For those of you who remember the embarrassment of the Times coverage of the “Whitewater” scandal, it must seem like déjà vu all over again. It does to me. The paper’s editors are trying, and I mean really trying, to make the Biden classified documents issue a thing. And I mean a grave thing. The stage was ably set by the subject line of the email I received blasting out their latest deep dive on the story: “Inside Biden’s 68 days of silence.” It’s this like a Gabriel García Márquez homage? I mean good lord. Are we really doing this again? Of course we are. It’s how they roll.
I took the liberty of a short set of annotations.
That’s from Josh Marshall who does an excellent job of analyzing the rapidly escalating hysteria around Joe Biden’s classified documents. I, of course, remember Whitewater as I’m sure quite a few of you do too. What both Josh and I recognize is the febrile excitement and barely repressed, palpable glee among the press corps as they run with the story 24/7 despite the fact that there is no real “news” beyond the fact that some classified documents were found and a special prosecutor has been named in order that the DOJ not be criticized for being biased against Trump for naming one in a very different case. That’s it.
The “story” you see is 100% about the negative political implications for Joe Biden not the substance of the supposed crime. After all, Biden is the president and he has cooperated at every step of the way, unlike Trump. No, this is the most fun kind of investigation for the beltway press corp, the kind where you can wax on for hour after hour about the “optics” and the “trust” and the judgement” of a particular Democrat as a way to place them in the same category as Richard Nixon or Donald Trump. Think about “her emails.”
As Josh writes:
There’s simply not a lot of meat on this bone. But there’s so much appetite for the bone that doesn’t really seem to matter. It’s both an opportunity to curry a bit of bothsidesist favor since most mainstream media reporters primarily focus on how not to be accused of liberal bias. (I know them. This is true.) But perhaps even more than that there are the cinematic qualities, fateful decisions with unknown and potentially grave consequences into the future. The over-clever and perhaps naive belief that completely cooperating would create the impression of complete cooperation.
The bigs really, REALLY want this one.
There was a deadly shooting today in California. 10 people were killed and 10 more injured and the suspect is still at large. Normally there would be wall to wall coverage of that story at least for one day. On CNN this morning they covered it at the top of the news but could hardly wait to switch gears and blather on about Biden’s documents. As Josh says, they really REALLY want this one.
And if they think this will somehow give them credibility with the right, prove that they aren’t “fake news’ they have another thing coming. The right is playing them all the way down. And let’s face facts: they know it. They like playing the game too.
I mean, are they really serious about drawing comparisons between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on corruption? Well, yes they are. If you think this is bad just wait until the Hunter Biden investigation gets going. They will use this “scandal” as a jumping off point.
They have not changed.