OPINION:
They got away with it the first time, so why wouldn’t they try it again?
Of course, I’m talking about how the left used the news media and government to protect candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election cycle and the glaring reality that they’re in the process of repeating it in 2024.
We were reminded of the malfeasance in the last election in new Department of Justice filings in Hunter Biden’s pending criminal cases. DOJ has finally acknowledged that it did come to possess the presidential son’s laptop, which he had left at a computer store. The House Judiciary Committee says the FBI has had the laptop since December 2019.
This recalls the closing days of the 2020 presidential race, when I, as communications director for then-President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, begged reporters (unsuccessfully) to cover the laptop story because the contents implicated the senior Biden in the family’s influence peddling.
The media hid behind a claim from 51 former intelligence officials who dishonestly described the laptop as part of a Russian disinformation plot.
We had a news conference call every day of the final two weeks of the campaign and specifically asked reporters to use their sources at DOJ to confirm the story. No one did, naturally, and the FBI has not yet been held accountable for falsely warning social media companies that the laptop — which it knew to be authentic — was part of a Russian “hack and leak” operation. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (now X) obliged and memory-holed the story at the time.
So, having shielded their preferred candidate from harm four years ago, those on the left are engaged in the same tactics again. And they’re doing it shamelessly — even proudly — right before our eyes.
After Mr. Trump won the Iowa caucuses earlier this week by a record margin for a contested race, CNN showed some of his victory speech before cutting away. MSNBC, on the other hand, declared it was censoring it entirely.
“There is a reason we and other news organizations have generally stopped giving an unfiltered, live platform to remarks by former President Trump,” said anchor Rachel Maddow, with the smugness only she can summon. “There is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”
Seriously, the leading shoveler of MSNBC’s Russia collusion manure said she’s all about the truth.
Regardless, Ms. Maddow was clear about their strategy — they will prevent Americans from hearing from one of the candidates for president because they don’t like what he says.
Meanwhile, NBC ran a poll of participants in the Iowa caucuses showing that immigration was the top issue on their minds, followed closely by the economy. This must have been a shock to newsrooms in D.C. and New York, where they’ve been fighting President Biden’s battles on those topics.
Collectively, the media have spent the entirety of the Biden administration downplaying or refusing to cover the illegal immigration crisis. And many members of the media have recently lamented that people don’t believe the White House’s spin on the economy over the financial conditions they’re experiencing every day.
And much like the FBI had a role in the dismissal of Hunter’s laptop as “Russian disinformation,” certain government entities are already in campaign mode and working directly on Mr. Biden’s behalf.
First, there’s the matter of the politically motivated indictments of Mr. Trump in four different jurisdictions by state and federal prosecutors. If he were not running for president again, he would be facing no charges, not a total of 91, as he does now.
The Colorado Supreme Court was the first to abuse the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to kick Mr. Trump off the ballot in that state, and there are other activists attempting the same elsewhere. The U.S. Supreme Court will settle the matter, but the left’s desire to remove its main rival from the contest could not be more obvious.
In short, leftists want to silence their principal opponent, remove him from the ballot, and put him in jail.
And before anyone suggests that this can all be avoided by choosing a different Republican candidate for president, I submit that it doesn’t matter because this is now the Democratic Party playbook. Activists have already tried to have other Republicans ruled ineligible to run for office because of their association with Mr. Trump, and there’s no reason to expect they will stop there.
If Democratic lawyers find success in removing candidates from ballots anywhere in this country, there is no chance they will resist using that weapon in as many places as they can. Everyone knows this.
Their plans worked in 2020, and in their arrogance, they’re ramping it up again in plain sight, confident they’ll succeed again.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist, founder and principal of Line Drive Public Affairs LLC, co-host of the “Line Drive Podcast,” and author of “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It: My Escape From Addiction and Shot at Redemption on the Trump Campaign.”
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