← Back to context

Comment by throwpoaster

3 days ago

> How? He was banned after the election.

By suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/hello-youve-been-referre...

  • > The fact that, much later on, many elements of the laptops history and provenance were confirmed as legitimate (with some open questions) is important

    “The story was true but…”

    Stopped reading here.

    • More fool you.

      There are two separate "the story"s. One is a story about Hunter Biden's laptop. One is a story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter.

      At least some of the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was true. That doesn't tell us anything about whether the story about political interference and/or bias at Twitter was true.

      The linked article argues that (1) there wasn't in fact political interference at Twitter, (2) although Twitter employees (like employees of many many many tech companies) lean left, there was no sign that anything in the company's treatment of the H.B. laptop story was politically motivated, and (3) the fact that Twitter nerfed links to the NY Post's story about H.B.'s laptop for one day (a) more likely increased than decreased interest in that story and (b) had no impact to speak of on the presidential election anyway.

      Of course it might be wrong about any or all of those things, but whether the NY Post's story about the laptop was actually true or not has nothing to do with any of them.

      (The assertion being made upthread here is that Twitter's handling of the story was a deliberate attempt to "suppress" Donald Trump and that it handed the election to Joe Biden. It's all about the second story, not the first one.)

      4 replies →

It's a stretch to say this would have made a major impact. Biden won fairly comfortably. COVID was Trump's bad luck.

  • Bad luck? Covid was the definition of an easy layup. It's like bush and 9/11, should be a trivial re-election.

    • The extended lockdowns 100% ended his term. It upset too many people for too long. Regardless of actual responsiblity, big nationwide negative events always get laid at the feet of the current sitting president.

    • Nope. In terms of presidential politics, covid was basically the same as an economic downturn; if it happens while you're the president, the electorate will blame it on you regardless of whether you had anything to do with it.

      In the case of Bush in the 2004 election, at that time they were pushing the story that Iraq had been developing WMDs; that was the initial justification for the invasion. Obviously false in hindsight, but at the time people were still pretty raw about 9/11, so critical thinking was in short supply, but--most importantly--it provided an enemy to focus on.

      In the case of covid there was no comparable enemy. "Declaring war" on a virus would not have anywhere near the same impact as using the military to actually wage war on another country.

      3 replies →

    • > Covid was the definition of an easy layup.

      I don't understand this at all.

      Covid was devastating for the whole world. I don't see how it is an "easy layup" for anybody or any country. Was there any country or scenario where it was an "easy layup"?

      1 reply →

    • > Covid was the definition of an easy layup. It's like bush and 9/11

      Anything but. Trump could have won in 2020 if not for Covid. A lot of turnout was anti-Trump protest vote.

      1 reply →

Why does Hunter Biden matter at all in anything?

  • Because the laptop includes a lot a emails. A lot of those emails include Hunter selling access to his father and suggesting that his father was in the the scheme with him. Whether or not Joe was actually involved vs. Hunter making it up to get these people to give him what he wanted is an open question, but this isn't something that should have been actively suppressed by the media just a few weeks before the election.

    • Fox News hyped up Hunter to distract people from the immense corruption between Jared Kushner and the Saudis. Kushner got a $2 billion investment fund from the Saudis.

      2 replies →

    • Trump's children are Hunter Biden on crack. There's more of them and they're way worse than Hunter.

      We literally have multiple Trump children openly bragging in public about how paying them gives one access to their father.

      Nobody cares. Nobody would have cared about Hunter either.