As we approach the month of December, an argument over the validity of the election continues to rage, with accusations of widespread voter fraud on one side, and complete disinterest and disbelief that the result is anything but flawless on the other. This specific debate will be settled eventually in the courts, with the one exception perhaps being the court of public opinion.
However, there is another area of gross misconduct which continues to slip beneath the radar, especially as the guilty party attempts to erase recent history and proceed with their chosen candidate. Such an area is the undeniable part the legacy media played in protecting Joe Biden and inconsistently and dishonestly targeting Donald Trump in order to achieve a victory for the Democratic party.
In simple terms, the legacy media rigged the election in favor of Biden.
The “very fine people on both sides” lie.
The most impactful and pervasive lie promulgated by the legacy media during Trump’s first term was that the president had referred to white supremacists and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in 2017 as “very fine people.” Despite the irrefutable fact that Trump specifically rejected these groups, saying that “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists. They should be condemned totally,” the media delighted in driving a narrative of equivalence between fascists and those protesting fascism.
This lie provided the foundation for much of the Democratic party’s attack against Trump, allowing Biden and the Left to ignore — and even subtly endorse — the violent actions of groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Moreover, the vile mischaracterization of Trump as a white supremacist — for which no evidence was ever provided — was steadily fed to Americans, alongside relentless demands by the legacy media that Trump “finally” denounce white supremacism, regardless of how many times he had already done so.
The goal? Portray Donald Trump and his administration as synonymous with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, meaning that any alternative is likely to be viewed as preferable. It just so happened that the alternative presented by the legacy media was the party they have always preferred.
Hunter Biden? Who?
Only a few weeks before the November election, the New York Post published a now infamous story titled “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” The piece discussed emails which indicated that Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, had introduced the then-Vice President “to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
Other areas of Hunter Biden’s personal and professional life have also been under scrutiny, including allegations regarding a $3.5 million wire transfer from a Russian billionaire and Hunter Biden’s travel on Air Force Two alongside Joe Biden which coincided with significant business deals. The issue here is not whether or not such accusations are true. After all, Hunter Biden would certainly not be the first Biden — nor the first family member of a powerful politician — to profit from their surname. The issue is the media’s complicit refusal to investigate, and their clear desire to bury the story, partnered with social media companies like Twitter who were all too happy to oblige.
Glenn Greenwald even resigned from The Intercept, an outlet he co-founded, after he was told “his article would only be published if critical points against the Democratic candidate were removed.” For a story that dominated right-wing media, a huge proportion of Biden voters remained blissfully unaware of the hidden scandal. As reported by The Daily Wire, a recent survey showed that 45.1% of 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states knew nothing of the Hunter Biden story. 9.4% said they would have changed their vote, had they known.
“Russia, Russia, Russia,” and other conspiracy theories via anonymous sources.
For the entirety of Trump’s first term, the legacy media have wholeheartedly embraced any story which could be used to damage or attack President Trump, with a complete disregard for any notion of investigative integrity, evidence, or reality.
These are too numerous to list, but the obvious example is the media’s obsession with “Russian collusion.” According to NewsBusters, between the dates of Jan 20th 2017 and July 20th 2019 alone, 2,634 minutes of airtime was dedicated to the subject of the “Russia probe” by ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news alone. When the Mueller Investigation “failed” — as described so objectively by The New Yorker — journalists either continued to promote the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian asset, or moved silently on to the next “bombshell.”
The media embraced the word of anonymous sources which claimed that Trump referred to veterans as “losers” or “suckers,” with a complete disinterest in the many on-the-record witnesses who debunked such accusations; the media stood silent as Kamala Harris and Joe Biden fueled shockingly anti-science anti-vaccine conspiracy theories; and it was the media who helped promote multiple conspiracy theories about Trump launching a Hitlerian coup or “stealing the election” by manipulating the U.S. Postal Service. The same media, of course, who now insist that the same election whose legitimacy hung by a thread on November 2nd is now built of nothing but impenetrable concrete and glistening steel.
COVID-19, and Andrew Cuomo’s nostrils.
In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic is actually quite easy to analyze, affecting almost every country in the world to varying degrees depending on their population, climate, and political system. The pandemic was caused by unforgivable malfeasance on the part of the Chinese communist party, whose continued lies and deceit were enabled and defended by the World Health Organization.
However, with COVID-19 appearing as the last arrow in the Democrat party’s sparse quiver against Donald Trump, the media pivoted to fully support a concerted and coordinated effort to characterize every negative outcome due to COVID-19 as a direct result of Trump and his supposed ineptitude.
COVID-19 was presented as a uniquely American problem, as if the pandemic wasn’t ravaging countries across the world. Trump’s admittedly inconsistent rhetoric regarding COVID-19 was condemned, while Democrat inconsistency was ignored. Death rates in Republican states were blamed on Republican governors and/or Trump, while higher death rates in Democrat states such as New York, New Jersey, or Michigan due to disastrous nursing home mandates were swept under the rug.
Most disgustingly, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been praised as a hero of the pandemic — even being nominated for an Emmy for his “masterful use of TV to inform and calm people” — despite his state experiencing the largest COVID-19 death toll in the nation. When interviewed by his “objective journalist” brother, jokes about Gov. Cuomo’s nostril size seemed far more important than the 34,000 people who have perished under his leadership.
"Is it true that when you were having the test administered, you inhaled and the doctor’s finger went all the way up your nose and got stuck?"
CNN's Chris Cuomo pulls out massive cotton swab to tease brother Gov. Andrew Cuomo after live test https://t.co/BravZj8anz pic.twitter.com/kKbuJjiyOQ
— The Hill (@thehill) May 21, 2020
Riots are either peaceful or part of “Trump’s America.”
After George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May, cities across the country were rocked by protests, riots, and looting. As groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa took control of the streets in cities like Portland, New York, and Seattle, the media attempted to push two antithetical positions. The first was the now clichéd argument that the riots were “mostly peaceful,” often used to support the ridiculous notion that riots were simply not happening. The other was the claim that any and all violence was the result of far-Right antagonism at the behest of Donald Trump. In simple terms, Trump was to blame for the sporadically imaginary violence.
It didn’t matter, of course, that violence was permitted to run rampant in cities that tended to have Democrat police departments, Democrat mayors, Democrat governors, Democrat Congressmen and women, and Democrat Senators. The media only started to condemn the violence in any significant way when, as described by Don Lemon, the riots were “showing up in the polling.” Throughout, the legacy media intentionally conflated any and all interactions with police (or indeed private citizens) as racist if the skin colors of the purported “aggressors” and “victims” fit the bill, with no concern for the facts of the case or any relevant context.
The Democrats have a simple strategy when it comes to “racial” violence: “blame up or blame right.” When Black Lives Matter protests and corresponding riots broke out under Barack Obama, such violence wasn’t a symptom of “Obama’s America,” but of the “system.” When violence broke out under Donald Trump, however, it was presented as a symptom of “Trump’s America.” The Democrats leveraged such logic in a tactic of extortion, with the legacy media as willing co-conspirators.
Believe all Women … except Tara Reade.
When it comes to accusations of sexual assault, the Left have a simple template. If the accusation is made against a conservative, then the “victim” is a hero. If not, you will never hear their name.
When Christine Blasey Ford came forward to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault decades prior during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, she was used to spark the absurd “Believe All Women” slogan. She also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, which was recognized as 2018’s “Cover of the Year.” Kavanaugh’s other accusers, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetmick, also received avid media attention, including profiles written by the New York Times, including details of their claims. When these accusations fell apart, their names slipped from the narrative.
Trump’s sexual exploits and behavior have also received heavy scrutiny, with Business Insider running a piece titled “The 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct,” and who can forget the scandals regarding alleged payments to “porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal?”
When Tara Reade, a former staffer in Biden’s Senate office, alleged that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, the same “Believe All Women” logic was suddenly nowhere to be found. CNN ran a piece titled “A complicated life and conflicting accounts muddle efforts to understand Tara Reade’s allegation against Joe Biden,” and Politico went with “‘Manipulative, deceitful, user’: Tara Reade left a trail of aggrieved acquaintances.” The issue is not whether these accusations are true or false, but the obvious partisan methods applied by the media in their reporting.
Remember when Kamala Harris endorsed a man she implied was a racist rapist?
Kamala Harris — Joe Biden’s running mate for Vice President — wasn’t always the media’s intersectional darling. Her dismal presidential campaign imploded before the first primary vote, and she didn’t even break into the double digits in California polls … Harris’ home state. Her policy positions were demonstrably self-contradictory, with her healthcare flip-flopping the target of much media criticism.
However, everything changed when Joe Biden — rather inexplicably — selected her as his political “partner in crime,” so to speak. Overnight, Kamala Harris became “historic,” because of her race and gender. Overnight, her deeply controversial record — with which Tulsi Gabbard launched a famous attack on Harris during a Democratic primary debate — was swept under the rug. Overnight, the fact that she had implied that Joe Biden was both a racist and guilty of sexual assault became completely unimportant for our “ambassadors of truth.”
The most challenging question came from “comedian” and Obama-sycophant Stephen Colbert, who tip-toed around the fact that Kamala Harris endorsed a man she had implied was a racist rapist. With a recognizable cackle, her response was to declare “it was a debate,” to which the media nodded, smiled, and happily turned the page.
1) If @StephenAtHome is the only one willing to ask these questions, the media is failing.
2) If you think “it was a debate” is a valid excuse to flip on fundamental principles like racism, you have no principles. #KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/6nPmm7dGyh— Ian G Haworth (@ighaworth) August 15, 2020
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Over the course of four years, the legacy media drove home a combination of damaging narratives which may very well have cost Trump the election. If you pay attention to our “objective legacy media,” Trump drew an equivalence between fascists and protestors; Hunter Biden’s business dealings are beyond reproach; Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016; Trump is to blame for every COVID-19 death; Trump is also to blame for racial violence in American, whether real or imaginary; Tara Reade is a unquestionable liar; and Kamala Harris never said that she believed Biden’s accusers.
The legacy media are liars. This time, their lies may have swung an election.
Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.