What about these Hunter Biden emails?

Triumvirate said:

It shouldn't. But prioritise the greater evil - Trump. This isn't difficult if you truly care about all the stuff you're claiming to care about.

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...prioritization is the key, which I why I said Trump is worse, and won't be voting for him.

My comment was on the fact that because Trump is worse, people are trying to pretend the story about Hunter (and possible implications for his father) are a big "nothing", and media outlets are avoiding even talking about it, and social media outlets are trying to block the story.

It's our job as voters to do the aforementioned prioritizing. It's the job of news outlets to report on stories that are newsworthy, and not filter out stories that are unflattering to the candidate that's running against the guy they don't like.

wing2000 said:

All of it. Given all the red flags identified early, it's hardly worth my time. It's obviously a mis-leading hit pieced manufactured to drive a narrative.

Did Hunter use his position as the VP son for his own advantage. Most likely.
Compared to open corruption of the Trump family members, it's kindergarten league. And anyone who suggest there is some equivalence between Hunter and any of the Trump kid's activities is smoking crack (not saying you are....but others imply it).

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Again, it's not about measuring equivalence.

There's a big difference between saying:

"Jim and Bob are both bad, but Jim is way worse"

and

"Since Jim is worse than Bob, we need to completely avoid even talking about what Bob did, because that may make some people dislike Bob, and we don't want that to happen because that may cause Jim to win, so until Jim is out of the picture, we're just going to pretend that Bob is squeaky clean"

civilwarbuff said:

Not the kids, Michelle. Wrote several books while Barack was in office some that became best sellers(?). Would that have happened had she been Michelle Obama living in Podunk, IL? Sometimes nepotism is simply by association.....like Ivanka and Trump Jr......but that is not their fault.

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Michelle Obama didn't write "several" books while in the White House. She wrote one book.
Michelle Obama - Wikipedia

And no, a book deal for being First Lady is not an example of nepotism, nor would it be unless she was related to the publisher.

Ivanka and Don Jr, however, were given their jobs by their father. That's textbook nepotism.

ThatRobGuy said:

This is one of those times where people need to apply standards consistently...

I understand that everyone has their political preferences, which is fine, we all do.

...but to pretend that the Hunter laptop thing wouldn't be just as big of a story had it been Don Jr.'s laptop is just disingenuous.

Democrats want to downplay it when it's their guy
Republicans want to downplay it when it's their guy

With both presidential candidates, there's solid evidence that both have children are using their name (and position of power) to make deals.

So to pretend that it's a "nothingburger" just because it's the guy someone hates less is dishonest.

Trump's kids leverage his status & position to capitalize...I don't know why people think it's unthinkable that Hunter Biden would do the same.


If there were a Don Jr. photo of him passed out with a crack pipe in his mouth, and other pics that were currently being investigated as potential underage inappropriate contentography, we all know it would be a much bigger story in certain outlets.

I wish it were easier for people to just admit that Biden and Trump are both terrible.

It's fine if you think that one is slightly less terrible than the other, but that doesn't mean you have to pretend as if the other one is a "good guy".


To pretend as if Hunter's position with Burisma isn't suspicious is wearing a pretty big pair of blinders. A person with no energy industry experience, getting a multi-million dollar salary from an energy company when their dad is the VP is suspicious by any objective standard.

If you think that Trump is worse, that's fine, there's probably a fair argument that could be made for that, but to pretend that it's a "nothing to see here" situation with Hunter Biden and his dad is dishonest.

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Few people (that I've seen) have argued that there wasn't a potential conflict of interest between Joe, Hunter, and Burisma. But the existence of a potential conflict doesn't require that unethical behavior actually happened and so far, I haven't seen anybody demonstrate any unethical behavior on the part of Joe and the stuff that's been proven about Hunter has been pretty small potatoes. (i.e. drug use and leveraging his family name)

I'm happy to have Hunter investigated, but let's not pretend that the Biden-hunting TrumpFans are acting in good faith on this one.

civilwarbuff said:

We might be able to say the same about Joe.....

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Sure, without the sarcasm.

DaisyDay said:

Sure, without the sarcasm.

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Glad you agree....

iluvatar5150 said:

I'm happy to have Hunter investigated, but let's not pretend that the Biden-hunting TrumpFans are acting in good faith on this one.

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Well, of course they're not acting in good faith on it lol...there's definitely people out there who look to take any moment of negative optics and use it for a political goal.

However, I think it'd be of service to Biden if:
A) He would agree to just acknowledge it and answer some simple questions about it
B) Media outlets and Social Media platforms weren't giving off the impression that they're trying to squash/hide the story.

Those things are causing a bit of a "backfire" effect as it just fuels the fire of the "Biden-hunters" as you called them. And as has been shown in some basic polling on the subject matter, those kinds of approaches from both the Biden Campaign and Media/Social Media aren't just coming across as suspicious to the die-hard Trump supporters looking to smear Biden.



Even among Democrats, upwards of 40% think Hunter's business dealings should at least be discussed.


It's just not a good look when things happen in a certain order. (if one is trying to get out in front of it and squash any suspicion)

- "Yeah, we'll talk about it...it's just a hoax and Russian disinformation, it's just alleged that it's even his laptop in the first place"
- Pictures from the laptop are released in intimate moments showing that it's his
- FBI says there's no evidence that the content of the laptop Russian disinformation
- Twitter and Facebook start restricting and blocking the story
- Biden starts saying things like "It's not even worth my time to talk about it" in one instance, in another, after his press rep called on someone with a question, and they started asking about that, they abruptly cut it short and said they were out of time.
- Now the talking points from him and his campaign have started to circle back around to the "Russian Hoax" angle from the looks of it.


If there's a story, that's clearly of some significance here, and people are already suspicious about it, about the worst case scenario (if you're trying to eliminate that suspicion) is for there to be the appearance of concerted efforts to squash the coverage of the story, and people being dodgy with questions.


I think some big tactical errors were made by outlets like CNN for the past few years with their handling of "all things Trump", so to speak. When they make everything involving Trump seem like a "big deal" (even for the things that aren't), but then when something happens involving Biden that actually should be discussed, and they brush it off, it's not a good look.

So for people who are already suspicious of media outlets "playing for a specific team", calling in your Sr. Political Analysts and Dr. Gupta to have a round table discussion about Trump getting home from the hospital and taking his mask off while standing alone on a balcony, but then seemingly not wanting to talk about the Hunter Biden story at all certainly isn't going to help that situation any with regards to people being suspicious.

ThatRobGuy said:

Even among Democrats, upwards of 40% think Hunter's business dealings should at least be discussed.

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Should Hunter Biden's business dealings be discussed?

40% Democrats "sure because it's the right thing to do."

Should trump's alleged rape of a 13 year old girl be discussed?

0% Repubicans "no, because that is irrelevant to his job as POTUS."

ThatRobGuy said:

Well, of course they're not acting in good faith on it lol...there's definitely people out there who look to take any moment of negative optics and use it for a political goal.

However, I think it'd be of service to Biden if:
A) He would agree to just acknowledge it and answer some simple questions about it
B) Media outlets and Social Media platforms weren't giving off the impression that they're trying to squash/hide the story.

Those things are causing a bit of a "backfire" effect as it just fuels the fire of the "Biden-hunters" as you called them.

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eh.... maybe...

I'm not really sure what the best way to handle this is - it seems to me that everybody is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If you talk about it, you push it into public consciousness. If you ignore it, you feed the conspiracy theories, which pushes it into the public consciousness.

It seems hard to know the proper way to handle it without knowing more about the veracity of it. Most legit news outlets appear to have passed on the story because they couldn't verify the material, so the NY Post and other right-wing rags abandoned any sort of scruples they may have had and "scooped" them.

iluvatar5150 said:

eh.... maybe...

I'm not really sure what the best way to handle this is - it seems to me that everybody is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If you talk about it, you push it into public consciousness. If you ignore it, you feed the conspiracy theories, which pushes it into the public consciousness.

It seems hard to know the proper way to handle it without knowing more about the veracity of it. Most legit news outlets appear to have passed on the story because they couldn't verify the material, so the NY Post and other right-wing rags abandoned any sort of scruples they may have had and "scooped" them.

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But currently the score is two eyewitnesses (business partners) and five electronic devices giving very similar testimony.

JohnDB said:

But currently the score is two eyewitnesses (business partners) and five electronic devices giving very similar testimony.

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Except one of the "eye witnesses" appears to be a liar and the Wall Street Journal, which published Bobulinksi's story, now appears to have walked it back.

To establish what Bobulinksi stated, "Prior to Thursday's debate, Bobulinksi held a press conference where he alleged that Joe Biden took part in a 2017 meeting, when he was a private citizen, to discuss a proposed investment opportunity in China. He cited an email from another investor, James Gillar, referring to a potential equity share for a "big guy," claiming that was a reference to Biden."

Of course, Gillar has now come out and stated, "I am unaware of any involvement at any time of the former vice president." Additionally, when the WSJ checked the corporate records to confirm Bobulinki's story "provided no evidence for that."

I think we need to wait a bit more, for more information (particularly from the FBI) to be released, before we draw any conclusions, one way or the other.

JohnDB said:

But currently the score is two eyewitnesses (business partners) and five electronic devices giving very similar testimony.

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No, at most, there is some evidence that Joe was involved in some kind of deal for something, in 2017 after he was a private citizen. That's all any of this shows, and as @SimplyMe pointed out, even that's being walked back.

MIDutch said:

Should Hunter Biden's business dealings be discussed?

40% Democrats "sure because it's the right thing to do."

Should trump's alleged rape of a 13 year old girl be discussed?

0% Repubicans "no, because that is irrelevant to his job as POTUS."

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For starters, the notion that "0% of republicans/conservatives are opposing" Trump is just utterly false.

The former head of the RNC, as well as groups like the Lincoln Project are actively calling him out for his misdeeds and incompetence as a leader...and a popular former GOP governor even tried to challenge him in a primary for 2020.

On to the main bit...
There's definitely double-standards being employed by both camps with regards to "when to take certain types of allegations seriously"

For instance, "believe all women" was a pretty important thing to some when Brett was up for Senate confirmation after an accuser came out of the woodwork to make an allegation about something that supposedly happened decades ago. Not so much when a women was making an accusation against Biden.

On the other end of the spectrum, all of the same people who pretended to be shocked and appalled by Clinton's infidelity seemed to take the "eh, it doesn't have anything to do with his job" stance went it was their guy, Trump, having his own infidelities highlighted.


The issue I was trying to highlight is that I would expect there to be a stark difference in journalistic integrity (and consistency) between widely recognized and long-standing news outlets (with millions of dollars and their 'pick-of-the-litter' in terms of acquiring top-notch reporters and journalists), and Facebook comment-section "experts".

I'm not surprised at all when I see some random Facebook groups where people post nonsense about vaccines, or Russian hoaxes, or flat-earth, or fluoride, etc...

I would expect CNN/FOX/NBC/etc... to have more journalistic integrity and consistency than Michael Moore or some QAnon sub-Reddit.

This "everything little thing the other guy does is a huge issue, but everything our guy is accused of must be a conspiracy by the other party so it's not even worth talking about" is something I'd expect from random commenters on social media, not legitimate news outlets.

iluvatar5150 said:

It seems hard to know the proper way to handle it without knowing more about the veracity of it. Most legit news outlets appear to have passed on the story because they couldn't verify the material, so the NY Post and other right-wing rags abandoned any sort of scruples they may have had and "scooped" them.

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The problem is, is that most legit (but becoming less legit by the day) news outlets have exhibited so much bias (in one direction or the other) over the past 3 years, that making the choice to either talk about or avoid talking about it comes with the implication that they're playing political favorites.

That's their own doing really.

...a symptom of a news cycle that's run by outlets that have a polarized stance of
"our guy can do no wrong and the other guy can do no right"

Two factors are hurting our media outlets' credibility
1) accuracy (or lack thereof)
2) selective coverage

While bias and accuracy are two different concepts (it's possible to be unbiased but inaccurate, and possible to incredibly biased, but still technically accurate), both chip away at overall credibility in the court of public opinion.

An outlet can theoretically be very accurate with the information they present, but if all of that information is selectively chosen in order to only cover the stories that make their political opponents look bad, and they don't dare touch the stories that challenge their own guy, in the eyes of a large segment of the public, they're no better than a partisan hack network that's just carrying water for their guy.

The most common argument I see is the CNN vs. Fox News argument. It should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain and access to any sort of independent research tools (IE: internet access) that CNN is more accurate than Fox in terms of the information presented (in terms of claims made that are factually and objectively false, Fox is obviously worse), but the selective coverage of CNN still essentially attempts to accomplish the same goal as the misinformation put out by Fox, which is steer voters in one direction or the other.

Whether I lie about how great "Bob Smith" is and how bad his opponent is, or I selectively choose to only cover the stories that put "Bob Smith" in a positive light, and draw extra attention to the stories that put his opponent in a negative light, it's still basically the same goal of subversion.

civilwarbuff said:

My guess on this is the FBI is still smarting from all the criticism they received about opening an 'investigation' on HRC just before the election....and they don't want to walk over those coals again.

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The shop owner said that the FBI picked up the computer in December of 2019, almost a year ago.

ThatRobGuy said:

...prioritization is the key, which I why I said Trump is worse, and won't be voting for him.

My comment was on the fact that because Trump is worse, people are trying to pretend the story about Hunter (and possible implications for his father) are a big "nothing", and media outlets are avoiding even talking about it, and social media outlets are trying to block the story.

It's our job as voters to do the aforementioned prioritizing. It's the job of news outlets to report on stories that are newsworthy, and not filter out stories that are unflattering to the candidate that's running against the guy they don't like.

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Even if something appears factual, it can be contextualized in a way to manipulate people, and shouldn't be simply treated as a benevolent factoid. It's always important to ask what narrative is being served, and if that narrative is really relevant in the first place.

This kind of stuff is how Russian intelligence works. They don't deal necessarily in lies, but they are trying to push people around who are already prone to believing a certain narrative anyways. The purpose is to make Americans cynical about the whole political process, and to either push people towards extremes or suppress their participation. It all goes back to the pre-Soviet doctrine of strategic and tactical maskerovka (masquerade), which is about confusion and deception.

ThatRobGuy said:

I'm not saying who's worse...in my own personal opinion, Trump is worse.

I'm saying that Trump being worse doesn't equate to "any corruption involving Biden = nothingburger"

The Hunter Biden situation is problematic. ...and there is some evidence that makes it at least makes it worth looking into weather or not his father was complicit.

That's not an endorsement of Trump.

The "lesser of two evils" shouldn't be immune from criticism.

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The difference between Hunter Biden using his father's name to garner business for himself is that his business is his own, his father has no stake in it, whereas Junior's and Eric's business is their father's business - Junior and Eric are Executive Vice Presidents and trustees of Donald's revocable trust. Any business advantage they receive as their father's son benefits Donald directly.

Ivanka has driven business to her father's properties, but legally.

iluvatar5150 said:

Ivanka and Don Jr, however, were given their jobs by their father. That's textbook nepotism.

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Ivanka has a position in the government as does Jared Kushner, but the eponymous son works on the campaign, so while that is nepotism it is not shady. The children's work for the Trump Organization is, of course, nepotism, but that is a private matter.

Brought to you by the discredited Giuliani?

His theatrical debut today was disgusting.

ThatRobGuy said:

The problem is, is that most legit (but becoming less legit by the day) news outlets have exhibited so much bias (in one direction or the other) over the past 3 years, that making the choice to either talk about or avoid talking about it comes with the implication that they're playing political favorites.

That's their own doing really.

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No, that's mostly a right wing myth.

DaisyDay said:

Ivanka has a position in the government as does Jared Kushner, but the eponymous son works on the campaign, so while that is nepotism it is not shady.

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Which one of them was responsible for peace in the Middle East?