With impeachment in the political headlines once more, Democrats and their media allies have formed a tight phalanx around President Biden, armed with a handful of fresh talking points. And unsurprisingly, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish the journalists from the politicians.
The media and Democrats have often marched to the same tune, but rarely with this degree of uniformity. Regardless of where the talking points originated, it’s clear that both groups received them:
Biden’s defenders insist the President’s only role in his son’s life was that of a loving, supportive father. On July 26, former Democratic Congresswoman Claire McCaskill complained on All In with Chris Hayes: “They are going to try to indict a father for loving his son who has been addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.”
Just a day earlier, NBC News White House correspondent Mike Memoli deployed the same argument: “The only involvement on the part of the President of the United States was as a loving father.”
Hours after Hunter’s former business associate Devon Archer testified before Congress on July 31, Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY) was on damage control duty. To downplay the revelation that Hunter had put his father on speakerphone at least 20 times during business meetings, Goldman insisted: “It was all casual conversation, niceties, the weather.”
The media quickly adopted that same argument, and since then they have reminded their viewers almost daily. “They talked about fishing and the weather,” co-host Mika Brzezinski insisted on the August 5 edition of Morning Joe.
During the August 13 State of the Union on CNN, Goldman pretended Hunter’s influence peddling career was nothing but smoke and mirrors: “Hunter Biden was trying to promote an illusion of access to his father for his own reasons.”
That claim — that Hunter was duping clients with the mere illusion of access to then-Vice President Biden — became a favored mantra for the journalists as well. On September 20, CNN News Central co-anchor Boris Sanchez went even further than Goldman had been a month earlier:
I will say, the reporting indicated that Archer told Congress, again, the President’s son was trying to sell then illusion of access, not actual access to the then-Vice President.
So far none of these people have bothered to explain how Joe Biden answering the phone during his son’s business meetings does not qualify as actual access.
We’ve seen this same charade play out whenever the political stakes were high enough: as soon as impeachment reared its head, the media eagerly transformed themselves into grotesque fountains of propaganda. Wouldn’t it be easier just to make Congressional Democrats the news anchors?
