OPINION:
President Biden wants Russian President Vladimir Putin hauled before the International Criminal Court and tried as a war criminal. As president, Mr. Biden must deal with folks he no doubt detests like China’s President Xi Jinping, who is waging an internal genocidal campaign against millions of China’s citizens while he dreams of the day China defeats the United States on the battlefield.
Iran’s terrorists will soon have nuclear weapons capability and suicide bombers at their disposal. A frighteningly unstable nutcase in North Korea has nuclear weapons and brags that he wouldn’t mind using them. Most of us would agree these are all incredibly dangerous men and would have difficulty deciding who is the most dangerous.
According to a new book by New York Times political journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, Mr. Biden has told insiders he regards someone else entirely as the “most dangerous man in the world.” And it’s not his predecessor, President Donald Trump, whom Mr. Biden calls a “threat to democracy.” It’s Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch has no nuclear weapons, missiles, nor a volunteer army of deplorables ready to applaud his every utterance, but his ownership of Fox News, “one of the most destructive forces in the United States” makes him, according to Mr. Biden, the “most dangerous man in the world.”
Of course, Mr. Murdoch also owns the New York Post and is no doubt therefore responsible for heaping abuse on the president’s son. Most of the legacy media along with his Silicon Valley supporters went to bat for Mr. Biden during the 2020 campaign because they all saw him as the best way to rid the nation of Mr. Trump. They excused or ignored his losing battle with the English language and covered for him when he took positions that might cost him votes. A Las Vegas newspaper edited his attacks on the Second Amendment out of an exclusive interview because the editors were afraid that if the public knew what he said they might be more reluctant to vote for him.
Mr. Murdoch’s reporters saw their role differently. They kept reporting facts rather than serving as a laudatory chorus constantly praising candidate Biden and thus had to be silenced. The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story was dismissed and ignored before the election and is only getting traction now as the mainline media is finally admitting that Mr. Murdoch’s people were onto something after all.
Mr. Biden is neither the only nor the first thin-skinned man to sit in the Oval Office. Former President George W. Bush was caught on a hot mic referring to a well-known New York Times reporter as “a major league a———.” Former President Harry Truman took umbrage at the way a Washington Post music critic belittled his daughter’s talent and sent him a handwritten note on White House stationery letting him know, “Someday I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!” Former President Richard Nixon kept an “enemies list” and former President Barack Obama wiretapped critical reporters. Mr. Trump attacked those who crossed him via Twitter.
Still, it is doubtful Mr. Nixon considered his harshest critics more dangerous than former Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, or that Mr. Trump considered Jim Acosta more dangerous than Mr. Xi. This president was elected promising levelheaded leadership for all the people, a president who wouldn’t let his emotions and prejudices interfere with his judgment.
But Mr. Murdoch and his reporters have gotten under Mr. Biden’s skin. Even though he has publicly referred to one of them as “a stupid son of a bitch,” they won’t leave him alone. They keep asking hard questions about immigration, inflation and, most grating, about his son Hunter’s schemes to get in bed with Russian oligarchs, Chinese intelligence agents and Ukrainian grifters.
Now that the “laptop” story has finally gotten the traction it deserves, been picked up by the mainstream media and universally validated as legitimate rather than Russian “disinformation” as Mr. Biden’s campaign and supporters claimed prior to his election, the story has moved from marginally embarrassing to downright dangerous, threatening to engulf not just the president’s wayward son, but the “big guy” himself.
Perhaps when the president referred to Mr. Murdoch as the most dangerous man in the world it was because he realized far earlier than anyone else that the facts being unearthed by his reporters posed an existential threat not to the world, but to him. To a man with a guilty conscience, which would make him the most dangerous man in the world.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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