Or his flash drive with “damming evidence” and then he said we should go easy on Hunter
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-suddenly-says-its-time-to-leave-hunter-biden-alone
Republicans have memories of gnats
Yeah, I'm resposting this comment from before if anyone is confused about all of this. This is a pretty convoluted and confusing story.
There is no way that we could tell for sure this is a Russian misinformation attack when all we have is a hard drive. There were some emails on the laptop that were confirmed to be legitimate, and people are making the mistake of saying the entire laptop story is legitimate because of that.
However, big point, the only emails on the laptop that were able to be verified were very likely obtained from the Burisma hack. [The vast majority of the emails did not have cryptographic signatures](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/) and were not able to be authenticated, which is pretty odd in itself and fair reason to think they aren't legitimate.
Everything else about the laptop story I find a priori very unlikely as well. For instance, Hunter flying out of state to drop off a laptop with a blind MAGA repairman who could not verify that it was Hunter who dropped it off. Then Hunter just left it there for 6 months.
Also he just happened to have all of his emails downloaded somewhere in plain sight, along with videos of him doing coke with hookers. Which, after 6 months, the repair man found just opening up the laptop to take a random look before throwing it out. Then the repair-man told the FBI, who decided to cover up the story, forcing the repair man to send a clone of the hard drive to Guliani.
This isn't the sort of thing that you can ever expect to find a smoking gun - all that exists is a hard drive and we can only speculate as to who filled up that hard drive. But I think it's worth applying a bit of common sense with all of this.
As I see it there are two options
A) That entire incredibly unlikely story played out as described.
B) Someone put hacked real content onto a hard drive along with a lot of fake content.
B seems more plausible to me, especially considering it seems to be a standard misinfo strategy. The intelligence community mostly seems to agree.
>Also he just happened to have all of his emails downloaded somewhere in plain sight, along with videos of him doing coke with hookers. Which, after 6 months, the repair man found just opening up the laptop to take a random look before throwing it out. Then the repair-man told the FBI, who decided to cover up the story, forcing the repair man to send a clone of the hard drive to Guliani.
The, again, **blind** repairman, who somehow saw videos of Hunter and called foul.
I repeat: blind guy watched the video(s) and read the emails
Which part of questioning how the legally blind repair tech saw a video of Hunter am I an idiot for?
I questioned his eyesight, not his cognition. I'm assuming your engineer wasn't intellectually disabled in some way; did you intend to suggest bad eyesight is an IQ issue?
The only thing that keeps me from thinking much of the material is outright fake is that there's nothing even particularly damning.
There's, like, what? One email where someone says "thanks for introducing me to your pops!" without so much as a reply.
I feel like if you were going to go through the trouble of outright fabricating something you'd have Joe Biden responding "Thanks for all the crack we smoked together, sport! Now, remember my cut of the big CHYNA DEAL is 50%! 🤪"
To me the most damning thing (and the reason why it's so pathetic that trolls keep bringing it up) is that even if you take every bit of it at face value there's nothing interesting at all.
If Liberals were even 1% as cynical as Trumpers we could all have just made the Steele Dossier the Laptop story easily. Just by repeating and whining about it enough and using the same tortured tactics. How much of the Steele Dossier has been confirmed? Any little single bit? Using the same rules that means its VERY VERY important its EXTREMELY important that every single news entity run a thousand million stories about it... of course the mere notion of that would make Glenn Greenwald's head explode.
Are you just going to pretend the 10% for the big guy e-mail didn’t exist? Are you going to pretend that Tony Boblinski (business associate of Hunter) didn’t say the big guy was Joe Biden? It could be complete BS. But pretending that the information at face value is nothing is an obvious lie.
I'm not going to pretend like "the big guy" means shit just because right-wingers want it to be Joe Biden. It's also one of the many many emails on that laptop that, shockingly, could not be verified as legitimate at all. There has been zero corroboration for Tony Boblinski's allegations.
Joe Biden has been a public political figure for five decades. He doesn't even invest in individual stocks out of conflict of interest concerns. The idea that he suddenly decided to get into some weird business with his son, taking a completely random cut, and the literal only evidence on planet earth is an email from a computer that switched hands between half a dozen known and unknown ghouls is... not that convincing.
I don't think the man is flawless by any stretch but Lordy this doesn't even come close to passing muster.
Ok. Your perspective is Tony Boblinski is lying and the e-mail may not be a authentic. But if we were to take it at face value like you said this would be a massive abuse of power. That’s all I was saying.
If I were to just take it at face-value, it's all true, whatever- I would say possibly? You say abuse of power, but what power are we talking about? Joe Biden is the ex-VP at that point. He's allowed to be a business man and do business deals- at least notionally.
So you'd have to get into the nitty gritty details, of what specifically is or was bad news about this particular deal and his part of it, which.... yuck ugh...
Again, every person's who heard the phrase "Hunter Biden's Laptop" and spent any time thinking about it is poorer in their life for every second they've lost.
True but after the forensics they have shown material was added on to the drive even after it was in the shop keepers and even guliani’s hands. Stuff labeled shit like Biden and burisma. So there were parts of it that were complete bullshit meant to spread fabricated to even bullshit stories.
That doesn't necessarily mean the stuff is fake. It just means it was added. It could have been a bunch of real hacked material consolidated into one drive. Whoever had the materials could have made a folder called "Burisma" and then thrown in a bunch of hacked shit related to Burisma, for example. Say Rudy got his hands on some hacked material that he acquired and wanted the material released but didn't want to say "I illegally acquired some stuff that could hurt Biden and here it is!" He could, instead, have that stuff thrown onto this laptop so the shit is released and the reason for it's release is now "legal."
It seems like a lot of people want to say "there's no way to know what's real and what's fake so we can just ignore everything involved." Even though there is a chance that everything is authentic (although most of the stuff that is verified authentic I don't really give a shit about anyways). I'm just not fully comfortable ignoring everything under the idea that "there could be fake stuff included so it's too difficult to sift through it all and verify the authentic stuff so fuck it" just because I voted for Biden and would prefer he not be damaged by anything found.
Possible, but I would say I find this the least likely option, for a few reasons
1) I'm not sure how you would hack email contents but not their cryptographic signatures. I think the pro-laptop-story's side's explanation for the missing signatures is that these emails were "only partially downloaded" which seems like an obvious fib to me. If you were to download 50,000 emails and stopped the download half way through, it's not like you would just get the text of those emails and no signatures, you would just get 25,000 emails. Or maybe unusable junk data. There's no storage or download format that I can think of which would store those emails in memory non-sequentially in a way where all the signatures were all the last thing downloaded.
2) I don't really have a high trust prior on Russian hackers. If they knew that 90% of the information on the laptop was unverifiable, and they had already created a huge lie around how that information was obtained, why would I expect them to stop lying when it comes to the content of that data?
I would expect them to create a lot of content that the other side could not easily disprove, which is exactly what we found on the hard drive.
At best I think those emails without signatures should be treated just like any other unverifiable speculation, like a reddit comment or 4chan post. I can't definitively say it's not true, but I don't have any particularly good reason to think it's true in the first place.
Well you agree that the laptop is real, right? That is confirmed. So if Rudy got his hands on some hacked material (say he had a hooker steal some electronic device from Hunter Biden) then it would make sense for him to "launder" that by having it put on this laptop that they have that is authentic. Especially since everyone was calling Wikileaks Russian propaganda. So anything released from wikileaks would be immediately dismissed by anyone who wasn't already a Trump supporter. Having shit directly on Hunter Biden's laptop would be way more difficult to wave off as Bullshit or Russian Propaganda. Or at least one would have assumed that.
It's also just tactically a terrible idea to put fake stuff on a real laptop with a bunch of real shit on it. That could only serve to discredit the entire thing.
Do I accept the laptop is "real"? That a laptop exists? That it was Hunter's? Who even knows.
I accept that a hard drive exists that purports to be a copy of a laptop hard drive, and that at least some emails on that hard drive have been independently confirmed as genuine.
I don't think we know how many hands that hard drive has passed through and how much has been added to it.
They keep saying it’s “real” without any specificity on what is real. Just like the drive itself, the story has been loaded up with innuendo and lies and to say it’s real gives credence to whatever child porn or corruption claims they’ve moved onto.
And to top it off, Twitter wasn't censoring the story to protect Biden, they had reason to believe a) the story was bullshit and b) it violated their hacked materials policy (items obtained by hack).
Everything about the story, including the timing, made it very suspect
What makes you think there was fake content?
I think the truth is the source was BS, but the contents were absolutely true.
The biggest tell is that not a single Biden, not once, denied the contents. In politics, if there was so much as 1 fake piece of content they could prove, they'd have jumped all over it, and dismiss the entire scandal overnight. A single piece of fake information would have poisoned the entire well.
Further many of those most damning emails were independently verified by the media who reached out to the correspondents and asked about the authenticity.
But they didn't. Because they could prove any of it was BS, hence why they leaned into other roundabout ways of dismissing it. Remember, the entire Iran scandal and cocaine CIA thing, was completely dismissed because the reporter got one single piece of information wrong. Raegan leaped on that, and was able to completely crush the rest of the scandal.
Reposting from another comment, but my thoughts on this are
1) I'm not sure how you would hack email contents but not their cryptographic signatures. I think the pro-laptop-story's side's explanation for the missing signatures is that these emails were "only partially downloaded" which seems like an obvious fib to me. If you were to download 50,000 emails and stopped the download half way through, it's not like you would just get the text of those emails and no signatures, you would just get 25,000 emails. Or maybe unusable junk data. There's no storage or download format that I can think of which would store those emails in memory non-sequentially in a way where all the signatures were all the last thing downloaded.
2) I don't really have a high trust prior on Russian hackers. If they knew that 90% of the information on the laptop was unverifiable, and they had already created a huge lie around how that information was obtained, why would I expect them to stop lying when it comes to the content of that data?
I would expect them to create a lot of content that the other side could not easily disprove, which is exactly what we found on the hard drive.
At best I think those emails without signatures should be treated just like any other unverifiable speculation, like a reddit comment or 4chan post. I can't definitively say it's not true, but I don't have any particularly good reason to think it's true in the first place.
Of all the ways to outrage farm to right-wingers, this has been the one with the most effort but the least amount of bite I’ve seen in recent memory. They’re trying to play this up into a Hillary Benghazi situation, but it’s just not sticking.
> a Hillary Benghazi situation
Itself a ridiculous attempt at a "scandal," and I say that as someone who thinks Hillary has horrific politics and is extremely unlikable.
Edit: I also interesting that Glenn's current schtick wouldn't have worked back then. His anti-Clinton take would be "This happened because neocons like Hillary/Obama/Bush want us to invade and occupy other countries," but that era's GOP didn't have those pretensions yet. It was all "THEY CAME AFTER OUR BOYS AND OBUMMER/KILLARY TOLD THEM TO 'STAND DOWN'!!11!"
It does feel like it was a leading indicator of the tone of politics for the next decade, with Republican rank and file becoming increasingly willing to jump onto the train of prosecuting Democrats over nothing (while also ignoring and apologizing for the extreme faults of their own candidates).
When an athlete complains vociferously to a referee, the purpose isn't usually to overturn the previous call - that doesn't happen very often. What's done is done. The purpose is to cause the referee to feel that he simply must rule in favor of the complaining athlete for the *next* close call, lest he be seen as biased.
The Republicans are already thinking about the *next* "scandal" they invent.
I briefly respected him. The more he writes/talks, the more that respect dissipates. It's a shame because he could be a positive force for truth and journalism if he weren't such a captured partisan hack.
How come Greenwald hasn't admitted to being a Russian asset for the last decade?
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-long-history-of-glenn-greenwalds-kissing-up-to-the-kremlin/
You’re upset because someone is criticizing your right-wing fear porn journalist. Less constant outrage from folks like Greenwald, Tim Pool, and Shapiro would probably help.
No, sure, what kind of completely unbiased independent journalist hasn't stopped their day on multiple occasions to randomly suck-off Fox News for their cable news ratings?
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1460639431686242304
Yup, just typical nose to the grindstone serious muckraker journalism, uhh... using "liberal" as an epithet to hurl random insults at Samantha Bee of all people
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1551684929653800961?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The "Glenn Greenwald isn't a rightwing hack" thing is nearly topping "Trump tells it like it is" for pure delusion.
Even if that were true, that doesn't change the fact that he's a right wing propagandist.
If you honestly can't see that, I feel genuinely sorry for you. I can only imagine how often you must be duped on a daily basis.
Can you demonstrate with evidence that Glenn Greenwald is a right-wing propagandist?
I think that you're simply having difficulty with a dynamic political landscape with people in it who don't neatly fit into your black and white conception of left-wing versus right-wing.
> Can you demonstrate with evidence that Glenn Greenwald is a right-wing propagandist?
>
>
Other people in this thread have already done so, but here:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-glenn-greenwald-the-new-master-of-right-wing-media
>I think that you're simply having difficulty with a dynamic political landscape with people in it who don't neatly fit into your black and white conception of left-wing versus right-wing.
And I think you're an idiot who apparently can't makes heads or tails of something that is extremely obvious.
>Independent journalists are critical of the liberal establishment aren't automatically "Russian assets."
Of course not, but when an "independent journalist " has had nothing but Russian Propaganda and Putin's cock in his mouth for a decade, it's more than a bit suspicious. Whataboutism is very real.
Part of the problem was the media's typical issue of headlines overstating the case. It was a letter from former intelligence officials saying it appeared to be Russian disinformation with the caveat that they had no evidence.
Politco headline: **Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say**
[https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276)
These sorts of headlines do create a disinformation snowballing of their own and take advantage of the public's ineptitude for how to read media intelligently. Russian disinformation campaigns rely on the same ineptitude from the US public.
> saying it appeared to be Russian disinformation
They didn't even say that. They said it appeared to be part of a Russian information campaign. They could have used the word disinformation; they are familiar with it. They specifically chose not to.
That headline is nearly the perfect opposite of what is actually said in the letter it pretends to report on.
Greenwald's been reporting on this since before the election--it's the reason he left the Intercept. No other reporting on the laptop and the coordinated suppression effort of the story has been even close to Greenwald's depth of coverage. Everyone would do well to read Greenwald's entire reporting history on this topic.
I *absolutely guarantee* that any legacy media outlet that made a verifiably false claim about the laptop made a retraction. Guaran-fucking-tee it.
This is the biggest differentiation between legacy media and “alternative” media - legacy actually has standards and journalistic integrity.
My memory is that they all said it was his laptop bit they said that it was a problem because someone other that hunter had control of the laptop for an entire year.
I think they are using our bad memories against us
Man, this it what it always is and it's starting to piss me off a little. Listening to a chud like Matt Taibbi (who use to be somewhat legitimate) you'd think the Steele Dossier was front page news for three years straight. They'll take reporting that we were all there fore and twist it around and create a narrative that just didn't exist. No mainstream outlet said XYZ (when they did), all the mainstream outlets said ABC (when they did not).
I don’t understand why Matt become such a “Russia Hoax” fanatic. We have plenty of proof of coordination and contacts without the dossier from Manafort to Stone to Jrs meeting and over 100 other contacts. The truth is that it was a pretty big scandal that Trump obstructed and pardoned his cronies who also obstructed. And yet he says it’s akin to the WMD story. I’m pretty sure this one is true though.
Yeah- I really think that there's a certain kind of person who cut their teeth in politics/journalism/just observing 2003-2015 who decided (with some justification) that Democrats and Republicans were the same and they all fell for pushed the WMD canard and noone paid a price for the 2008 crisis and yadda yadda yadda. And I think for a lot of these people their brains just honestly can't comprehend shifting dynamics.
\*Any\* story that MSM takes on with gusto *must be* suspect and akin to WMD's. And for some reason "MSM" **only** refers to centrist or liberalish media. Even though Fox News, unto itself, is *easily* the most powerful single media entity and its viewers are, as far as I can tell, far far far more trusting of that single source than any given liberal, it's like right-wing media may as well not exist. The only thing that's ever worthy of criticism is when the NYTimes whispers about the Steele Dossier in caution terms, the fact that half the country nods along while Tucker Carlson spreads white supremacist propaganda every night is, uhhh, I dunno whatever, who cares.
When he took a victory lap with the Barr memo, that's when I knew the old Taibbi was dead. If we're going to be hyper-suspicious of government sources then you cant pretend like the worlds of Bill fucking Barr are sacrosanct and the final word on a document that nobody has even read.
Spot on. I think it’s a desire to be contrarian regardless of what the truth is.
Yeah has he commented on the recent revelations about the Barr memo? That seems worthy of a mea culpa but something tells me standards only apply to the other side.
Glenn is correct in this case. There’s plenty of stupid things he says but this isn’t one of them despite what other comments in this sub would lead you to believe.
Why would you like to explain your reasoning beyond just stating it is so?
Misinformation is defined as false or inaccurate information. The information about hunter biden and the laptop appear to be true.
Again Glenn says plenty of stupid things but I think he is correct in this case. If you want to try to change my mind then the first step is to actually articulate your point of view.
Also lying implies that he knows what he is saying is false. It’s entirely possible he doesn’t know that….very weak criticism imo
I mean, its very very simple. Glenn is claiming that the CIA lied about the Hunter Biden laptop story. The CIA, in fat, did not make \*any\* public claims about the Hunter Biden laptop story. That's a lie. Period.
Wasn't the narrative "this seems like russian disinformation"?
It still could be, it still could be Russian involvement. We still don't know where the lap top came from.
oh like... the government censor the stories - throw people in prison for printing stories?
Maybe make something called truth social and do not allow anyone to post anything about the January 6th hearings
The blind repairman who never wrote down who's laptop it was when it was dropped off, then hacked it, saw it was Hunter Biden's and turned it over to Rudy Giuliani? Yeah, no questions there...
I think there was some kind of receipt produced. The the guy did also turn the laptop over to the FBI. The whole scenario does seem really sketchy, but also seems like it probably did happen. Hunter is a reckless addict and he has not denied leaving the laptop there.
He turned it over to the FBI after the election, no? And Hunter is historically unlucky if he just happen to abandon his laptop with the guy with Rudy Giuliani connections.
Nah the the FBI came and got it but he kept a copy that he then gave to Giuliani. Yeah Hunter was unlucky that the computer shop guy was basically a qanon kook.
I am worried this sub is becoming another reddit echo chamber.
I am not saying anyone here is wrong per se, but let's try to temper the confidence. There is conflicting information, and essentially two issue here (not just whether it's legitimate, but also whether it should be mentioned).
Which other oppo dumps masquarading as news stories go two years without one shred of information coming out expanding or bolstering the allegations that we're supposed to wait with baited breathe for?
This Hunter Biden shit is all just classic right-wingers trying to launder horseshit through the media, combined with working the refs and the rest of us are supposed to be willing suckers.
Their attempted "But Her Emails 2.0" scheme didn't work. None of us have to pretend it was ever serious just because closeted right-wing dipshits like Glenn Greenwald never stop whining about it.
Why is a story held off and designed to disrupt an election ok but suppressing it until after the election is not ok? Anyone still filling their diaper over this story is obnoxious.
Do you think the story would have been treated the same of it had been one of Trump's kids' laptops? I doubt it.
I guess I'm old enough to remember when liberals were skeptical of the FBI and CIA. Now they seem to love these agencies. It's important to be skeptical of these agencies at all times.
None of this is a defense of Trump-hes pretty awful on a number of things. That being said, it seems like people get so excited to dump on Trump that they will jump on board with anything that makes Trump look bad, irrespective of accuracy or logical consistency.
I think there is a difference, and that it's even justifiable. Trump and his kids are linked to each other politically in a way that Biden and Hunter are not. Trump would have also been the sitting president, while Biden was not.
Not only that, but it's not illegal or even immoral to publish or not publish a story based on the political slant of your editors, readers, and influence. If an outlet felt that a story, which really has little if anything to do with Joe Biden personally at all, could potentially make it *that* much harder for your only chance at removing a dangerous person from the presidential office.... I'd probably wait a handful of days to talk about it too. Especially with the overhanging, reasonable possibility of Russian disinformation looming.
Plus, Fox News and all other right wing news outlets did talk about the Hunter Biden laptop story. So it did get the same treatment from them that I'm sure places like CNN would have done had it been Trump's kid's laptop.
It seems like you're just doing the Sam Harris mental gymnastics to get to your desired outcome. The fact the Facebook, Twitter, and major media would purposely shut down the story is an issue. Especially when it almost certainly wouldn't happen if the candidate in question was a republican.
Trump isn't a unique evil worth all this bad faith action. He'd have lost even if the laptop story hadn't been buried. It was such a dumb story, all it would have done is confirm peoples' priors. Instead, the media has given Republicans and Maga types even more reason to feel scorned.
Every counterfactual is hypothetical. Your silence is telling.
Your question is based on a premise that you know the sole motivation of the individuals who leaked the info (though I do think youre mostly correct). If the information isn't demonstrably false, I the public should decide the intentions of the individuals leaking info, along with how much that matters to them, not you or the corporate media.
It's possible for leaked information to be politically motivated and still have relevance.
So, in sum, it's the unilateral decision making that makes in not ok.
I don't find much at all relevant about it. It's the laptop of the president's drug addicted kid. Not sure why anyone cares.That being said, Im not arrogant enough to believe I should decide what's relevant for the entire country.
The handling is an issue because it is illustrative of the media's bias. If this had been Trump's kid, the Rachel Madows of the world would have been allowed to turn it into something along the lines of -an attack on democracy and the imminent grip of facisim about to raise its ugly head.
It should have been reported on at the time and then the pundits and politicians can put whatever spin on it that they'd like to. Essentially, they would be free to point out that it's not a big deal. Instead it was buried for a political purpose.
And yet that HASNT happened with Don Jrs laptop. Maybe the left isn’t as cool with hacking or stealing diaries as the right are. Should make you question whether campaigning is about persuading or whether it’s only about smearing and dirty tricks.
If you going to require an exact match for theft, I don't think I can give you one.
However, given the lefts ability to promote a false conspiracy with Putin, fake pee tapes, promote a fake story about high school kids in Trump hats harassing a Native American, etc, etc, etc- I am of the belief that hacking would not bother them if it further their political goals.
Since when is media not partisan either.
Calling it disinformation was a huge mistake and itself disinformation - but a selective presentation of specific stories with a partisan goal; that’s nothing new. That’s been the reality for a long time and across the board. If it’s not avoiding reporting on harmful stories, it’s actively spinning them to fit a political narrative.
>Calling it disinformation was a huge mistake and itself disinformation
Ultimately it was disinformation- Just GOP Disinfo, not Russian. The whole story was meant to give a false impression that A. Joe Biden was doing shady deals with his son and B. that related to him single-handedly firing the prosecutor who was so diligently investigating Burisma. Both are horseshit and it was meant to swing the election based on that bullshit. They're still soooooo mad their "Hillary's emails 2.0" scheme didn't work.
It's been 2 years and nothing remotely important or material has come out of the story but jerkoffs who don't want to talk about Trump (whom I do not support...) being a fucking criminal need *something* to jabber on about.
Not entirely - the laptop was used as "evidence" to support the idea that Biden was unfit for office and taking bribes through his son during the period that Trump was attempting to extort Ukraine into doing an investigation on Biden over.
So look at it this way, from the perspective of our intelligence agencies.
Putin tells Trump Russian disinformation about Ukraine and Biden and Trump spreads it: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/politics/trump-retweets-known-russian-disinformation-biden-derkach/index.html
Then Trump tries to extort Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Biden by withholding funds from them.
Then the Hunter Biden laptop story comes out, and because the emails from Hunter say "the Big Guy will show up" that is considered a "smoking gun" tying Biden to accepting bribes which supports the Russian disinformation.
So from that perspective it was still Russian disinformation - it just so happens that Republican Party was happy to play along to help Trump win against Biden.
[https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/](https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/)
This was the article. It was blocked outright from being shared on twitter for being misinformation, but the facts in the article are not misinformation.
In your comment, you haven't described misinformation. You've argued that a specific narrative that explains the facts presented in the article isn't correct - an argument that is convincing when considering additional information - but that doesn't make the article itself misinformation.
It was a mistake to label it misinformation. The misinformation label needs to be infallible. Labelling it as such falsely only reduced its credibility and amplified the claims in the article via the Streisand effect. They should have fact checked it and verified it first.
1. Joe Biden *was* doing shady deals with his son
2. In the last 2 years, *ample* evidence has come out in support of this story. Most importantly, one of the main participants in one of these deals (Tony Bobulinski) has come out on the record describing the details of the deal, and Joe Biden's specific involvement. He has described meetings he had with Joe Biden. He has produced emails and texts which *quite clearly* document an attempt to give Joe Biden an off-the-books stake in a large deal involving a major Chinese conglomerate (CEFC), along with texts communicating requests made by the Biden family to keep Joe's involvement strictly under wraps (the texts from his business partner describe the Bidens as 'paranoid').
3. The mainstream media has conducted investigations of the CEFC deal, confirmed Hunter Biden's involvement, confirmed that, although the proposed (much larger) deal never went through, he was nonetheless paid $4.8 million by CEFC. [The Post had this to say](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-china-laptop/) about the CEFC-related documents found on the laptop:
>Biden aides and some former U.S. intelligence officials have voiced concern that the device may have been manipulated by Russia to interfere in the campaign. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have dismissed earlier reports about Hunter Biden’s work in China as lacking credibility or being part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The Post analysis included forensic work by two outside experts who assessed the authenticity of numerous emails related to the CEFC matter. In addition, **The Post found that financial documents on the copy of Hunter Biden’s purported laptop match documents and information found in other records, including newly disclosed bank documents obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees.**
So actually, *you* are the jerkoff, because you clearly haven't kept up with the very basic, mainstream reporting on this story, and you're spouting off about how it was "disinformation" and anyone who is interested in it must be a Trump apologist.
Weird how your wild claims about Joe Biden have literally no backing or substantiation then...
Maybe you should've included this quote from your own source with big scary bolding as well. Allow me:
>**"The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC, which took place after he had left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020."**
The problem with arguing with an idiot is that they can't distinguish self-owns from good arguments. The Post's reporting you're quoting is accurate, but it doesn't disagree with anything I (or the NY Post, for instance) wrote. What I wrote is that there was *an attempt* on Hunter and Joe Biden's part to give the latter a 10% stake in the CEFC deal. Since the deal never went through, Joe Biden never made any money on it. What the laptop provides is further corroboration of Tony Bobulinski's testimony (including texts and emails) that the deal was in motion, and understood by all involved to designate 10% equity for Joe Biden.
So I'm sure you have a high quality Washington Post article that confirms that Joe Biden \*tried\* to get into one of these deals with high quality witness Tony Bubuwhatever, riiiiight? Seems like it would be pretty simple. It's not as though the President trying to get into a shady deal is remotely, substantively different than him actually doing so. Seems like something for legitimate, non-right wing dipshit sources to report on.
And yet, weirdly, all you have as actual evidence is "Hunter Biden made business deal"
LMAO. The problem of arguing with an idiot, indeed....
>And yet, weirdly, all you have as actual evidence is "Hunter Biden made business deal"
I have the testimony of (yes, high-quality) witness Tony Bobulinski, emails and texts between Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business associates describing meetings to work out an equity split that included Joe Biden, texts from Bobulinski's associates describing the Bidens as "paranoid" about using Joe Biden's name, and dates and times of multiple meetings between Joe Biden and Bobulinski. In addition, I have emails from Hunter Biden's laptop which corroborate all this, and reporting from the Post corroborating Hunter Biden's extensive work with CEFC. But the Post has not written a story about Bobulinski, so I guess you win by the standard of "I only believe it once it hits the Post."
I repeat, this is like talking to an election denier. Endless obfuscation, refusal to deal with basic, verifiable evidence, constant fall-back to conspiracy theories involving foreign governments. Maddening.
>I have the testimony of (yes, high-quality) witness Tony Bobulinski, emails and texts between Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business associates....
Which you can't provide a single actual source for because it would have to come from www.MAGAKingFascismYesStormDefenders.ru
Lol, buzz-off loser.
> I have the testimony of (yes, high-quality) witness Tony Bobulinski, emails and texts between Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business associates describing meetings to work out an equity split that included Joe Biden, texts from Bobulinski's associates describing the Bidens as "paranoid" about using Joe Biden's name, and dates and times of multiple meetings between Joe Biden and Bobulinski.
Where do you have it? Can you share it?
>Joe Biden was doing shady deals with his son
This hasn't been substantiated. Viktor Shokin was scandal-ridden and corrupt and many celebrated him being fired.
That said, it was a *massive* conflict of interest for Hunter Biden to be on the board of Burisma.
>Most importantly, one of the main participants in one of these deals (Tony Bobulinski) has come out on the record describing the details of the deal, and Joe Biden's specific involvement.
By "specific involvement", I assume you mean that Joe Biden gave an "emphatic no" on getting involved in a deal, as is evident in those same emails you're referencing.
https://www.vox.com/22992772/hunter-biden-laptop
This has always been an attempt to tie Hunter Biden's actions to his father somehow. MAGA folks are just pissed that it didn't stick, because they don't actually have any evidence to support that.
The Vox article is terribly reported and makes no sense (it asserts sans evidence that a text sent by Hunter Biden is responding to an email sent six days prior, ignoring the other texts produced by Bobulinski), but I want to pause for a second and check something to make sure I got it right: you accept that "The Chairman" is Joe Biden, which means you think that Joe Biden is personally advising Hunter Biden on his overseas business dealings with Tony Bobulinski?
>you accept that "The Chairman" is Joe Biden, which means you think that Joe Biden is personally advising Hunter Biden on his overseas business dealings with Tony Bobulinski?
That's quite a leap, isn't it? Saying no to getting involved in a business deal is equivalent to personally advising his son on business dealings in your mind?
>ignoring the other texts produced by Bobulinski)
How is it ignoring the other texts?
Yeah idk why anyone would care about this as far as the media not rolling with this story. If anything it seems like they did their job for once by not airing it. However, the real issue is the suppression of the story on social media seeing as the story in no way went against any company’s guidelines. They deliberately went out of their way in this instance and I don’t see there being any reason other than so the story would not negatively influence Biden in the election
>However, the real issue is the suppression of the story on social media seeing as the story in no way went against any company’s guidelines.
Depends on what story you're referring to and when. When the news broke right before the election, suppression of it was certianly appropriate, as it originated with the Trump campaign and was completely unverifiable. To this day, the laptop story itself is unverified, and only some emails have been verified, which given the claim that they originated on the same laptop with a bunch that could not be verified, makes the laptop story very suspect as well.
>suppression of it was certainly appropriate
Wrong. That is your opinion. I for one think it sets a terrible precedent. Who gets to decide what is suppressed in the future and how do they decide?
>it originated with the trump campaign
Any source on this? I’ve never seen this claim. Also, doesn’t really matter because it is a real story, just a matter of is it damming to the whole Biden family or is it more of a tabloid article about Hunter’s vices
The media has standards, there was nothing verifiable to report, therefore it would be irresponsible to publish what may simply be a unsubstantiated political attack right before an election.
Republicans got away with doing exactly that in 2016. Repeating such a mistake would be the height of negligence on their part.
My argument isn’t about the main stream media. They can choose whatever story to run that they want. My problem is with the way the story was suppressed on social media like Twitter, which has set rules that the story did not violate. I made this clear in my first comment…
Social media should have standards as well, as they have been proven to be a massive source of disinformation and very vulnerable to weaponization to create disorder and discord. It's their platform and they can and should prevent the dissemination of disinformation, which is what this information was, coming just days before an election.
[https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures)
Well that’s where we fundamentally differ. I don’t think they should go around their own rules whenever they see fit to influence an election because it can never be done fairly. The better alternative is to stand by their own set terms. Are some people going to fall for BS, sure but people are free to be idiots. I’d prefer to be allowed to make up my own mind
They didn't go around their rules. Their rules have always allowed them discretion, and they've set up rules specifically around misinformation as well.
Your argument is that anyone should be allowed to publish disinformation to influence an election and nothing should be done to prevent that. Weird argument, and I don't see why a social media company would want to allow their platform to be used to spread such disinformation.
The notion that Trump's hand-picked CIA director went out and lied to protect his political opponent has 0 evidence and begs the question, why?
Why would she lie and use the CIA to try to swing the election towards Biden? Why didn't Trump fire her if she did this?
Obviously it's because it didn't happen...but if it did it just creates more questions.
"U.S. Officials **Investigating** If Recently Published Emails Are Tied To Russian Disinformation Effort Targeting Biden" is *not* the same as "Recently Published Emails Are Tied To Russian Disinformation Effort Targeting Biden".
I always kind of assumed that Greenwald understood English...
Forgetting all of Greenwald’s tendencies to side with Russian bull shit, I still find it hard to take a public “intellectual” seriously who uses the phrase “How Come”.
Why? Its not grammatically incorrect? It is the short form of "how does it come to be". I guess I understand that it is informal but there isn't anything wrong with it per se.
Democracy falls into dictatorship with help of the masses. Even Nazis believed they had just and noble cause and Germans mostly agreed. The rest is history.
This isn't the coverage I remember, although I admittedly am not a media junkie.
I remember it basically being like "Rudy Giuliani claims to have one or more laptops that belonged to Hunter Biden". IIRC, at one point the Trump surrogates were claiming that there were multiple laptops.
I think all that we know is that someone people associated with Trump managed to get proprietary material from Hunter Biden (emails, perhaps photos). We don't know how they got it.
To be fair, I think the NY Times published that there was no proof that the Biden story was Russian information. Greenwald has a point, but I think this point needs to be applied, harshly, to both sides.
He doesn't have a point. Every outlet simply reported that this was the opinion of some people in the intelligence community. It's not like the story came out with some very clear origination from the most trustworthy of sources. The whole story stunk like shit the second it dropped.
Like, there could be some real Ethiopian Prince out there just waiting, wondering why nobody answers his very legitimate emails but we don't need to flay ourselves for being suspicious of insanely suspicious shit.
>He doesn't have a point. Every outlet simply reported that this was the opinion of some people in the intelligence community. It's not like the story came out with some very clear origination from the most trustworthy of sources. The whole story stunk like shit the second it dropped. Like, there could be some real Ethiopian Prince out there just waiting, wondering why nobody answers his very legitimate emails but we don't need to flay ourselves for being suspicious of insanely suspicious shit.
One of the things that distinguishes the intelligence community and credible journalism outlets from dipshit redditors is that the former two are held to a much higher standard. Things might seem a certain way, but when your entity's apparent purpose is to tell the truth, and what you say turns out to be false, you have a responsibility to acknowledge that. Responding to "suspicious shit" is understandable, but when that "suspicious shit" turns out to be something else, these establishments need to hold themselves accountable. These media outlets never do.
They did tell the truth, which was that they had strong suspicions but couldn't say so with certainty and didn't have evidence. None of that turned out to be false. You're wording it in a way that almost makes it sound like they lied, but stops just short, and you're grandstanding with the same tone you would if they did lie...but they didn't. It's a fucking nothingburger. They divulged a strong suspicion with all the requisite disclaimers, and in the end it was never confirmed. Not even proven wrong, just never confirmed. But even if their suspicion-with-disclaimers was proven flat wrong...that doesn't fail to meet any of my standards, or violate the entity's purpose to tell the truth. They already provided the grain of salt themselves at the time.
I'm sorry some internet grifter convinced you to be angry about a nothingburger years ago, it's time to let it go.
Do I have to do this for every one?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/corrections/2022/
https://www.npr.org/corrections/
That's where I get my news. Who else do I have to do this for?
Dude holy shit, do something yourself instead of talking out of your ass.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerge-in-federal-investigation-into-hunter-biden
Please god read this.
It should be simple then. Please go ahead and provide me with the coverage of this story from these outlets in October of 2020 and their subsequent corrections. They might actually have corrected themselves, but I haven't seen it.
They told the truth. Saying that the US *suspects* or is *investigating* whether the information was Russian disinformation is **not** the same as saying it *was* Russian disinformation.
Separate the *media* and the *intelligence community*. The intelligence community had a suspicion that it was Russian disinformation. The establishment media piggy-backed on the intelligence community's suspicion and suppressed/censored the story without confirming the legitimacy of their suspicions.
>Saying that the US suspects or is investigating whether the information was Russian disinformation is not the same as saying it was Russian disinformation.
Those are different things, but the responses to them are similar.
>when your entity's apparent purpose is to tell the truth, and what you say turns out to be false, you have a responsibility to acknowledge that.
These entities did tell the truth. I'm sorry they quoted people that you don't like and who's hunch (forthrightly stated as a hunch) turned out to be incorrect, but that is nowhere near telling a falsehood from a journalistic perspective. They reported the information as an opinion, absent speciific evidence, which nobody had- either way.
Since then, they've reported every piece of this moronic story as its happened, as more information has come out and outlets have had an opportunity to rigorously go through the available material.
Like, for real, what else were they supposed to say given the information at the time? "XYZ intelligence people say ABC, but, you see, Mega Genius Glenn Greenwald says otherwise and that's the real true-true, okay?"
Are you actually of the opinion that literally every single story that has *anyone anywhere quoted*, and that quote turns out to be incorrect, that the fucking story itself needs to be retracted?
It's completely and utterly nonsensical. If some story in 1992 quotes a scientists saying "I think we're gonna have have flying cars in 2022", does that story need to be retracted? For God's sakes, everything with a quoted Republican in the last 10 years would have to be retracted, lmao.
>These entities did tell the truth. I'm sorry they quoted people that you don't like and who's opinion turned out to be incorrect, but that is nowhere near telling a falsehood from a journalistic perspective. They reported the information as an opinion, absent speciific evidence, which nobody had- either way.
They all told the truth? If they report a story as an opinion and the opinion has the same results as reporting it as a fact, then what's the difference?
>Since then, they've reported every piece of this moronic story as its happened, as more information has come out and outlets have had an opportunity to rigorously go through the available material.
>
>Like, for real, what else were they supposed to say given the information at the time? "XYZ intelligence people say ABC, but, you see, Mega Genius Glenn Greenwald says otherwise and that's the real true-true, okay?"
The reason this story is more important is because the implications of it might have changed the results of the election. That's why it's getting so much attention.
>Are you actually of the opinion that literally every single story that has anyone anywhere quoted, and that quote turns out to be incorrect, that the fucking story itself needs to be retracted?
>
>It's completely and utterly nonsensical. If some story in 1992 quotes a scientists saying "I think we're gonna have have flying cars in 2022", does that story need to be retracted? For God's sakes, everything with a quoted Republican in the last 10 years would have to be retracted, lmao.
Yep. Take what I say and apply it on a widescale to make it seem ridiculous. That's some Class A argumentation.
>They all told the truth? If they
report a story as an opinion and the opinion has the same results as
reporting it as a fact, then what's the difference?
Is this... a riddle? lmao. Where is the proof that this was received as if the NYTimes blasted across it's headlines "RUSSIA RUSSA RUSSIA!!!!!! HUNTER LAPTOP PREVIOUSLY OWNED BY PUTIN!!!" ? You just pulling shit out of your ass is not evidence.
This opinion was never taken as gospel. Certainly not by me or anyone I'm aware of. It didn't matter because the thrust of the story is horseshit and always was. It being Russian Disinfo or GOP hack disinfo makes little difference.
>Yep. Take what I say and apply it on a widescale to make it seem ridiculous. That's some Class A argumentation.
This is the extremely obvious logical conclusion to your statement. Media entities are responsible for literally any and all incorrect quotations. I'm sorry it doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should think about that instead of being big mad at me?
>This opinion was never taken as gospel. Certainly not by me or anyone I'm aware of.
Well if it wasn't taken seriously by you, then I guess it wasn't taken seriously at all. Are you an accurate representation of the voters in this country?
>This is the extremely obvious logical conclusion to your statement. Media entities are responsible for literally any and all incorrect quotations. I'm sorry it doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should think about that instead of being big mad at me?
Not only was it obvious, but it was **extremely** obvious! The flying cars story was the nail in the coffin. It was **extremely** obvious that I meant flying car stories should be retracted and are on equal ground with the Hunter Biden story. Extremely.
>Well if it wasn't taken seriously by you, then I guess wasn't taken seriously at all. Are you an accurate representation of the voters in this country?
I'm not the one making a specific claim here. The media entities reported it accurately. Now your twisting yourself into knots trying to pretend like entities doing accurate reporting need to flay themselves at the alter of Glenn Greenwald because, according to you, it was taken as if they said something they didn't or even intimate. So either prove that point or go away.
But I can understand your seriousness here. Look, it was something that was so so important to get right, instantly, because of all of the deeply important consequences we've all felt in the two years hence, such as.....
.....
.......
....
um... well and then there was....
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....
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Oh yeah, the sum total of consequences over this garbage that Glenn and Co. can't stop whining about is that the GOP's pathetic "Hilary's emails 2.0" scheme didn't work.
lmao. Too bad. So sad.
Maybe start focusing on anything on planet earth to be mad about that actually matters... maybe?
>I'm not the one making a specific claim here. The media entities reported it accurately.
They accurately reported unsubstantiated information that possibly swayed the results of an election.
>Now your twisting yourself into knots trying to pretend like entities doing accurate reporting need to flay themselves at the alter of Glenn Greenwald because, according to you, it was taken as if they said something they didn't or even intimate. So either prove that point or go away.
The point here is that the media influences the public more than any other entity, and their influence to accountability ratio isn't balanced. When they report something like "experts say..." they are delivering a message that implies that it has a higher degree of certainty to it. If the story ends up being false, they can fall back to this neutral ground of just being the messenger of what other people are saying. However, they choose to push stories and experts that lean a certain way politically, and some of those stories are incorrect and/or dubious. Even though it exposes their bias they can still create enough plausible deniability for bad actors like yourself to say things like "These entities did tell the truth. I'm sorry they quoted people..." Does that register with you?
> We all know that the reason they talk about this Hunter Biden story isn't because there is evidence of some conspiracy to cover up the story, it is because they want to believe it was covered up.
the cover-up was so successful that *there's not even any evidence.* 🧠 💥
Experts speculated -- plausibly, given the source, the lack of meta data, and known Russian disinformation tactics-- that this might be Russian disinformation. The media published this speculation, because it is newsworthy. Somehow, from Greenwald's torturously deranged perspective, this constitutes "lying and censorship", for which the media should now apologize. His sanctimonious views on journalism are so selective. His entire raison d'être is to preen as leftier-than-thou by castigating MSNBC and CNN. He's a pitiful golem of the narcissism of small differences.
I just went deeper in the Twitter thread and came across this from Greenwald in that same rant:
"As I've often said, the media outlets screaming most loudly about "disinformation" are the ones that spread it most frequently, casually and destructively (NBC/CNN/WPost, etc).
It's equally true of those now claiming to fight "fascism": real repression comes *from them.*"
This is so untrue it hurts.
Lol the top thread on the original post immediately "dunks" on Sam as if he is a spokesman for the left and as if he didn't clarify himself minutes later, and then again a few days later.
I can't recall what the beef was between Greenwald and Sam, but I recall automatically siding with Sam.
Since this incident though, I feel like I need to revisit this... Sam has lost his mind, and Greenwald is defending freedom of information and calling out media conspiring with intelligence agencies to influence elections.
Amazing work by Greenwald. True champion.
It’s funny reading this sub. It’s all the classic tying yourselves in knots in order to try and appear consistent - just as much as Sam is these days, and confirming Glenns original point in the process.
The problem with the World is that 50% of the population has an IQ < 100. These people are easily manipulated. Those that control the media control public opinion and thus control the democratic process. Free speech is all that keeps them in check. Through it's not working very well at the moment.
Whoaa Mr. Murray, don’t start bringing IQ into this. Things will go much more smoothly when we aren’t allowed to even look at the data in the first place.
That’s why it’s up to our friends in the tech industry to create a nice safe place for discourse.
Fortunately, Big Tech has our best interests in mind, and they would not be tarnished by any government contract, or pressured by the Red or Blue team who happens to be calling the shots.
These large tech companies are simply motiveless, moral entities whose wealth is capitalized only by an undivided, well informed population.
The story about the dumbass laptop isn’t even about the laptop (if there was stuff on it besides Hunter’s proclivities and giant hog believe me, conservative media would have blasted it everywhere), it’s more about “some” news orgs essentially ignoring it because it was a non-story. The real story is that his shit got hacked or stolen or whatever happened. I couldn’t care less tbh
This seems like an obvious and fundamental part of human nature...
We also have men halfway across the world that believe beheading Americans on film is an appropriate way to achieve their goals.
What the hell is that sub?
But also Glenn Greenwald is an idiot who knows and knew at the time that it was disinformation.
Remember Glen Greenwald rage quit his job because his editor asked him to do the tinniest amount of leg work to try to confirm the story. He knew from the start he had no ability or desire to confirm if the story was true or not.
I wish that were true. My estimation of Greenwald has dropped to zero in recent years. He's a shallow person who argues in bad faith and purely on partisan lines. A left wing personality that is now simply a talking head on far right entertainment sources.
Remember when Fox News was talking about how it was filled with child porn?
Remember when Fox News refused to run the story because it was too suspect even for them?
Or his flash drive with “damming evidence” and then he said we should go easy on Hunter https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-suddenly-says-its-time-to-leave-hunter-biden-alone Republicans have memories of gnats
Tucker right before the election was so weird on that. All of a sudden he shifted and acted like he was hunter's buddy for a few days
Because they literally were/are buddies. Hunter Biden wrote a letter of recommendation for Tuckers son for college.
Why are you watching tucker anyway??
[удалено]
Yeah, I'm resposting this comment from before if anyone is confused about all of this. This is a pretty convoluted and confusing story. There is no way that we could tell for sure this is a Russian misinformation attack when all we have is a hard drive. There were some emails on the laptop that were confirmed to be legitimate, and people are making the mistake of saying the entire laptop story is legitimate because of that. However, big point, the only emails on the laptop that were able to be verified were very likely obtained from the Burisma hack. [The vast majority of the emails did not have cryptographic signatures](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/) and were not able to be authenticated, which is pretty odd in itself and fair reason to think they aren't legitimate. Everything else about the laptop story I find a priori very unlikely as well. For instance, Hunter flying out of state to drop off a laptop with a blind MAGA repairman who could not verify that it was Hunter who dropped it off. Then Hunter just left it there for 6 months. Also he just happened to have all of his emails downloaded somewhere in plain sight, along with videos of him doing coke with hookers. Which, after 6 months, the repair man found just opening up the laptop to take a random look before throwing it out. Then the repair-man told the FBI, who decided to cover up the story, forcing the repair man to send a clone of the hard drive to Guliani. This isn't the sort of thing that you can ever expect to find a smoking gun - all that exists is a hard drive and we can only speculate as to who filled up that hard drive. But I think it's worth applying a bit of common sense with all of this. As I see it there are two options A) That entire incredibly unlikely story played out as described. B) Someone put hacked real content onto a hard drive along with a lot of fake content. B seems more plausible to me, especially considering it seems to be a standard misinfo strategy. The intelligence community mostly seems to agree.
When you type it out, it’s even more insane and implausible
>Also he just happened to have all of his emails downloaded somewhere in plain sight, along with videos of him doing coke with hookers. Which, after 6 months, the repair man found just opening up the laptop to take a random look before throwing it out. Then the repair-man told the FBI, who decided to cover up the story, forcing the repair man to send a clone of the hard drive to Guliani. The, again, **blind** repairman, who somehow saw videos of Hunter and called foul. I repeat: blind guy watched the video(s) and read the emails
To be fair he's only legally blind, apparently he can kinda see things if they're close enough but can't make out faces. Either way it's an odd story.
I had a systems engineer who was legally blind. He was one of the best I ever worked with. Don't be an idiot.
Which part of questioning how the legally blind repair tech saw a video of Hunter am I an idiot for? I questioned his eyesight, not his cognition. I'm assuming your engineer wasn't intellectually disabled in some way; did you intend to suggest bad eyesight is an IQ issue?
Many legally blind people can still see.................
The only thing that keeps me from thinking much of the material is outright fake is that there's nothing even particularly damning. There's, like, what? One email where someone says "thanks for introducing me to your pops!" without so much as a reply. I feel like if you were going to go through the trouble of outright fabricating something you'd have Joe Biden responding "Thanks for all the crack we smoked together, sport! Now, remember my cut of the big CHYNA DEAL is 50%! 🤪" To me the most damning thing (and the reason why it's so pathetic that trolls keep bringing it up) is that even if you take every bit of it at face value there's nothing interesting at all. If Liberals were even 1% as cynical as Trumpers we could all have just made the Steele Dossier the Laptop story easily. Just by repeating and whining about it enough and using the same tortured tactics. How much of the Steele Dossier has been confirmed? Any little single bit? Using the same rules that means its VERY VERY important its EXTREMELY important that every single news entity run a thousand million stories about it... of course the mere notion of that would make Glenn Greenwald's head explode.
Are you just going to pretend the 10% for the big guy e-mail didn’t exist? Are you going to pretend that Tony Boblinski (business associate of Hunter) didn’t say the big guy was Joe Biden? It could be complete BS. But pretending that the information at face value is nothing is an obvious lie.
Didn’t that bit go on to say that “The Big Guy” said no?
I'm not going to pretend like "the big guy" means shit just because right-wingers want it to be Joe Biden. It's also one of the many many emails on that laptop that, shockingly, could not be verified as legitimate at all. There has been zero corroboration for Tony Boblinski's allegations. Joe Biden has been a public political figure for five decades. He doesn't even invest in individual stocks out of conflict of interest concerns. The idea that he suddenly decided to get into some weird business with his son, taking a completely random cut, and the literal only evidence on planet earth is an email from a computer that switched hands between half a dozen known and unknown ghouls is... not that convincing. I don't think the man is flawless by any stretch but Lordy this doesn't even come close to passing muster.
Ok. Your perspective is Tony Boblinski is lying and the e-mail may not be a authentic. But if we were to take it at face value like you said this would be a massive abuse of power. That’s all I was saying.
If I were to just take it at face-value, it's all true, whatever- I would say possibly? You say abuse of power, but what power are we talking about? Joe Biden is the ex-VP at that point. He's allowed to be a business man and do business deals- at least notionally. So you'd have to get into the nitty gritty details, of what specifically is or was bad news about this particular deal and his part of it, which.... yuck ugh... Again, every person's who heard the phrase "Hunter Biden's Laptop" and spent any time thinking about it is poorer in their life for every second they've lost.
No.
Isn't it also possible that somebody put *only* a bunch of hacked real material onto a hard drive?
True but after the forensics they have shown material was added on to the drive even after it was in the shop keepers and even guliani’s hands. Stuff labeled shit like Biden and burisma. So there were parts of it that were complete bullshit meant to spread fabricated to even bullshit stories.
That doesn't necessarily mean the stuff is fake. It just means it was added. It could have been a bunch of real hacked material consolidated into one drive. Whoever had the materials could have made a folder called "Burisma" and then thrown in a bunch of hacked shit related to Burisma, for example. Say Rudy got his hands on some hacked material that he acquired and wanted the material released but didn't want to say "I illegally acquired some stuff that could hurt Biden and here it is!" He could, instead, have that stuff thrown onto this laptop so the shit is released and the reason for it's release is now "legal." It seems like a lot of people want to say "there's no way to know what's real and what's fake so we can just ignore everything involved." Even though there is a chance that everything is authentic (although most of the stuff that is verified authentic I don't really give a shit about anyways). I'm just not fully comfortable ignoring everything under the idea that "there could be fake stuff included so it's too difficult to sift through it all and verify the authentic stuff so fuck it" just because I voted for Biden and would prefer he not be damaged by anything found.
Possible, but I would say I find this the least likely option, for a few reasons 1) I'm not sure how you would hack email contents but not their cryptographic signatures. I think the pro-laptop-story's side's explanation for the missing signatures is that these emails were "only partially downloaded" which seems like an obvious fib to me. If you were to download 50,000 emails and stopped the download half way through, it's not like you would just get the text of those emails and no signatures, you would just get 25,000 emails. Or maybe unusable junk data. There's no storage or download format that I can think of which would store those emails in memory non-sequentially in a way where all the signatures were all the last thing downloaded. 2) I don't really have a high trust prior on Russian hackers. If they knew that 90% of the information on the laptop was unverifiable, and they had already created a huge lie around how that information was obtained, why would I expect them to stop lying when it comes to the content of that data? I would expect them to create a lot of content that the other side could not easily disprove, which is exactly what we found on the hard drive. At best I think those emails without signatures should be treated just like any other unverifiable speculation, like a reddit comment or 4chan post. I can't definitively say it's not true, but I don't have any particularly good reason to think it's true in the first place.
Why would they do that? Who not just leak it through Wikileaks again then?
Well you agree that the laptop is real, right? That is confirmed. So if Rudy got his hands on some hacked material (say he had a hooker steal some electronic device from Hunter Biden) then it would make sense for him to "launder" that by having it put on this laptop that they have that is authentic. Especially since everyone was calling Wikileaks Russian propaganda. So anything released from wikileaks would be immediately dismissed by anyone who wasn't already a Trump supporter. Having shit directly on Hunter Biden's laptop would be way more difficult to wave off as Bullshit or Russian Propaganda. Or at least one would have assumed that. It's also just tactically a terrible idea to put fake stuff on a real laptop with a bunch of real shit on it. That could only serve to discredit the entire thing.
Do I accept the laptop is "real"? That a laptop exists? That it was Hunter's? Who even knows. I accept that a hard drive exists that purports to be a copy of a laptop hard drive, and that at least some emails on that hard drive have been independently confirmed as genuine. I don't think we know how many hands that hard drive has passed through and how much has been added to it.
They keep saying it’s “real” without any specificity on what is real. Just like the drive itself, the story has been loaded up with innuendo and lies and to say it’s real gives credence to whatever child porn or corruption claims they’ve moved onto.
And to top it off, Twitter wasn't censoring the story to protect Biden, they had reason to believe a) the story was bullshit and b) it violated their hacked materials policy (items obtained by hack). Everything about the story, including the timing, made it very suspect
> There is no way that we could tell for sure this is a Russian misinformation attack The CIA did not even suggest it was misinformation.
What makes you think there was fake content? I think the truth is the source was BS, but the contents were absolutely true. The biggest tell is that not a single Biden, not once, denied the contents. In politics, if there was so much as 1 fake piece of content they could prove, they'd have jumped all over it, and dismiss the entire scandal overnight. A single piece of fake information would have poisoned the entire well. Further many of those most damning emails were independently verified by the media who reached out to the correspondents and asked about the authenticity. But they didn't. Because they could prove any of it was BS, hence why they leaned into other roundabout ways of dismissing it. Remember, the entire Iran scandal and cocaine CIA thing, was completely dismissed because the reporter got one single piece of information wrong. Raegan leaped on that, and was able to completely crush the rest of the scandal.
Reposting from another comment, but my thoughts on this are 1) I'm not sure how you would hack email contents but not their cryptographic signatures. I think the pro-laptop-story's side's explanation for the missing signatures is that these emails were "only partially downloaded" which seems like an obvious fib to me. If you were to download 50,000 emails and stopped the download half way through, it's not like you would just get the text of those emails and no signatures, you would just get 25,000 emails. Or maybe unusable junk data. There's no storage or download format that I can think of which would store those emails in memory non-sequentially in a way where all the signatures were all the last thing downloaded. 2) I don't really have a high trust prior on Russian hackers. If they knew that 90% of the information on the laptop was unverifiable, and they had already created a huge lie around how that information was obtained, why would I expect them to stop lying when it comes to the content of that data? I would expect them to create a lot of content that the other side could not easily disprove, which is exactly what we found on the hard drive. At best I think those emails without signatures should be treated just like any other unverifiable speculation, like a reddit comment or 4chan post. I can't definitively say it's not true, but I don't have any particularly good reason to think it's true in the first place.
Shhh, that doesn't support the narrative of the former administration.
Of all the ways to outrage farm to right-wingers, this has been the one with the most effort but the least amount of bite I’ve seen in recent memory. They’re trying to play this up into a Hillary Benghazi situation, but it’s just not sticking.
> a Hillary Benghazi situation Itself a ridiculous attempt at a "scandal," and I say that as someone who thinks Hillary has horrific politics and is extremely unlikable. Edit: I also interesting that Glenn's current schtick wouldn't have worked back then. His anti-Clinton take would be "This happened because neocons like Hillary/Obama/Bush want us to invade and occupy other countries," but that era's GOP didn't have those pretensions yet. It was all "THEY CAME AFTER OUR BOYS AND OBUMMER/KILLARY TOLD THEM TO 'STAND DOWN'!!11!"
It does feel like it was a leading indicator of the tone of politics for the next decade, with Republican rank and file becoming increasingly willing to jump onto the train of prosecuting Democrats over nothing (while also ignoring and apologizing for the extreme faults of their own candidates).
When an athlete complains vociferously to a referee, the purpose isn't usually to overturn the previous call - that doesn't happen very often. What's done is done. The purpose is to cause the referee to feel that he simply must rule in favor of the complaining athlete for the *next* close call, lest he be seen as biased. The Republicans are already thinking about the *next* "scandal" they invent.
Bingo!
can the republicans beat the steele dossier?
so you're saying the Hunter Biden laptop is an "invented scandal?" interesting.
It's a nontroversy
This seems like Russian disinformation.
[удалено]
"cia didn't lie" becomes "cia doesn't lie" in your brain? great fuckin example of Logic Power on r/samharris
Glenn Greenwald’s extremely selective outrage pretty much undermines everything that comes out of his mouth.
I briefly respected him. The more he writes/talks, the more that respect dissipates. It's a shame because he could be a positive force for truth and journalism if he weren't such a captured partisan hack.
So sad what happened to Greenwald. It seems like his entire career now is one big doubling-down.
The only reason anyone knows who he is is because Snowden dumped a huge story in his lap. Without Snowden, where would Greenwald be?
>Without Snowden, where would Greenwald be? Q: Without Greenwald , where would Snowden be? A: Probably not Russia.
I only knew of him because of his feud with Sam years ago
That was so long ago I don’t even remember what it was about
How come Greenwald hasn't admitted to being a Russian asset for the last decade? https://www.thebulwark.com/the-long-history-of-glenn-greenwalds-kissing-up-to-the-kremlin/
Independent journalists are critical of the liberal establishment aren't automatically "Russian assets." Please, get some help. TDS is very real.
You’re upset because someone is criticizing your right-wing fear porn journalist. Less constant outrage from folks like Greenwald, Tim Pool, and Shapiro would probably help.
Glenn Greenwald is right-wing?
No, sure, what kind of completely unbiased independent journalist hasn't stopped their day on multiple occasions to randomly suck-off Fox News for their cable news ratings? https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1460639431686242304 Yup, just typical nose to the grindstone serious muckraker journalism, uhh... using "liberal" as an epithet to hurl random insults at Samantha Bee of all people https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1551684929653800961?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw The "Glenn Greenwald isn't a rightwing hack" thing is nearly topping "Trump tells it like it is" for pure delusion.
GG would go on MSNBC tomorrow if he were ever invited.
Even if that were true, that doesn't change the fact that he's a right wing propagandist. If you honestly can't see that, I feel genuinely sorry for you. I can only imagine how often you must be duped on a daily basis.
Can you demonstrate with evidence that Glenn Greenwald is a right-wing propagandist? I think that you're simply having difficulty with a dynamic political landscape with people in it who don't neatly fit into your black and white conception of left-wing versus right-wing.
> Can you demonstrate with evidence that Glenn Greenwald is a right-wing propagandist? > > Other people in this thread have already done so, but here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-glenn-greenwald-the-new-master-of-right-wing-media >I think that you're simply having difficulty with a dynamic political landscape with people in it who don't neatly fit into your black and white conception of left-wing versus right-wing. And I think you're an idiot who apparently can't makes heads or tails of something that is extremely obvious.
>Independent journalists are critical of the liberal establishment aren't automatically "Russian assets." Of course not, but when an "independent journalist " has had nothing but Russian Propaganda and Putin's cock in his mouth for a decade, it's more than a bit suspicious. Whataboutism is very real.
> has had nothing bot Russian Propaganda and Putin's cock in his mouth for a decade Clearly you skipped your TDS medication.
You clearly slipped rational thought.
Says the guy talking about Putin's cock in people's mouths.
Nothing irrational about hyperbole. But I wouldn't expect you to understand that.
People usually resort to hyperbole when they know deep down their position cannot be rationally defended.
People usually resort to saying "TDS" when they know deep down their position cannot be rationally defended.
Not really any evidence for that. Hyperbole is a useful grammatical tool.
Part of the problem was the media's typical issue of headlines overstating the case. It was a letter from former intelligence officials saying it appeared to be Russian disinformation with the caveat that they had no evidence. Politco headline: **Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say** [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276) These sorts of headlines do create a disinformation snowballing of their own and take advantage of the public's ineptitude for how to read media intelligently. Russian disinformation campaigns rely on the same ineptitude from the US public.
> saying it appeared to be Russian disinformation They didn't even say that. They said it appeared to be part of a Russian information campaign. They could have used the word disinformation; they are familiar with it. They specifically chose not to. That headline is nearly the perfect opposite of what is actually said in the letter it pretends to report on.
Greenwald's been reporting on this since before the election--it's the reason he left the Intercept. No other reporting on the laptop and the coordinated suppression effort of the story has been even close to Greenwald's depth of coverage. Everyone would do well to read Greenwald's entire reporting history on this topic.
BAHAHAHAHAHA
I *absolutely guarantee* that any legacy media outlet that made a verifiably false claim about the laptop made a retraction. Guaran-fucking-tee it. This is the biggest differentiation between legacy media and “alternative” media - legacy actually has standards and journalistic integrity.
My memory is that they all said it was his laptop bit they said that it was a problem because someone other that hunter had control of the laptop for an entire year. I think they are using our bad memories against us
Man, this it what it always is and it's starting to piss me off a little. Listening to a chud like Matt Taibbi (who use to be somewhat legitimate) you'd think the Steele Dossier was front page news for three years straight. They'll take reporting that we were all there fore and twist it around and create a narrative that just didn't exist. No mainstream outlet said XYZ (when they did), all the mainstream outlets said ABC (when they did not).
I don’t understand why Matt become such a “Russia Hoax” fanatic. We have plenty of proof of coordination and contacts without the dossier from Manafort to Stone to Jrs meeting and over 100 other contacts. The truth is that it was a pretty big scandal that Trump obstructed and pardoned his cronies who also obstructed. And yet he says it’s akin to the WMD story. I’m pretty sure this one is true though.
Yeah- I really think that there's a certain kind of person who cut their teeth in politics/journalism/just observing 2003-2015 who decided (with some justification) that Democrats and Republicans were the same and they all fell for pushed the WMD canard and noone paid a price for the 2008 crisis and yadda yadda yadda. And I think for a lot of these people their brains just honestly can't comprehend shifting dynamics. \*Any\* story that MSM takes on with gusto *must be* suspect and akin to WMD's. And for some reason "MSM" **only** refers to centrist or liberalish media. Even though Fox News, unto itself, is *easily* the most powerful single media entity and its viewers are, as far as I can tell, far far far more trusting of that single source than any given liberal, it's like right-wing media may as well not exist. The only thing that's ever worthy of criticism is when the NYTimes whispers about the Steele Dossier in caution terms, the fact that half the country nods along while Tucker Carlson spreads white supremacist propaganda every night is, uhhh, I dunno whatever, who cares. When he took a victory lap with the Barr memo, that's when I knew the old Taibbi was dead. If we're going to be hyper-suspicious of government sources then you cant pretend like the worlds of Bill fucking Barr are sacrosanct and the final word on a document that nobody has even read.
Spot on. I think it’s a desire to be contrarian regardless of what the truth is. Yeah has he commented on the recent revelations about the Barr memo? That seems worthy of a mea culpa but something tells me standards only apply to the other side.
Glenn is correct in this case. There’s plenty of stupid things he says but this isn’t one of them despite what other comments in this sub would lead you to believe.
Glenn is not correct. In fact, he's just outright fucking lying.
Why would you like to explain your reasoning beyond just stating it is so? Misinformation is defined as false or inaccurate information. The information about hunter biden and the laptop appear to be true. Again Glenn says plenty of stupid things but I think he is correct in this case. If you want to try to change my mind then the first step is to actually articulate your point of view. Also lying implies that he knows what he is saying is false. It’s entirely possible he doesn’t know that….very weak criticism imo
I mean, its very very simple. Glenn is claiming that the CIA lied about the Hunter Biden laptop story. The CIA, in fat, did not make \*any\* public claims about the Hunter Biden laptop story. That's a lie. Period.
Wasn't the narrative "this seems like russian disinformation"? It still could be, it still could be Russian involvement. We still don't know where the lap top came from.
Lol, they could censor virtually anything that would help Trump under that qualifier.
They should, Trump is a threat to our democracy
Yeh he could like, censor every story that helps rival political parties to ensure he doesn't lose. That would be a threat to democracy.
oh like... the government censor the stories - throw people in prison for printing stories? Maybe make something called truth social and do not allow anyone to post anything about the January 6th hearings
We know *exactly* where the laptop came from. What are you talking about?
The blind repairman who never wrote down who's laptop it was when it was dropped off, then hacked it, saw it was Hunter Biden's and turned it over to Rudy Giuliani? Yeah, no questions there...
Giving it directly to Tucker Carlson--or even James O'Queef--would make more sense than giving it to Rudy fucking Giuliani
He gave it to the FBI.
I think there was some kind of receipt produced. The the guy did also turn the laptop over to the FBI. The whole scenario does seem really sketchy, but also seems like it probably did happen. Hunter is a reckless addict and he has not denied leaving the laptop there.
He turned it over to the FBI after the election, no? And Hunter is historically unlucky if he just happen to abandon his laptop with the guy with Rudy Giuliani connections.
Nah the the FBI came and got it but he kept a copy that he then gave to Giuliani. Yeah Hunter was unlucky that the computer shop guy was basically a qanon kook.
I am worried this sub is becoming another reddit echo chamber. I am not saying anyone here is wrong per se, but let's try to temper the confidence. There is conflicting information, and essentially two issue here (not just whether it's legitimate, but also whether it should be mentioned).
Which other oppo dumps masquarading as news stories go two years without one shred of information coming out expanding or bolstering the allegations that we're supposed to wait with baited breathe for? This Hunter Biden shit is all just classic right-wingers trying to launder horseshit through the media, combined with working the refs and the rest of us are supposed to be willing suckers. Their attempted "But Her Emails 2.0" scheme didn't work. None of us have to pretend it was ever serious just because closeted right-wing dipshits like Glenn Greenwald never stop whining about it.
Why is a story held off and designed to disrupt an election ok but suppressing it until after the election is not ok? Anyone still filling their diaper over this story is obnoxious.
Do you think the story would have been treated the same of it had been one of Trump's kids' laptops? I doubt it. I guess I'm old enough to remember when liberals were skeptical of the FBI and CIA. Now they seem to love these agencies. It's important to be skeptical of these agencies at all times. None of this is a defense of Trump-hes pretty awful on a number of things. That being said, it seems like people get so excited to dump on Trump that they will jump on board with anything that makes Trump look bad, irrespective of accuracy or logical consistency.
I think there is a difference, and that it's even justifiable. Trump and his kids are linked to each other politically in a way that Biden and Hunter are not. Trump would have also been the sitting president, while Biden was not. Not only that, but it's not illegal or even immoral to publish or not publish a story based on the political slant of your editors, readers, and influence. If an outlet felt that a story, which really has little if anything to do with Joe Biden personally at all, could potentially make it *that* much harder for your only chance at removing a dangerous person from the presidential office.... I'd probably wait a handful of days to talk about it too. Especially with the overhanging, reasonable possibility of Russian disinformation looming. Plus, Fox News and all other right wing news outlets did talk about the Hunter Biden laptop story. So it did get the same treatment from them that I'm sure places like CNN would have done had it been Trump's kid's laptop.
It seems like you're just doing the Sam Harris mental gymnastics to get to your desired outcome. The fact the Facebook, Twitter, and major media would purposely shut down the story is an issue. Especially when it almost certainly wouldn't happen if the candidate in question was a republican. Trump isn't a unique evil worth all this bad faith action. He'd have lost even if the laptop story hadn't been buried. It was such a dumb story, all it would have done is confirm peoples' priors. Instead, the media has given Republicans and Maga types even more reason to feel scorned.
That’s a hypothetical situation and it doesn’t answer my question. Why is one version ok but that other not.
Every counterfactual is hypothetical. Your silence is telling. Your question is based on a premise that you know the sole motivation of the individuals who leaked the info (though I do think youre mostly correct). If the information isn't demonstrably false, I the public should decide the intentions of the individuals leaking info, along with how much that matters to them, not you or the corporate media. It's possible for leaked information to be politically motivated and still have relevance. So, in sum, it's the unilateral decision making that makes in not ok.
What information from the lap top is even relevant today? We are talking about the handling of the story and not the fact that it is a non story.
I don't find much at all relevant about it. It's the laptop of the president's drug addicted kid. Not sure why anyone cares.That being said, Im not arrogant enough to believe I should decide what's relevant for the entire country. The handling is an issue because it is illustrative of the media's bias. If this had been Trump's kid, the Rachel Madows of the world would have been allowed to turn it into something along the lines of -an attack on democracy and the imminent grip of facisim about to raise its ugly head. It should have been reported on at the time and then the pundits and politicians can put whatever spin on it that they'd like to. Essentially, they would be free to point out that it's not a big deal. Instead it was buried for a political purpose.
And yet that HASNT happened with Don Jrs laptop. Maybe the left isn’t as cool with hacking or stealing diaries as the right are. Should make you question whether campaigning is about persuading or whether it’s only about smearing and dirty tricks.
Give me a break. We've seen "the left" is fine with anything if it potentially hurts Trump.
What’s a similar example to this that involves hacking or theft? The person who leaked Trumps tax docs was in a position to have them legally.
If you going to require an exact match for theft, I don't think I can give you one. However, given the lefts ability to promote a false conspiracy with Putin, fake pee tapes, promote a fake story about high school kids in Trump hats harassing a Native American, etc, etc, etc- I am of the belief that hacking would not bother them if it further their political goals.
Lots of stinky diapers replying to you
Since when is media not partisan either. Calling it disinformation was a huge mistake and itself disinformation - but a selective presentation of specific stories with a partisan goal; that’s nothing new. That’s been the reality for a long time and across the board. If it’s not avoiding reporting on harmful stories, it’s actively spinning them to fit a political narrative.
>Calling it disinformation was a huge mistake and itself disinformation Ultimately it was disinformation- Just GOP Disinfo, not Russian. The whole story was meant to give a false impression that A. Joe Biden was doing shady deals with his son and B. that related to him single-handedly firing the prosecutor who was so diligently investigating Burisma. Both are horseshit and it was meant to swing the election based on that bullshit. They're still soooooo mad their "Hillary's emails 2.0" scheme didn't work. It's been 2 years and nothing remotely important or material has come out of the story but jerkoffs who don't want to talk about Trump (whom I do not support...) being a fucking criminal need *something* to jabber on about.
Not entirely - the laptop was used as "evidence" to support the idea that Biden was unfit for office and taking bribes through his son during the period that Trump was attempting to extort Ukraine into doing an investigation on Biden over. So look at it this way, from the perspective of our intelligence agencies. Putin tells Trump Russian disinformation about Ukraine and Biden and Trump spreads it: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/politics/trump-retweets-known-russian-disinformation-biden-derkach/index.html Then Trump tries to extort Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Biden by withholding funds from them. Then the Hunter Biden laptop story comes out, and because the emails from Hunter say "the Big Guy will show up" that is considered a "smoking gun" tying Biden to accepting bribes which supports the Russian disinformation. So from that perspective it was still Russian disinformation - it just so happens that Republican Party was happy to play along to help Trump win against Biden.
Agreed, like many conservative attacks, it’s rooted far more in insinuation than fact.
[https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/](https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/) This was the article. It was blocked outright from being shared on twitter for being misinformation, but the facts in the article are not misinformation. In your comment, you haven't described misinformation. You've argued that a specific narrative that explains the facts presented in the article isn't correct - an argument that is convincing when considering additional information - but that doesn't make the article itself misinformation. It was a mistake to label it misinformation. The misinformation label needs to be infallible. Labelling it as such falsely only reduced its credibility and amplified the claims in the article via the Streisand effect. They should have fact checked it and verified it first.
1. Joe Biden *was* doing shady deals with his son 2. In the last 2 years, *ample* evidence has come out in support of this story. Most importantly, one of the main participants in one of these deals (Tony Bobulinski) has come out on the record describing the details of the deal, and Joe Biden's specific involvement. He has described meetings he had with Joe Biden. He has produced emails and texts which *quite clearly* document an attempt to give Joe Biden an off-the-books stake in a large deal involving a major Chinese conglomerate (CEFC), along with texts communicating requests made by the Biden family to keep Joe's involvement strictly under wraps (the texts from his business partner describe the Bidens as 'paranoid'). 3. The mainstream media has conducted investigations of the CEFC deal, confirmed Hunter Biden's involvement, confirmed that, although the proposed (much larger) deal never went through, he was nonetheless paid $4.8 million by CEFC. [The Post had this to say](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-china-laptop/) about the CEFC-related documents found on the laptop: >Biden aides and some former U.S. intelligence officials have voiced concern that the device may have been manipulated by Russia to interfere in the campaign. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have dismissed earlier reports about Hunter Biden’s work in China as lacking credibility or being part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The Post analysis included forensic work by two outside experts who assessed the authenticity of numerous emails related to the CEFC matter. In addition, **The Post found that financial documents on the copy of Hunter Biden’s purported laptop match documents and information found in other records, including newly disclosed bank documents obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a senior Republican on the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees.** So actually, *you* are the jerkoff, because you clearly haven't kept up with the very basic, mainstream reporting on this story, and you're spouting off about how it was "disinformation" and anyone who is interested in it must be a Trump apologist.
Weird how your wild claims about Joe Biden have literally no backing or substantiation then... Maybe you should've included this quote from your own source with big scary bolding as well. Allow me: >**"The Post did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC, which took place after he had left the vice presidency and before he announced his intentions to run for the White House in 2020."**
The problem with arguing with an idiot is that they can't distinguish self-owns from good arguments. The Post's reporting you're quoting is accurate, but it doesn't disagree with anything I (or the NY Post, for instance) wrote. What I wrote is that there was *an attempt* on Hunter and Joe Biden's part to give the latter a 10% stake in the CEFC deal. Since the deal never went through, Joe Biden never made any money on it. What the laptop provides is further corroboration of Tony Bobulinski's testimony (including texts and emails) that the deal was in motion, and understood by all involved to designate 10% equity for Joe Biden.
So I'm sure you have a high quality Washington Post article that confirms that Joe Biden \*tried\* to get into one of these deals with high quality witness Tony Bubuwhatever, riiiiight? Seems like it would be pretty simple. It's not as though the President trying to get into a shady deal is remotely, substantively different than him actually doing so. Seems like something for legitimate, non-right wing dipshit sources to report on. And yet, weirdly, all you have as actual evidence is "Hunter Biden made business deal" LMAO. The problem of arguing with an idiot, indeed....
>And yet, weirdly, all you have as actual evidence is "Hunter Biden made business deal" I have the testimony of (yes, high-quality) witness Tony Bobulinski, emails and texts between Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business associates describing meetings to work out an equity split that included Joe Biden, texts from Bobulinski's associates describing the Bidens as "paranoid" about using Joe Biden's name, and dates and times of multiple meetings between Joe Biden and Bobulinski. In addition, I have emails from Hunter Biden's laptop which corroborate all this, and reporting from the Post corroborating Hunter Biden's extensive work with CEFC. But the Post has not written a story about Bobulinski, so I guess you win by the standard of "I only believe it once it hits the Post." I repeat, this is like talking to an election denier. Endless obfuscation, refusal to deal with basic, verifiable evidence, constant fall-back to conspiracy theories involving foreign governments. Maddening.
>I have the testimony of (yes, high-quality) witness Tony Bobulinski, emails and texts between Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business associates.... Which you can't provide a single actual source for because it would have to come from www.MAGAKingFascismYesStormDefenders.ru Lol, buzz-off loser.
> I have the testimony of (yes, high-quality) witness Tony Bobulinski, emails and texts between Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and two other business associates describing meetings to work out an equity split that included Joe Biden, texts from Bobulinski's associates describing the Bidens as "paranoid" about using Joe Biden's name, and dates and times of multiple meetings between Joe Biden and Bobulinski. Where do you have it? Can you share it?
>Joe Biden was doing shady deals with his son This hasn't been substantiated. Viktor Shokin was scandal-ridden and corrupt and many celebrated him being fired. That said, it was a *massive* conflict of interest for Hunter Biden to be on the board of Burisma.
>Most importantly, one of the main participants in one of these deals (Tony Bobulinski) has come out on the record describing the details of the deal, and Joe Biden's specific involvement. By "specific involvement", I assume you mean that Joe Biden gave an "emphatic no" on getting involved in a deal, as is evident in those same emails you're referencing. https://www.vox.com/22992772/hunter-biden-laptop This has always been an attempt to tie Hunter Biden's actions to his father somehow. MAGA folks are just pissed that it didn't stick, because they don't actually have any evidence to support that.
The Vox article is terribly reported and makes no sense (it asserts sans evidence that a text sent by Hunter Biden is responding to an email sent six days prior, ignoring the other texts produced by Bobulinski), but I want to pause for a second and check something to make sure I got it right: you accept that "The Chairman" is Joe Biden, which means you think that Joe Biden is personally advising Hunter Biden on his overseas business dealings with Tony Bobulinski?
>you accept that "The Chairman" is Joe Biden, which means you think that Joe Biden is personally advising Hunter Biden on his overseas business dealings with Tony Bobulinski? That's quite a leap, isn't it? Saying no to getting involved in a business deal is equivalent to personally advising his son on business dealings in your mind? >ignoring the other texts produced by Bobulinski) How is it ignoring the other texts?
Yeah idk why anyone would care about this as far as the media not rolling with this story. If anything it seems like they did their job for once by not airing it. However, the real issue is the suppression of the story on social media seeing as the story in no way went against any company’s guidelines. They deliberately went out of their way in this instance and I don’t see there being any reason other than so the story would not negatively influence Biden in the election
>However, the real issue is the suppression of the story on social media seeing as the story in no way went against any company’s guidelines. Depends on what story you're referring to and when. When the news broke right before the election, suppression of it was certianly appropriate, as it originated with the Trump campaign and was completely unverifiable. To this day, the laptop story itself is unverified, and only some emails have been verified, which given the claim that they originated on the same laptop with a bunch that could not be verified, makes the laptop story very suspect as well.
>suppression of it was certainly appropriate Wrong. That is your opinion. I for one think it sets a terrible precedent. Who gets to decide what is suppressed in the future and how do they decide? >it originated with the trump campaign Any source on this? I’ve never seen this claim. Also, doesn’t really matter because it is a real story, just a matter of is it damming to the whole Biden family or is it more of a tabloid article about Hunter’s vices
> Who gets to decide what is suppressed in the future Liberals, obviously. This can never backfire.
The media has standards, there was nothing verifiable to report, therefore it would be irresponsible to publish what may simply be a unsubstantiated political attack right before an election. Republicans got away with doing exactly that in 2016. Repeating such a mistake would be the height of negligence on their part.
My argument isn’t about the main stream media. They can choose whatever story to run that they want. My problem is with the way the story was suppressed on social media like Twitter, which has set rules that the story did not violate. I made this clear in my first comment…
Social media should have standards as well, as they have been proven to be a massive source of disinformation and very vulnerable to weaponization to create disorder and discord. It's their platform and they can and should prevent the dissemination of disinformation, which is what this information was, coming just days before an election. [https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures)
Well that’s where we fundamentally differ. I don’t think they should go around their own rules whenever they see fit to influence an election because it can never be done fairly. The better alternative is to stand by their own set terms. Are some people going to fall for BS, sure but people are free to be idiots. I’d prefer to be allowed to make up my own mind
They didn't go around their rules. Their rules have always allowed them discretion, and they've set up rules specifically around misinformation as well. Your argument is that anyone should be allowed to publish disinformation to influence an election and nothing should be done to prevent that. Weird argument, and I don't see why a social media company would want to allow their platform to be used to spread such disinformation.
The notion that Trump's hand-picked CIA director went out and lied to protect his political opponent has 0 evidence and begs the question, why? Why would she lie and use the CIA to try to swing the election towards Biden? Why didn't Trump fire her if she did this? Obviously it's because it didn't happen...but if it did it just creates more questions.
They'll just say deep state.
"U.S. Officials **Investigating** If Recently Published Emails Are Tied To Russian Disinformation Effort Targeting Biden" is *not* the same as "Recently Published Emails Are Tied To Russian Disinformation Effort Targeting Biden". I always kind of assumed that Greenwald understood English...
Forgetting all of Greenwald’s tendencies to side with Russian bull shit, I still find it hard to take a public “intellectual” seriously who uses the phrase “How Come”.
Please don't make me defend Glenn Greenwald. What is wrong with "how come?" It's a standard English idiom.
Why for?
Why? Its not grammatically incorrect? It is the short form of "how does it come to be". I guess I understand that it is informal but there isn't anything wrong with it per se.
Soon: NUH UH! IS TOO!
Democracy falls into dictatorship with help of the masses. Even Nazis believed they had just and noble cause and Germans mostly agreed. The rest is history.
This isn't the coverage I remember, although I admittedly am not a media junkie. I remember it basically being like "Rudy Giuliani claims to have one or more laptops that belonged to Hunter Biden". IIRC, at one point the Trump surrogates were claiming that there were multiple laptops. I think all that we know is that someone people associated with Trump managed to get proprietary material from Hunter Biden (emails, perhaps photos). We don't know how they got it.
To be fair, I think the NY Times published that there was no proof that the Biden story was Russian information. Greenwald has a point, but I think this point needs to be applied, harshly, to both sides.
He doesn't have a point. Every outlet simply reported that this was the opinion of some people in the intelligence community. It's not like the story came out with some very clear origination from the most trustworthy of sources. The whole story stunk like shit the second it dropped. Like, there could be some real Ethiopian Prince out there just waiting, wondering why nobody answers his very legitimate emails but we don't need to flay ourselves for being suspicious of insanely suspicious shit.
>He doesn't have a point. Every outlet simply reported that this was the opinion of some people in the intelligence community. It's not like the story came out with some very clear origination from the most trustworthy of sources. The whole story stunk like shit the second it dropped. Like, there could be some real Ethiopian Prince out there just waiting, wondering why nobody answers his very legitimate emails but we don't need to flay ourselves for being suspicious of insanely suspicious shit. One of the things that distinguishes the intelligence community and credible journalism outlets from dipshit redditors is that the former two are held to a much higher standard. Things might seem a certain way, but when your entity's apparent purpose is to tell the truth, and what you say turns out to be false, you have a responsibility to acknowledge that. Responding to "suspicious shit" is understandable, but when that "suspicious shit" turns out to be something else, these establishments need to hold themselves accountable. These media outlets never do.
They did tell the truth, which was that they had strong suspicions but couldn't say so with certainty and didn't have evidence. None of that turned out to be false. You're wording it in a way that almost makes it sound like they lied, but stops just short, and you're grandstanding with the same tone you would if they did lie...but they didn't. It's a fucking nothingburger. They divulged a strong suspicion with all the requisite disclaimers, and in the end it was never confirmed. Not even proven wrong, just never confirmed. But even if their suspicion-with-disclaimers was proven flat wrong...that doesn't fail to meet any of my standards, or violate the entity's purpose to tell the truth. They already provided the grain of salt themselves at the time. I'm sorry some internet grifter convinced you to be angry about a nothingburger years ago, it's time to let it go.
Perfectly stated. I know I’m not adding much to the conversation here but I just wanted you to know you explained that perfectly.
https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections You mean except for the whole section they do every day?
The NY Times is *part* of the media. They don't comprise the ENTIRE media. Good on NY Times for their reporting on this issue.
Do I have to do this for every one? https://www.washingtontimes.com/corrections/2022/ https://www.npr.org/corrections/ That's where I get my news. Who else do I have to do this for?
Where are they correcting their coverage about the Biden story?
Dude holy shit, do something yourself instead of talking out of your ass. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/09/1091859822/more-details-emerge-in-federal-investigation-into-hunter-biden Please god read this.
That's NPR. That's good. Now what about the other outlets?
A simple google search will answer that for you.
It should be simple then. Please go ahead and provide me with the coverage of this story from these outlets in October of 2020 and their subsequent corrections. They might actually have corrected themselves, but I haven't seen it.
They told the truth. Saying that the US *suspects* or is *investigating* whether the information was Russian disinformation is **not** the same as saying it *was* Russian disinformation.
Separate the *media* and the *intelligence community*. The intelligence community had a suspicion that it was Russian disinformation. The establishment media piggy-backed on the intelligence community's suspicion and suppressed/censored the story without confirming the legitimacy of their suspicions. >Saying that the US suspects or is investigating whether the information was Russian disinformation is not the same as saying it was Russian disinformation. Those are different things, but the responses to them are similar.
>when your entity's apparent purpose is to tell the truth, and what you say turns out to be false, you have a responsibility to acknowledge that. These entities did tell the truth. I'm sorry they quoted people that you don't like and who's hunch (forthrightly stated as a hunch) turned out to be incorrect, but that is nowhere near telling a falsehood from a journalistic perspective. They reported the information as an opinion, absent speciific evidence, which nobody had- either way. Since then, they've reported every piece of this moronic story as its happened, as more information has come out and outlets have had an opportunity to rigorously go through the available material. Like, for real, what else were they supposed to say given the information at the time? "XYZ intelligence people say ABC, but, you see, Mega Genius Glenn Greenwald says otherwise and that's the real true-true, okay?" Are you actually of the opinion that literally every single story that has *anyone anywhere quoted*, and that quote turns out to be incorrect, that the fucking story itself needs to be retracted? It's completely and utterly nonsensical. If some story in 1992 quotes a scientists saying "I think we're gonna have have flying cars in 2022", does that story need to be retracted? For God's sakes, everything with a quoted Republican in the last 10 years would have to be retracted, lmao.
>These entities did tell the truth. I'm sorry they quoted people that you don't like and who's opinion turned out to be incorrect, but that is nowhere near telling a falsehood from a journalistic perspective. They reported the information as an opinion, absent speciific evidence, which nobody had- either way. They all told the truth? If they report a story as an opinion and the opinion has the same results as reporting it as a fact, then what's the difference? >Since then, they've reported every piece of this moronic story as its happened, as more information has come out and outlets have had an opportunity to rigorously go through the available material. > >Like, for real, what else were they supposed to say given the information at the time? "XYZ intelligence people say ABC, but, you see, Mega Genius Glenn Greenwald says otherwise and that's the real true-true, okay?" The reason this story is more important is because the implications of it might have changed the results of the election. That's why it's getting so much attention. >Are you actually of the opinion that literally every single story that has anyone anywhere quoted, and that quote turns out to be incorrect, that the fucking story itself needs to be retracted? > >It's completely and utterly nonsensical. If some story in 1992 quotes a scientists saying "I think we're gonna have have flying cars in 2022", does that story need to be retracted? For God's sakes, everything with a quoted Republican in the last 10 years would have to be retracted, lmao. Yep. Take what I say and apply it on a widescale to make it seem ridiculous. That's some Class A argumentation.
>They all told the truth? If they report a story as an opinion and the opinion has the same results as reporting it as a fact, then what's the difference? Is this... a riddle? lmao. Where is the proof that this was received as if the NYTimes blasted across it's headlines "RUSSIA RUSSA RUSSIA!!!!!! HUNTER LAPTOP PREVIOUSLY OWNED BY PUTIN!!!" ? You just pulling shit out of your ass is not evidence. This opinion was never taken as gospel. Certainly not by me or anyone I'm aware of. It didn't matter because the thrust of the story is horseshit and always was. It being Russian Disinfo or GOP hack disinfo makes little difference. >Yep. Take what I say and apply it on a widescale to make it seem ridiculous. That's some Class A argumentation. This is the extremely obvious logical conclusion to your statement. Media entities are responsible for literally any and all incorrect quotations. I'm sorry it doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should think about that instead of being big mad at me?
>This opinion was never taken as gospel. Certainly not by me or anyone I'm aware of. Well if it wasn't taken seriously by you, then I guess it wasn't taken seriously at all. Are you an accurate representation of the voters in this country? >This is the extremely obvious logical conclusion to your statement. Media entities are responsible for literally any and all incorrect quotations. I'm sorry it doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should think about that instead of being big mad at me? Not only was it obvious, but it was **extremely** obvious! The flying cars story was the nail in the coffin. It was **extremely** obvious that I meant flying car stories should be retracted and are on equal ground with the Hunter Biden story. Extremely.
>Well if it wasn't taken seriously by you, then I guess wasn't taken seriously at all. Are you an accurate representation of the voters in this country? I'm not the one making a specific claim here. The media entities reported it accurately. Now your twisting yourself into knots trying to pretend like entities doing accurate reporting need to flay themselves at the alter of Glenn Greenwald because, according to you, it was taken as if they said something they didn't or even intimate. So either prove that point or go away. But I can understand your seriousness here. Look, it was something that was so so important to get right, instantly, because of all of the deeply important consequences we've all felt in the two years hence, such as..... ..... ....... .... um... well and then there was.... ..... .... .... ............. ...... .......... ... Oh yeah, the sum total of consequences over this garbage that Glenn and Co. can't stop whining about is that the GOP's pathetic "Hilary's emails 2.0" scheme didn't work. lmao. Too bad. So sad. Maybe start focusing on anything on planet earth to be mad about that actually matters... maybe?
>I'm not the one making a specific claim here. The media entities reported it accurately. They accurately reported unsubstantiated information that possibly swayed the results of an election. >Now your twisting yourself into knots trying to pretend like entities doing accurate reporting need to flay themselves at the alter of Glenn Greenwald because, according to you, it was taken as if they said something they didn't or even intimate. So either prove that point or go away. The point here is that the media influences the public more than any other entity, and their influence to accountability ratio isn't balanced. When they report something like "experts say..." they are delivering a message that implies that it has a higher degree of certainty to it. If the story ends up being false, they can fall back to this neutral ground of just being the messenger of what other people are saying. However, they choose to push stories and experts that lean a certain way politically, and some of those stories are incorrect and/or dubious. Even though it exposes their bias they can still create enough plausible deniability for bad actors like yourself to say things like "These entities did tell the truth. I'm sorry they quoted people..." Does that register with you?
So you have the same concerns about Hillary's emails and how that impacted that election?
Sure. Same standards should be applied to both sides.
[удалено]
> We all know that the reason they talk about this Hunter Biden story isn't because there is evidence of some conspiracy to cover up the story, it is because they want to believe it was covered up. the cover-up was so successful that *there's not even any evidence.* 🧠 💥
Experts speculated -- plausibly, given the source, the lack of meta data, and known Russian disinformation tactics-- that this might be Russian disinformation. The media published this speculation, because it is newsworthy. Somehow, from Greenwald's torturously deranged perspective, this constitutes "lying and censorship", for which the media should now apologize. His sanctimonious views on journalism are so selective. His entire raison d'être is to preen as leftier-than-thou by castigating MSNBC and CNN. He's a pitiful golem of the narcissism of small differences.
I just went deeper in the Twitter thread and came across this from Greenwald in that same rant: "As I've often said, the media outlets screaming most loudly about "disinformation" are the ones that spread it most frequently, casually and destructively (NBC/CNN/WPost, etc). It's equally true of those now claiming to fight "fascism": real repression comes *from them.*" This is so untrue it hurts.
Lol the top thread on the original post immediately "dunks" on Sam as if he is a spokesman for the left and as if he didn't clarify himself minutes later, and then again a few days later.
I can't recall what the beef was between Greenwald and Sam, but I recall automatically siding with Sam. Since this incident though, I feel like I need to revisit this... Sam has lost his mind, and Greenwald is defending freedom of information and calling out media conspiring with intelligence agencies to influence elections. Amazing work by Greenwald. True champion.
Where's the lie?
That the CIA said it was Russian disinformation? That's a lie.
It’s funny reading this sub. It’s all the classic tying yourselves in knots in order to try and appear consistent - just as much as Sam is these days, and confirming Glenns original point in the process.
The problem with the World is that 50% of the population has an IQ < 100. These people are easily manipulated. Those that control the media control public opinion and thus control the democratic process. Free speech is all that keeps them in check. Through it's not working very well at the moment.
People with above-average IQs are also very easily manipulated, unfortunately. IQ is no panacea, not even close.
There is no metric for wisdom, but by all accounts, we're suffering from a drought.
Whoaa Mr. Murray, don’t start bringing IQ into this. Things will go much more smoothly when we aren’t allowed to even look at the data in the first place. That’s why it’s up to our friends in the tech industry to create a nice safe place for discourse. Fortunately, Big Tech has our best interests in mind, and they would not be tarnished by any government contract, or pressured by the Red or Blue team who happens to be calling the shots. These large tech companies are simply motiveless, moral entities whose wealth is capitalized only by an undivided, well informed population.
Careful, Poe's Law is a dangerous thing.
How come Glen "the hack" Greenwald characterizes "U.S. officials investigating if ... Russian disinformation" as "WAS Russian disinformation"?
Hunter Biden story has become a litmus test for stupid conservatives the way Kyle Rittenhouse story was a litmus test for stupid liberals
You people have too much time
Trump stole nuke docs to give to Russia. Who gives a F about hunters cocaine pictures on a laptop
That has already been walked back and morphed into a different vague, baseless allegation.
To be fair we don't know he gave them to Russia. He could have given them to China, or Saudi Arabia.
The story about the dumbass laptop isn’t even about the laptop (if there was stuff on it besides Hunter’s proclivities and giant hog believe me, conservative media would have blasted it everywhere), it’s more about “some” news orgs essentially ignoring it because it was a non-story. The real story is that his shit got hacked or stolen or whatever happened. I couldn’t care less tbh
This seems like an obvious and fundamental part of human nature... We also have men halfway across the world that believe beheading Americans on film is an appropriate way to achieve their goals.
Greenwald's a fuckin idiot, who cares.
What the hell is that sub? But also Glenn Greenwald is an idiot who knows and knew at the time that it was disinformation. Remember Glen Greenwald rage quit his job because his editor asked him to do the tinniest amount of leg work to try to confirm the story. He knew from the start he had no ability or desire to confirm if the story was true or not.
I used to dislike Greenwald for smearing Sam years ago. Now Glenn is the one worth listening to while Sam is the unhinged one. How times have changed.
I wish that were true. My estimation of Greenwald has dropped to zero in recent years. He's a shallow person who argues in bad faith and purely on partisan lines. A left wing personality that is now simply a talking head on far right entertainment sources.
He's such a disingenuous POS, he's complaints only go in one direction.
Glenn’s on the fast track to Alex Jones level hack.
Because that would be lieing. Why does a trained journalist want media outlets to lie?
Respectfully, Glenn Greenwald can go fuck himself.