4 Years After Laptop Coverup, Media Electioneering Is Even Worse

Four years ago this week, the corporate press helped airlift Joe Biden to the White House by blacking out coverage of his international pay-for-play scandal, after the New York Post discovered evidence of the scandal on an abandoned Biden laptop. The press reaction ranged from refusing entirely to cover the story because it was a “waste of time” to only covering it insofar as outlets could cast doubt on its legitimacy. After the election, polling would show that 1 in 6 Biden voters would have changed their vote had they known about some of the stories suppressed by the media, including the Hunter Biden laptop story.

It was the most infamous, though not the only, instance of journalists interfering to swing the 2020 election for the Democrats by stifling inconvenient reporting and propagating nonsense about Donald Trump, Biden’s Republican opponent. (Biden got a very minor taste of the media’s wrath this summer, when the powers that be decided he was no longer an expedient means to Democrat victory, and he didn’t last a month.)

The Biden laptop story blackout followed four entire years in which the media, in tandem with the Clinton campaign and the intelligence apparatus, spread lies about Trump based on the Russia collusion hoax and every other dubiously-sourced rumor they could find.

The good news is, after seeing how cravenly the corporate press carried water for the Clinton campaign’s false narrative about Trump and Russia, America is recognizing and dismissing media hoaxes more quickly these days. And as the life cycle of each media lie shrinks, the dishonesty — dare I say, disinformation? — has been attempted even more rapidly and more desperately.

Just last week, CBS News used deceptive video splicing to replace one of Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ answers on “60 Minutes” with one that sounded less awful. A preview clip of the interview showed Harris responding to a question with nonsensical babble, but when the full interview aired, that answer was nowhere to be seen, having been replaced by a completely different response. The original answer was also missing from the transcript released by the network, and CBS continues to refuse to release an undoctored transcript.

The most outrageous election interference from the press this cycle might be the pile-up on Trump by ABC News “moderators” when Trump met Harris for a singular presidential debate in September. They lobbed “fact checks” at Trump left and right while refusing to question Harris’ many falsehoods. Throughout the debate, the format resembled ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis asking Trump to explain how he could possibly be so horrible and then giving Harris a chance to opine on whether she thought Trump was horrible and why.

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The moderators weren’t much better when vice presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walz met for their own debate, with CBS News promising not to “fact check” the candidates before breaking that promise to challenge — incorrectly — one of Vance’s responses.

Harris’ campaign itself — at least the “brat,” “joyful” version of it that we’re supposed to believe — is itself a media creation. Only 87 days ago, Kamala Harris was not the Democrat nominee but only one of the least popular vice presidents in American history. Before she was magically shuttled into place as the presidential nominee, Harris was the subject of headlines like “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president” and “How Joe Biden should solve the Kamala Harris Conundrum” from the corporate press. It was so bad that Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren were leaving open the question of whether Biden should switch out his unpopular VP in 2024 (New York Magazine answered that question in the affirmative). The New York Times called her Democrats’ “unspoken” “electoral challenge.”

That all changed on July 21. As soon as Harris became the only option to face Trump, newsrooms fell into line and began pumping out a gushy narrative about “The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris” to convince voters “How Kamala Harris Can Win and Make History.” Journalists said they were “coconut-pilled.” It was obvious to everyone why the change really happened.

Before that, of course, the entire media establishment had hung its tattered reputation on the brazenly disqualifying lie that Joe Biden’s brain was still in office. (That narrative was discarded, like Old Joe, as soon as it was no longer politically expedient.) If Biden was still the nominee, they’d still be spreading it.

Weeks before that, when Donald Trump nearly had his head exploded on live TV — in an attempt incubated by years of “assassination prep” by the media — headline writers first downplayed the shooting as an “incident” involving “popping noises.” Then, talking heads victim-blamed him for getting himself shot. News photographers started complaining that the iconic image of Trump fist-pumping with the American flag behind him moments after he was shot was too flattering. When another assassination attempt happened two months later, it was rushed out of the news as quickly as possible.

When Harris’ role as the “border czar” of an administration that roughly doubled the number of illegal aliens in the country became a political liability, the media all just agreed to pretend she had never been in charge of the border, actually. Axios even “corrected” its own previous reporting to sell the lie.

The media regularly attempt to convince voters that Trump plans to imprison his political opponents while also treating the multi-pronged attempt by the Biden-Harris Justice Department and its allies to throw Trump in prison.

They make up stupid lies too, and sometimes the dumber the lie, the more aggressive the news cycle. When Trump said the auto industry would face a “bloodbath” of economic repercussions if he lost the election, newsrooms covered the remark as if Trump had threatened to personally kill and maim his political opponents in an election night massacre.

When the Trump campaign drew attention to concerns expressed by residents of a small Ohio town that Haitian migrants dumped there by the Biden-Harris administration’s border disaster were terrorizing residents, overwhelming schools, causing deadly car accidents, and gruesomely capturing and eating small animals, the media pretended Trump was just a crazy old man ranting about cat and dog kebabs.

Meanwhile, regime media make excuses for Harris hiding from questions about her policies — and get rewarded with assured softball interview slots in return. They’re setting new records for shamelessness in the election interference department, and they’ve still got three weeks to go.

Elle Purnell is the elections editor at The Federalist. Her work has been featured by Fox Business, RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_etreynolds.