OPINION:
What goes around comes around — right? But if there’s a phrase that rarely applies in a media world that fawns over far leftists and liberals, that would be it. Seriously, Democrats get a lot of free media passes.
Joe Biden is emerging as an exception. As a bit of a delicious about-time exception. And his campaign has all the appearances of entering panic mode.
Here’s what happened: The New York Times just allowed an opinion piece from “Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer to grace its editorial pages. The op-ed was titled, “What Hunter Biden Did Was Legal — That’s the Problem.”
Schweizer went on to write “We Need a Washington Corrupt Practices Act to stop political families from self-dealing.” And then he tweeted the piece, writing above the link — and above a photograph that included Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, “Congress can and should conduct an inquiry to determine whether anything illegal occurred.”
Team Biden wasn’t happy.
No doubt, Team Biden felt a bit betrayed.
So Team Biden, via its campaign deputy manager, Kate Bedingfield, took action and penned a scathing letter to the newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, for unfairly “giving top billing” to Schweizer on its editorial pages.
Bedingfield also slammed the newspaper’s Ukraine coverage as catering to President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and serving as an “outsized hand in a baseless conspiracy theory,” Fox News reported.
And there was more. Much more.
“Despite voluminous work done by the independent press and fact-checkers — including some by The Times — to refute the heinous conspiracy theory that Donald Trump attempted to bully Ukraine into propping-up for him, the paper ran an op-ed by none other than Peter Schweizer, making more malicious claims about the Biden family,” Bedingfield wrote. “This leaves us with a critical question: are you truly blind to what you got wrong in 2016, or are you deliberately continuing policies that distort reality for the sake of controversy and the clicks that accompany it?”
Biden’s campaign also reached out to Facebook and Twitter powers-who-be, begging them to put a stop to an advertisement that spread the word about Biden and Ukraine. Facebook said sorry, no dice; Twitter didn’t respond, CNN reported.
The Times, meanwhile, shot back this to Biden’s campaign: “Our coverage of the Biden campaign and Hunter Biden has been fair and accurate. … [We] will continue to cover Joe Biden with the same tough and fair standards we apply to every candidate in the race and we’re happy to sit down with Biden advisers anytime to discuss news coverage.”
What to make of all that flurry?
Only this: Biden’s campaign is in panic mode. They’re feeling the heat, feeling the snub, feeling the unaccustomed scrutiny. And they’re panicking.
It’s like 2016, all over again.
The Democrats’ heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, thought she had a cake walk to the White House — but she was wrong. She misstepped. And lost.
It’s looking more and more like Biden, taking that same heir apparent approach to his presidential campaign, is misstepping, too. When a paper like The New York Times puts a long-time entrenched Democrat under the looking glass, it’s a sure sign of rejection. It’s a sure sign that it’s time for that candidate to give up the fight.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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