303 Comments

Wow, I am blown away by the criticisms of Matt Taibbi. I am a Trump partisan who craves an objective understanding of reality. I obviously cannot rely on my bubble, Fox News and Breitbart to name two, to test reality. I need the views of people outside my bubble that overlap with my understanding of reality to ensure that my analysis is correct. Thus, I have assiduously sought out the views of left of center pundits to see where the Venn diagram circles overlap. In a recent communication with my son, I listed the people I trust who view the world very differently from myself. The list includes Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert cartoons, Tim Pool, Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Jimmy Dorr, Aaron Mate, Glenn Greenwald, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, Chris Hedges, Bjorn Lomborg, Gad Saad, and many others. Interestingly, studies have found that conservatives know more about liberal media than liberals know about conservative media. Matt Taibbi is my most trusted source of objective insight. Please don’t dissuade him from critiques of modern media.

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Simple question. Would the same level of media prudence be accorded to Eric, Don Jr, or Ivanka right now - two weeks before the election - if Trump was ahead in the polls?

Zero chance. The media is in the tank for Biden, is entirely biased and I have nothing but disdain for anyone in the MSM. I have voted with my wallet by opting out of any portion of the economy that doesn't support our Constitution, law and order, and a complete commitment to the American people regardless of age, gender, orientation, race, national origin and religion.

As a subscriber here, I have chosen to support a writer who appears to be unbiased and reading all of your comments is refreshing (albeit some of you have nothing to offer other than insults which is childish).

Vote with your time, clicks and wallet America.

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If Trump wins, we'd have 4 more years of democratic rabid insanity; new impeachment, new lies, celebrity degenerates losing their minds etc., but if Kamala wins we'd have a mentally deranged puppet 'presiding' over Maoist-Stalinist kleptocracy, powered by what was f.k.a. Deep State (now "commentators" in media) plus the media plus the Party on power.

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The importance of the Burisma story so far is that it tells us so much about how gingerly the press handles any story that may reflect badly on Democratic Party interests, as contrasted with the rapid and vapid repition it indulges in the cases of unsubstantiated stories about Republican operatives cooperating with foreign, especially "dictatorial" countries. We call this censorship.

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"The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies."

Well said.

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Bravo Matt for continuing to write without fear that which is blindingly obvious to any impartial observer.

Classic sentence:

" On the other hand, if you want to assert without any evidence at all that the New York Post story is Russian interference, you can essentially go straight into print."

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Here are two important questions that simply must be asked and eventually will be answered:

1) If Trump wins will the MSM and Big Tech realize their strategy is broken and stop doing it, or will they simply double down?

2) Perhaps more important, if Biden wins will the MSM and Big Tech think their strategy worked and double down again.

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I'm saying this as a 2016 Trump voter and I will vote for him again in a few days.

I had thought that Biden was the average corrupt politician. A $5mm type of guy.

As it turns out, he is not only a $50+mm type of guy but also what he sells is not local zoning policies but USA foreign policies.

The laptop doesn't change my vote but I'm utterly disgusted. Maybe I'm naive but I don't want any politicians in America to sell US interest for money.

Facebook and twitter have created a Streisand effect this time so I guess I will just thank them for once.

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It is amazing to me how many so-called liberals are here advocating for censorship and suppression of information by supposedly impartial social media platforms and a supposedly free press. I have no doubt these same so-called liberals would be screaming to the skies if the damning laptop in question belonged to Donald Trump Jr and the same media outlets and social media platforms reacted with blackouts, censorship and disinformation to discredit the evidence.

What really shocks me is this. On September 1, 1983 I was serving as a Communications Technician (ET2) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway (CV-41) out of Yokosuka, Japan when two Russian MIG pilots shot down Korean Airlines flight KAL007. We didn't have satellite or cable or even broadcast TV in the middle of the Western Pacific. What I had available was HF radio, on which I listened to Voice of America. That often meant I was listening to English-language Radio Moscow, since the Soviets spent $400M annually on jamming equipment which was more than America spent on its entire overseas broadcasting services at the time.

When the first news of the KAl007 incident was broadcast over VOA, Radio Moscow stepped up its jamming of VOA and maintained radio silence on the shootdown. About three days after that, when the news of the outside world could no longer be ignored, the Russians launched a massive disinformation campaign absolving themselves of responsibility and blaming the victims and the American government for the shootdown, even when everyone outside the Iron Curtain knew exactly what happened.

I suspect the propaganda campaign may have been in part because the Yuri Andropov-led Soviet Union wanted to keep the Russian people in the dark, but also to influence nations other than the US of America's responsibility for the crime despite the overwhelming evidence of Russian guilt. I told myself back then that I was proud to live in a nation whose treasured free press pursued and reported the truth via rigorous investigative journalism with no fear of censorship.

What do I tell myself now? Lastly, I am a rabid Trump supporter and not a big fan of Matt Taibbi's politics, which are a bit too left-leaning for me. Same for Glenn Greenwald. But I subscribed to Matt's blog here months ago because he is one of the few investigative journalists in America actually doing his job no matter where the evidence leads him. The $5 a month I pay Mr. Taibbi for his reporting is a tremendous bargain. I don't have to subscribe to The Intercept, but read Mr. Greenwald's reporting every chance I get.

I know what investigative reporting looks like. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer when I was 12 years old. I've read all of Woodward and Bernstein's books on the Watergate crisis (as well as The Brethren, best book ever written on SCOTUS imho), all of teh writings by Peter Maas (Valachi Papers), Robin Moore (French Connection), Cornelius Ryan and Nick Pileggi to name a few. Messrs. Greenwald and Taibbi are investigative reporters in that tradition.

The bulk of the rest of the media more resemble the frantic and angry propaganda broadcasters of Radio Moscow during the KAL007 shootdown, and that is the real tragedy here regardless of whatever is on Hunter Biden's laptop. Truths are lies and lies are truth. We are told to believe 2+2 equals whatever our corrupt mainstream media and censoring social media platforms tell us it is, when they're not impeding the free flow of information to the point we don't even see the equation. How did America get to this dark place? And how do we get back into the light of freedoms of a truly free press, the free flow of information and a First Amendment that has any meaning at all?

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Your journalism continues to be worth far more than what I pay for it.

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While it should come as no surprise I continue to be dismayed at the naked partisanship of major media and big tech. The level of hypocrisy and double standards is breathtaking. Spin and selective editing is now replaced with outright suppression. Where does it end? If the left achieves the goal of one party rule capturing White House and both Houses of Congress I suppose no act of corruption or malfeasance will be news worthy. They will just dutifully regurgitate the “Party” talking points. As a current example one might conclude calling the Hunter laptop “Russian disinformation” with zero evidence is in fact disinformation propagated by the party that hopes to become The Party that does not tolerate thought, speech or action it doesn’t seem acceptable. This accelerated trend is likely to end liberal democracy and replace it with something closer to China’s state sanctioned media. By the time so called journalists wise up it might. be too late.

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The last few years have seen a host of stories where the explosive allegation gets huge play, and then the later retraction is ignored. It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter are trying to take some steps to slow the initial 'bomb' so that there's some time to fact check things. I can't find anything in the Post stories or anywhere else to say how they authenticated the emails and other computer files. I can find numerous statements in other media saying that they can't authenticate them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2020/10/22/the-hunter-biden-scoops-heres-why-the-media-largely-hasnt-picked-up-the-ny-post-stories-hint-its-not-bias/#28acd5eb9c41 And honestly, without some verification it's a bit hard to say why the Biden's should be faulted for not confirming that the hacked or stolen private documents are authentic.

The providence of the documents and the October Surprise timing give rise to reasonable suspicion. If the Post authors want to be taken seriously they can either give the materials to law enforcement to be authenticated or they can make the source materials and meta data available so that people can make an informed opinion. Otherwise tales of agents hacking, altering, and planting documents seem plausible.

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There is another aspect to this -- the FBI. Is it true, as reported (but not, of course, by the WaPo or the NYT) that the FBI subpoenaed and took possession of Hunter Biden's laptop in December 2019? That would be an interesting question for news professionals to ask.

Did FBI operatives notify their director, Chris Wray, of what they found on the hard drive? Did he tell the attorney general? Would it have been fair to tell the president, who is in charge of the executive branch, and whose impeachment trial was in January 2020? Would Democratic leaders have been interested in a briefing as they were selecting their presidential candidate?

Biden's dismissively calling the whole matter "Russian disinformation," given how long it took for the last Russian hooey to be discredited, is not even close to a good enough answer. Wouldn't it be nice if a serious debate moderator, or indeed any news reporter, asked real questions? "What in Mr. Bobulinski's written statement is false? Let's take his claims, one by one."

If the contents of the hard drive were just a bunch more sleazy Hunter photos, wouldn't the FBI have brought them forth already? We know just about everybody in the J. Edgar Hoover Building hates Trump, really hates the guy. Wouldn't they have been happy to leak this Hunter-is-a creep-but-not-a-traitor news to the reporters whose numbers they have on speed dial?

What I see is a bunch of "news" people and techies who think they know more than they do trying to smother a story that, true or false, is of legitimate interest.

As a result, too many obvious questions go unasked. People form up ranks with their teams and accept whatever palaver their preferred politicians dish out. It embarrasses us.

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It is probably important to note that what the MSM and Facebook/Google are doing is not something new. Only in scale.

Please read what George Orwell wrote in 1942...

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.

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Keep the information flowing Matt. This is too important. Be prepared for the onslaught.

Where are the journalists? If this story is untrue I would like a journalist or two to dig deep and expose how it came to be. I can't just nod my head in agreement the paltry disinformation from MSM without a logical roadmap on the supposed path of deception . If the accusations about the Biden clan or any other corrupt politician prove to be true, how anyone could sleep at night while willing to ignore these acts in the name of their party is disgusting. Either way the citizens on the USA deserve to know the truth and a fair unbiased media is essential.

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By the way, did anyone see that Google or FB demonetized the Babylon Bee article ...

https://babylonbee.com/news/senator-hirono-demands-acb-be-weighed-against-a-duck-to-see-if-she-is-a-witch

The editor tried to have it reversed but they wouldn't have it. Their algorithms are so dumb that they cannot even differentiate satire from the real thing. Anyone that thinks these Tech Companies are so smart and that their algorithms are brilliant are kidding themselves. They can't even spot a joke. They are the joke. People need to point this out. Their algorithms should be thoroughly reviewed by the public. If they were, people would see what pure spaghetti code they are writing.

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