All Fair in Love, War and Politics

Friday is here once again and there really doesn't seem much to say on the probation front and having absolutely no appetite to dwell on Brexit, that just leaves either Covid or Trump. 

As regular readers are aware, I've become a big fan of CNN and somewhat surprisingly, also taken to Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain. I'm continuing to follow US politics for some distraction, but oh dear, I find the two have fallen out and the issue involves matters of principle, integrity and honesty, all matters many might feel are in short supply where politics and the Fourth Estate are concerned. 

So, as the Republicans and Trump initiate a seemingly absurd last-ditch attempt to steal the election and invite the Supreme Court to disallow millions of votes, as this take on things from Piers writing for the Daily Mail in his column sinks in, I'm hugely disappointed to yet again be reminded that indeed all is fair in love, war and politics:-

This Hunter Biden cover-up stinks

Imagine for a moment that Donald Trump had won the US election last month? I don't mean won it in the increasingly absurd way HE thinks he won it – i.e. that Joe Biden's entirely legitimate victory was invalid because uncorroborated 'mass voter fraud' made it a 'rigged' and 'stolen' election. Only a bonkers conspiracy theorist actually thinks that, someone like the President himself whose pathetic elongated temper tantrum is turning into the most unedifying episode of The Biggest Loser ever aired.

No, I mean imagine if Trump had actually won fair and square and was now preparing to be inaugurated for his second term of office? Then imagine that his victory was quite narrow, like Biden's, and came down to a few thousand votes in the swing states? And then imagine that just before the election, a major US newspaper had published an explosive story about his son Donald Trump Jr. based around the contents of his personal laptop that revealed extensive dodgy dealings with people from foreign countries, some very unfriendly to the United States, and which even suggested his father may have been involved in some of those dealings?

Now imagine that in this eventuality, and with none of the key elements of the story denied by the Trumps, 90% of America's mainstream media deliberately refused to cover the story, and social media giants like Twitter and Facebook actively suppressed it altogether? Finally, imagine waking up today to hear that rather than Hunter Biden being formally investigated by federal authorities from the Justice Department over his financial affairs, as is the case, it was Donald Trump Jr.

And that the investigation has been ongoing since 2018 but was 'paused' in case it affected the election. And that it has looked at allegations of potential criminal violations of tax and money laundering laws. And that it is now in front of a Delaware Grand Jury with a view to indictment. By now, some of you might be screaming that the election was 'rigged' and 'stolen' from Joe Biden, right? And of course, that is exactly what Donald Trump will be screaming all day long today, as he does every day, only this time with some actual evidence to support his otherwise hysterical claims.

I mean, who knows how damaging it might have been if this federal investigation into Hunter Biden's finances had been revealed before the election, and the mainstream media had given it the full Hillary Clinton email treatment that many believe cost her the 2016 election? I said at the time that the media's abject failure to properly report the New York Post's scoop about Hunter was a shameful dereliction of journalistic duty driven by the inherent liberal bias of much of the US media – and I said it as a liberal myself.

Predictably, and equally shamefully, the media responded by then trying to censor me too: I was dropped from an appearance on Brian Stelter's CNN media show after going on Fox News and lambasting news organisations like my former CNN employers for refusing to follow up the Post's Biden exposé. They were happy to buy into Joe Biden's line that it was all a hoax driven by nefarious Russians to discredit him.

Now the same CNN is reporting that the federal investigation is 'examining multiple financial issues, including whether Hunter Biden and associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China.' CNN also reports that the investigation had been 'largely dormant in recent months' due to Justice Department rules that prohibit taking legal actions in cases that could affect an election. That tells me there's enough meat on the bone of the investigation to warrant genuine concern in the Biden camp.

If I were appearing on Stelter's show this Sunday, I might ask him if he is still comfortable that CNN refused to pursue the Post's story before the election? And what would they have done if it had been about Donald Trump Jr instead? At the time of the Post story breaking, I also made the point that the Democrats, mainstream media and social media firms could conspire to try to avoid it all they liked, but that wouldn't make it go away and it would come back to haunt Joe Biden if he won the election. Well, here we are.    

Piers Morgan