Music

Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Friday March 18th, 2022.

I am John Poghortz, the editor of commentary magazine inviting everyone in around or who wants to take a quick

John or even a long john to South Florida to join us on April 6th in Palm Beach for a live taping of the commentary magazine podcast

me, Abe Christine, Noah, Dan Seenor and other special guests perhaps you can join us just to hear the podcast you can join us and have a meet and

read or you can join us for a VIP dinner. These are three levels of participation. You can read all about it and sign up at commentary.org slash live podcast April 6th Palm Beach, Florida, mid afternoon.

What a time. What a joy. What a prelude or what a thrill will be thrilled to meet you. You'll be thrilled to meet us. Let's face it and we will all have a great time and among those having a great time will be

Zach editor Abe Greenwald. Hi John senior writer Christine Rosenhy Christine. Hi John and associate editor and all Ross Man, hi, Noah. Hi, John.

So back in October of 2020, my erstwhile paper for which I worked on and off now is a freelancer for the last 14 years but but as a staffer for the previous 13 years.

The the New York Post broke the story of the mysterious laptop left at a Wilmington Delaware computer repair shop owned by Hunter Biden that featured incriminating emails about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's brother, Robert and the business that they had started together in efforts to

start a business for for Hunter Biden's consulting business with promises of access to the then vice president of the United States Joe Biden.

And astonishing efforts were made at the time to suppress openly openly and without apology to suppress the story on the grounds that several former intelligence officials said that the laptop could have been created by Russia as a disinformation tool to deny Joe Biden.

And so the president see if you the Twitter de platform the New York Post for publishing tweets promoting the articles are tweets that mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop thing were, were killed and people suspended for using them same thing was going on on Facebook where this warning you may be reading something untrue was attached to Facebook posts.

And so it was true. We can now see from the Russian the brilliant Russian conduct of the war in Ukraine that are our our our fantasy imaginings about the unbelievable competence of the Russians being so good at what they do that they could fabricate a laptop and create three years of internet history with fake emails and fake email addresses that actually conform to real standards that are true.

And so it's formed to real standards that are traceable and trackable and all of this. This is all part of this delusion that began in 2016 that the Russians had somehow seized control of the American brain using social media and Cambridge Analytica and in hypno therapy and and and and pelving and rolving and all kinds of things to control America into voting for for Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin's say so.

This delusion about Russian omnipotence and omniscience in the purveillance of computer use and sewing discord and all of that really met reached its apogy with this idea that they had fabricated a laptop, dropped it off in Wellington Delaware with a computer store owner who had handed it to Rudy Giuliani who had then retailed it to the New York Post and then the story came out and the New York Times yes.

Yesterday finally acknowledged on behalf of the entire mainstream media that this was garbage and that the laptop was real and that the emails were real and that Hunter Biden is a sleaze who was under federal investigation for improperly using improper lobbying techniques and standards and other other stuff.

What do you guys make of it Christine as our media columnist.

Well, it's first of all, it's not a surprise, but it deepens the cynicism of everyone who has mistrust of the mainstream media in part because no one's acknowledging they got it wrong.

So, I think it's a report that it was all right and let's just move on we have more important there's a war in Ukraine after all. And I think it's that attitude the we we consistently lied to you we used not and it wasn't just the the big tech platform suppressing us it was mainstream journalist on you know wolf blitzer all these other guys on TV just constantly announcing this.

And so, you know, the politician saying look at this terrible Russian disinformation. This is horrible. Look at this is right out of the right wing playbook. It was a concerted effort by the cultural and political left to suppress information that has now been definitely shown to be true and it was done.

Those were the means, but the end was to get a Democrat elected to the presidency that's shocking. I mean, we should be shocked. We should be angry and Americans are absolutely right to be completely cynical about what they're hearing from the media. They always are.

...