Bidengate Breaks... err... down

[Ford]

@TSwizzle, since your last post was just a repetition of things you had already said in the past, I feel no need in further discussion.

Was there a link to the Daily Mail?

Anyway, this latest twist reminds me that - once again - if you believe that the laptop has been in possession of whatever right wing tabloid "news" source claims to have it, then why hasn't all the really, really damaging info been released? And I'm talking about the info that's ONLY on the infamous "Hunter Biden's Laptop" (of Hunter Biden's Laptop fame).

We don't need his laptop to know that he had a substance abuse problem. We don't need his laptop to know that he got some lucrative jobs based on his last name and connections. We don't really need it to know that he had some sexual escapades that are usually reserved for the offspring of the wealthy and powerful - though I'm sure some on the right are more than happy to have the dick pics - but apart from the stuff we already knew, what's so damning that the folks who allegedly have it all are nonetheless holding it in secret for so long?


It's a bit like the "massive voter fraud" claim. To hear some on the right tell it, there's evidence of entire mail trucks worth of fraudulent ballots out there. Video of people committing voter fraud on camera for all to see. Massive amounts of data from voting machine companies just waiting for release so that they can prove all of it once and for all!

Yet more than 2 years on, none of this has surfaced.

It's almost like this whole thing is a scam.

 

[Copernicus]

Was there a link to the Daily Mail?

TSwizzle posted this link.


The headline disingenuously claims that Hunter Biden "finally admits" something, because his lawyers moved to have the Trump-supporting computer repair owner and Rudy Giuliani investigated for possibly releasing private, personal information that was not authorized for public release. For example, that could have referred to the alleged emails and private data on the hard drive that was claimed to come from him. Even if all of the information was genuine, all it could prove is that Hunter Biden might have made things up to impress people who were giving him money for access to his father. There is no evidence that Biden himself would have been aware of his son's activities.

 

[blastula]

Coke head, meth fiend, whatever, Hunter Biden is an awful human being in my opinion.

Just because he took drugs? Your moral compass is whack.

 

[TSwizzle]

Coke head, meth fiend, whatever, Hunter Biden is an awful human being in my opinion.

Just because he took drugs? Your moral compass is whack.

No, not just because he took drugs.

 

[Patooka]

Coke head, meth fiend, whatever, Hunter Biden is an awful human being in my opinion.

Just because he took drugs? Your moral compass is whack.

No, not just because he took drugs.

Then I guess you don't like Hunter because he is a coked up rich kid who lives off the reputation of his parents, something completely unprecedented in US politics..

 

[Copernicus]

Coke head, meth fiend, whatever, Hunter Biden is an awful human being in my opinion.

Just because he took drugs? Your moral compass is whack.

No, not just because he took drugs.

Then I guess you don't like Hunter because he is a coked up rich kid who lives off the reputation of his parents, something completely unprecedented in US politics..

The problem is that Joe Biden is hard to demonize, but Hunter Biden has some baggage they can use. It's too bad that Hunter Biden never got an official government job in which he could use taxpayer subsidies to peddle his business interests around the world. So the laptop scandal is the best that they can come up with, since two of his children have died and Ashley Biden's diary doesn't appear to be getting much traction in the news or on social media platforms outside of the rightwing blogosphere.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Coke head, meth fiend, whatever, Hunter Biden is an awful human being in my opinion.

Just because he took drugs? Your moral compass is whack.

No, not just because he took drugs.

Hunter Biden isn't much of a role model. We understand this. What is hard to understand is why this laptop keeps being brought up... yet years later, still almost nothing has been posted that was allegedly on it, other than picks and a number of emails. This laptop from hell was bit oversold... and despite it being oversold and a complete lack of documentation coming from it, even via The Daily Mail, you still think it is a big deal. The Rosetta Stone of political scandal.

 

[marc]

Well what is on the laptop doesn't matter. Like in the 90's we had the Whitewater investigation that turned up nothing illegal, but they did find Clinton had an affair. Or all the Benghazi investigations that turned up nothing, but were used to wear away at Hillary's support. It is just the nothingburger tool they will use to insinuate and smear to keep people either voting republican, or not voting at all.

What I often wonder is the proportion of bullshitters to true believers in the GOP. How many know they are just lying their ass off, and how many are deluded enough to believe it?

 

[Patooka]

Well what is on the laptop doesn't matter. Like in the 90's we had the Whitewater investigation that turned up nothing illegal, but they did find Clinton had an affair. Or all the Benghazi investigations that turned up nothing, but were used to wear away at Hillary's support. It is just the nothingburger tool they will use to insinuate and smear to keep people either voting republican, or not voting at all.

What I often wonder is the proportion of bullshitters to true believers in the GOP. How many know they are just lying their ass off, and how many are deluded enough to believe it?

It's also a rite of passage. "Hunter's laptop" or "Hillary's emails" or "Benghazi" is just a shorthand among Q-tards as a way of asking people "Are you one of us?". Because if you ask for details, any sort of who, what, when ,where or how you have clearly outed yourself as one of them.

So I'm not sure if "who believes this shit" is the important part. Maybe it's more who uses this as a form of reinforcement.

 

[Ford]

Well what is on the laptop doesn't matter. Like in the 90's we had the Whitewater investigation that turned up nothing illegal, but they did find Clinton had an affair. Or all the Benghazi investigations that turned up nothing, but were used to wear away at Hillary's support. It is just the nothingburger tool they will use to insinuate and smear to keep people either voting republican, or not voting at all.

What I often wonder is the proportion of bullshitters to true believers in the GOP. How many know they are just lying their ass off, and how many are deluded enough to believe it?

Well the Whitewater investigation (which turned into many other things) was more "we want a reason to impeach Clinton, investigate until you find it" situation. Hillary never got to be President, but I guarantee if she'd won, the Benghazi/Buttery Mails investigation would have kept right on going rather than be quietly wrapped up a couple weeks after she conceded.

As for the proportions? Elected officials, party officials, and donors all (with some overlap) fall into the bullshitters category. True believers? People who buy MAGA hats and still sport "Hillary for Prison 2016" shirts. I'd say there's a minority of fans that know the bullshitters are bullshitting, but either don't care because politics is a sport for them, or don't care because the hate "the libs" so much. Most of them, though, literally buy the bullshit by the shovelful.

There is another, much smaller subset which I think exists: People who post on internet forums and comment sections who know it's bullshit, but keep pushing it for their own weird enjoyment.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Looks like meth fiend Hunter Biden is admitting the laptop from hell is his;

The first son's lawyer Abbe Lowell asked the DOJ to probe former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, campaign lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Hunter Biden never consented to having his personal information shared, Lowell argued. 'This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation and manipulation of Mr. Biden's private and personal information,' the letter said. 'Politicians and the news media have used this unlawfully accessed, copied, distributed, and manipulated data to distort the truth and cause harm to Mr. Biden.' The letter is the first time Hunter Biden has acknowledged it was his data that was found and distributed to members of the news media.

Daily Mail

So this wasn't a Russia disinformation operation as the FBI said?


"Hunter is the smartest guy I know" LOL.

There are multiple versions out there. Thus we know at least some versions have been tampered with. Same thing I just said about a binary answer. There's little doubt it's an image of his machine--but that doesn't mean it hasn't been tampered with. So long as whoever did the tampering was careful it would be completely impossible to discern.

 

[lpetrich]

The House Republicans have started hearings on Hunter Biden's laptop computer, and at least one Democrat is objecting to their premises.

CSPAN on Twitter: ".@RepAOC @AOC: "It's an abuse of public resources...We could be talking about health care...We could be talking abortion rights, civil rights, voting rights, but instead we're talking about Hunter Biden's half fake laptop story. I mean this is an embarrassment." (vid link)" / Twitter
She asked a witness about what some right-wingers have gotten away with on Twitter.

With responses like
Jeff Hudson on Twitter: "@cspan @RepAOC @AOC @AOC cuts through the irrelevant topics and asks all the right questions during her time while she's speaking. I love that the Democratic Party has AOC on their side! She has a long career ahead of her!" / Twitter
and
Lisa Walsh on Twitter: "@cspan @RepAOC @AOC Thank God we have adults in the room!" / Twitter
and
9fm on Twitter: "@cspan @AOC @RepAOC
Interviewer: "What would you fix if we gave you this job?"
Candidate: "I'd secure the border, fix inflation, lower gas prices, address fentanyl overdoses, end wokeness."
Interviewer: "Great! You got the job."
Candidate: "Thanks. First order of business, Hunter Biden's laptop!”" / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Ian Sams on Twitter: "President Biden: Let’s end junk fees!
House Republicans: Let’s start junk hearings!" / Twitter
noting Aaron Rupar's Twitter thread on the House Oversight Committee's hearing on Hunter Biden's laptop.

House Republicans are unveiling their inflation plan this morning
"Oversight Hearing on Hunter Biden Censorship"

"We return not to focus on advancing this robust agenda of progress, but instead, to take up an authentically trivial pursuit, all based on the obsessive victimology of right-wing politics" -- Raskin begins by pointing out what a huge waste of time a hearing Hunter's laptop is

it's sad that Raskin has to explain the 1st Amendment to Republicans like this

"Rather than conspiring to suppress right-wing MAGA speech, as my colleagues astonishingly claim, Twitter and other media companies knowingly facilitated Trump's spread of disinformation" -- Raskin

Jamie Raskin is the ranking member, the head of the Democrats' Oversight Committee members.

Former Twitter exec Yoel Roth explains that the Hunter Biden laptop stuff at first glance bore a lot of similarities to the 2016 Russia hack and dump operation

Former Twitter official Anika Collier Navaroli says "if we're here to talk social media &the govt, we need to talk about Twitter's failure to act before J6. I'm here to tell you that doing nothing is not an option. If we continue to do nothing, violence is going to happen again"

Navaroli: "In January 2020, after the US assassinated an Iranian general and the US president decided to justify it on Twitter, management literally instructed me and my team to make sure that World War 3 did not start on the platform."

RASKIN: Did I hear you say there were hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Twitter accounts set up by Russian propaganda and disinformation?

ROTH: That's right. Those accounts are still active on social media today.

RASKIN: Well, we should be having a hearing about that

Raskin guides Navaroli through explaining how in the months leading up to January 6, Twitter actually bent over backward to accommodate right-wing MAGA hate speech

Yet another case of right-wingers doing what they accuse "the left" of doing - getting what they want by calling themselves victims of persecution.

 

[lpetrich]

More Aaron Rupar.

Comer uses his questioning time to try to craft the perfect 30 second soundbite of him owning libs for Hannity

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton: "Like Benghazi before, Republicans are on a taxpayer-funded expedition to attack their political rivals, and they're feeding the flames of conspiracy in the process"

Yoel Roth says that after Elon Musk spread homophobic nonsense about him, he was flooded with so much harassment that he had to sell his house and move

"I have great regrets about getting the shot" -- Nancy Mace is out here trying to undermine Covid vaccines

Oh boy. Nancy Mace is really trying to get those sweet Fox hits with antics like this.

"Thank God for Matt Taibbi. Thank God for Elon Musk" -- Nancy Mace

Nancy Mace claiming that Twitter is guilty of suppressing anti-vaxxers who had Harvard and Stanford educations, and that the suppressors lack medical expertise.

Roth: "Our judgment was colored by the experience of 2016, and by the very real Russian activities we saw play out that year"

Jim Jordan is trying to push a conspiracy theory about security clearances at Twitter but he's not getting very far

"I think you guys got played by the FBI" -- Jim Jordan (recall that in the run up to the 2020 election Trump was president and the FBI director was Trump's handpicked guy, Chris Wray)

LOL
(Me: Jim Jordan: "Maybe so" about Jamie Raskin's point about private companies not being bound by the First Amendment)

Rep. Gerry Connolly after Jim Jordan flails around for 5 minutes: "My my my -- what happens when you hold a hearing, and you can't prove your point"

Connolly points out that Trump tried to bully Twitter into specific content moderation decisions in public!

just a brilliant line of questioning for Connolly highlighting that Trump did everything Republicans are accusing Biden of doing and worse

Yet more right-wing projection.

 

[lpetrich]

Roth: "My understanding is that these tweets contained nonconsensual nude photos of Hunter Biden"

"It's just an abuse of public resources, an abuse of public time" -- AOC on this Twitter/Hunter Biden hearing

"So much for bias against right-wing on Twitter" -- AOC guides Navaroli through explanation how Trump violated Twitter's policies and then Twitter changed its policies to accommodate him

Dang -- AOC uses her questioning time to detailing how Libs of TikTok incites harassment against children's hospital but is allowed to remain on Twitter

Great job by AOC, showing how much Twitter accommodates right-wing nastiness.

LMAO
(Me MTG showing a sign that shows what happened to her on Twitter: "Your account is permanently suspended")

Wait until Marjorie Taylor Greene figures out that political donations are free speech and also learns who was president in 2020

Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks (wrongly) that Twitter broke the law by suspending her account for violating the terms of service

My goodness -- Marjorie Taylor Greene smears Yoel Roth as a pedophile

Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupts the hearing so she can go after Roth some more. Comer tries to accommodate her.

Will MTG wear out her welcome?

Rep. Goldman schools Comer on facts in the Hunter Biden story that the New York Post got wrong

Goldman: "So far we've seen no actual evidence of any lies or any support for Joe Biden being involved in anything having to do with Ukraine other than promoting US foreign policy."

Rep Burchett goes full epistemological relativism: "Everybody has their own facts ... the American people do not trust what they're being told"

Comer is just out here randomly recognizing Republicans to give them extra questioning time

 

[lpetrich]

CSPAN on Twitter: "Former Twitter Employee Anika Collier Navaroli: "Twitter's leadership bent and broke their own rules in order to protect some of the most dangerous speech on the platform. I'm going to talk a little bit about what happened in the months leading up to January 6th." (vid link)" / Twitter
She described how Twitter's management bent over backwards for right-wing nastiness and threats of violence.

Acyn on Twitter: "AOC: So Twitter changed their own policy after Trump violated it to accommodate his tweets? (vid link)" / Twitter

Acyn on Twitter: "AOC: Despite inspiring a bomb threat due to the right wing incitement of violence against trans Americans because they cannot let go of this obsession with inciting violence against trans people.. This is the party that can’t pick on anyone their own size (vid link)" / Twitter

Will Ragland on Twitter: ".@AOC "A whole hearing about a 24 hour hiccup in a right-wing political operation... we could be talking about health care, bringing down the cost of Rx drugs, abortion rights, voting rights, civil rights, but instead we're talking about Hunter Biden's half baked laptop story." (vid link)" / Twitter

Parker Molloy on Twitter: "This hearing is doing a great job of showing how Twitter was, even before Musk, biased *in favor of* the GOP.
Trump didn't have to follow the same rules as everyone else. He was held to lower standards than anyone else. And then Twitter rewrote its rules *specifically for him*" / Twitter
noting
Acyn on Twitter: "AOC: So Twitter changed their own policy after Trump violated it to accommodate his tweets? (vid link)" / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

The second part of Aaron Rupar's hearing thread: Aaron Rupar on Twitter: "Rep. Garcia begins the second part of the hearing by apologizing to Yoel Roth for MTG smearing him as a pedo (vid link)" / Twitter

Rep. Garcia begins the second part of the hearing by apologizing to Yoel Roth for MTG smearing him as a pedo

AOC points out that the Trump administration PUBLICLY BRAGGED about working directly with Twitter about content moderation

Rep Timmons goes full epistemological relativism: "Everybody has their own facts ... the American people do not trust what they're being told"

Rep. Burchett is out here asking witnesses questions about how many Twitter followers Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk have
(me: two right-wing talk-show hosts)

LMAO
(me: about someone claiming that right-wingers are being silenced when they have plenty of platform to speak)

Rep. Frost: "We get it, my Republican colleagues wish that the Hunter Biden story would've helped them win the 2020 election. And that didn't happen, and so they're angry about it, and that's the point of this hearing."

"Chrissy Teigan referred to Donald Trump as a 'pussy ass bitch'"

Frost: "Free speech is about the government limiting speech ... my governor, Ron DeSantis, is doing that right now"

Gosar is using his questioning time to defend Covid-19 misinformation

Gosar is struggling. None of the witnesses understand him.

Rep. Balint points out that Comer has gone on Fox News and spread blatant misinformation about the Biden campaign colluding with Twitter

Balint: "I believe that what's happening her is my Republican colleagues know that the premise of this whole hearing is misleading. There is no evidence that the Biden campaign had anything to do with the Hunter Biden New York Post story."

Rep. Gary Palmer after the lights in the hearing room go out: "Sounds like the Green New Deal to me"

so the lights went out and the hearing was suspended

 

[lpetrich]

Aaron Rupar on Twitter: "it is true that ..." / Twitter

it is true that this Twitter/Hunter Biden hearing is not going well for Republicans. But Hannity, Tucker, and Ingraham will still be able to find 20 second clips of the Jordans and Comers of the world owning libs, and in that world that's the most important thing.

Rep. Summer Lee: "I understand my colleagues on the other sides of the aisle want to be victims so very badly."
(me: she continued by asking if accusations of anti-conservative bias were a way of keeping social-media platforms from enforcing their policies against conservatives. Ms. Navaroli said yes.)

Rep. Casar: "After talking to thousands of people across Texas, asking them, what do you want me to work on for you as a new member of Congress? Not a single person told me they were concerned about a New York Post story on Twitter about Hunter Biden."

Rep. Fallon suggests, citing a single dubious poll, that Trump would have won reelection if the Hunter Biden story had spread more freely on Twitter

Comer is just letting Republicans do whatever they want during this hearing

Rep. Crockett: "I'm glad that seemingly we have now accepted that President Joe Biden won the election, even though now we are blaming President Trump's loss on Twitter. Can we finally let it go?"

Navaroli says Trump's account was the only one she did not have access to when she worked at Twitter

Grothman really thought he had something here lol

Comer tries to get Jim Baker to waive attorney client privilege to talk about his communications with Twitter

Goldman: "Let's run down what Twitter know about this hard drive and this story when it was published. First, the sole source of the hard drive was Rudy Giuliani, who had been working closely with Russian intelligence agents throughout 2020."

Clay Higgins is submitting random things he found on the internet into the congressional record

Clay Higgins, who is very scary, threatens that the ex-Twitter employee witnesses will be arrested for unspecified crimes

Republicans have now baselessly smeared Yoel Roth as a pedophile and threatened his arrest, all in a single hearing.

Rep. Sessions: "God bless Elon Musk, because I think I feel that way. It was Elon Musk that revealed data that uncovered a disturbing cabal."

After Raskin enters into the record a Rolling Stone article about Twitter keeping a record of Republican requests to censor liberal posts, Comer says, "I didn't have you pegged as a Rolling Stone reader."

Rep. Moskowitz: "Donald Trump, and his administration, it's been proven, reached out to Twitter to take down tweets that got under his skin. The tough guy, Donald Trump ... you guys have no credibility!"

Moskowitz: "Not all Republicans are Nazis, but I gotta tell ya -- Nazis seem really comfortable with Donald Trump."

"Now who the hell do you think you are? ... I bet Putin is sitting in the Kremlin wishing he had as much election interference [power] as you four here today" -- Boebert is grilling witnesses about the biggest issue facing the American people: her Twitter reach
(me: Lauren Boebert talking about how she was shadow banned by Twitter for what she called a joke about Hillary Clinton being angry that she could not rig her election)

"I can reach out to Elon and to his staff and I can see what's happened" -- Boebert
(me: LB said that we don't know where the FBI ends and Twitter begins)

What displays of angry victimhood.

 

[lpetrich]

Katie Porter: "This hearing has been in its length nearly 1/4 of the amount of time that Twitter users could not share the link [to the Hunter story] ... today's hearing is merely an exercise in misinformation and disinformation -- a free for all hellscape"

Rep. Luna's line of questioning
(Me: Big Tech - Big Government collusion)

wait until Rep. Luna finds out who the president was before January 6
(me: she talked about how Twitter's supposed censorship apparatus was in place before that date)

Rep. Mfume: "We're getting awfully close to witness intimidation, and I would ask the chair to intervene"

AOC then asks what the policy is for threatening witnesses with arrest. Comer denies threats occurs, even though they did.

Rep. Cori Bush: "Republicans are holding this hearing because of their ridiculous, politically motivated obsession with Hunter Biden. This is a distraction from their inability again to govern."
(me: she talked about how disinformation traveled three times faster than facts about Chile's proposed new constitution)

Raskin's closing statement: "Twitter is a private 1st amendment protected media entity ... there's just a fundamental legal fallacy and logical fallacy that pervades most of the questioning today."

The House Oversight hearing on Twitter & Hunter's laptop story is over.

It doesn't look like the House Republicans are off to a very good start. But then again, they made plenty of soundbites for Fox News, and that's what seems to count for them.

 

[ZiprHead]

Why the hearing on Twitter, Hunter Biden backfired on Republicans

Republicans held an oversight hearing, intending to prove government abuses about Twitter and Hunter Biden. It backfired in ways the GOP should've seen coming.

www.msnbc.com

Remember, the whole point of the hearing was to explore the extent to which Democrats pressured Twitter to suppress content from conservatives. It was against this backdrop on Wednesday that Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia asked Anika Collier Navaroli, a former member of Twitter’s content moderation team, about this September 2019 tweet from Teigen, a prominent model and television host, criticizing Donald Trump.

“The White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate?” Connolly asked.

“I do remember hearing we’d received a request from the White House to make sure we evaluated this tweet, and they wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement directed at the president,” Navaroli said.

The tweet was not taken down, but the relevant detail was the revelation that the Republican White House tried to squelch criticism of the then-president.

What’s more, this was not the only new detail to emerge Wednesday that undermined the point of the hearing:

• In response to questioning from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, former Twitter employees acknowledged that Trump published racist content that ran afoul of the company’s standards and policies, so Twitter altered its standards and policies to accommodate the Republican’s offensive content.
• Former Twitter employees confirmed that the FBI did not direct the social media company to block a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop, despite Republican claims to the contrary. James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy general counsel, said, “I was not aware of and certainly did not engage in any conspiracy” with government or campaign officials to suppress the story. “Moreover, I’m aware of no unlawful collusion with or direction from any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” Baker added.
• The witnesses testified that Twitter could’ve done more to prevent the Jan. 6 attack, but executives made a conscious decision not to.
• The Biden campaign did ask Twitter to remove “non-consensual nude photos” of Hunter Biden from the platform, which Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida found scandalous for reasons I still don’t understand.
• Republicans had to be reminded of what the First Amendment means and how it applies to private companies.
• Hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Twitter accounts set up to advance Russian propaganda and disinformation remain active on the platform.