressed elsewhere, as well.
But I think it’s misplaced. Plenty of GOP members were saying that Biden had declined cognitively. They were brushed off by the Democrats and the press. What’s more, Johnson certainly said it as well. That he didn’t tell the exact details of that particular story is irrelevant. It wouldn’t have mattered one iota.
This is what Johnson was saying in October of 2023, which I believe was even before that meeting took place:
He spoke up and plenty of other Republicans in office spoke up. They were ignored.
The Fourth Estate is reaping what it’s sown. The MSM’s proven liars face permanent, contemptuous distrust.
But only from our side, Geoffrey Britain (6:20 pm). Certainly not from their side.
We can only hope that the relatively persuadable members of their side may at least be open to questioning what once was unassailable (prominent example: Bill Maher).
it seems media is promoted for lying about events, take julia ioffe, who was at new republic when she circulated lies about melania despite the settlement she ended up at politico, then she ended up at Politico,
most recently she was excusing the united health shooter, that was before she went on hiatus,
This is how the 2020 election was stolen. It wasn’t about fraud, though I’m sure there was some. It was much “smarter” than that.
Joe Biden was the only candidate who could still plausibly pretend to be moderate and ftherefore defeat Trump. Except everyone knew he had a corruption problem. So they hoped they could hide it with the basement campaign. When the laptop made that impossible, they used the intelligence agencies to bury the story. It’s difficult to believe that public knowledge that Biden had monetized the vice presidency by extorting 10s of millions from foreign interests would have failed to cost him the 10k or so voters in GA, WI and AZ,