I'd be willing to take a bet with you that they're not a fabrication, if you want.
If they were a fabrication, the smartest thing to do would be a vehement pronouncement that it's all doctored, fake bullshit. It'd make sense to do that once and then never talk about it again and refuse questions, but the fact that there's not a single denial is telling. It's definitely not proof, but it's a sign.
Also, at least one email thread was corroborated by someone else on the thread as being real. That doesn't prove the rest of the emails are real, but it increases the likelihood.
Again, I don't even think there's anything damaging in there. But the absolute kneejerk insistence that they're fabricated, and that even trying to be impartial about it is giving into propaganda, by so many people, is pretty bizarre to me. There's a reasonable, rational, balanced middle ground here that very few people (besides some actual journalists like Matt Taibbi, Ross Douthat, and perhaps Glenn Greenwald - pending exactly what he says in this forthcoming article) seem to be taking.
>If they were a fabrication, the smartest thing to do would be a vehement pronouncement that it's all doctored, fake bullshit
This is false, and rather laughable. If he addresses them directly, then that gives legitimate news organizations license to report on his denial, including reporting on the accusations. By not denying them he puts the onus on those pushing the story to demonstrate its legitimacy first.
>Is this a smoking gun of corruption of any sort? Obviously not. But could it raise some questions, before an important election? It could. If someone had completely fabricated this email, in my opinion almost any rational person would, at least once, somewhere, say or write that it was absolutely completely fabricated.
>Additionally, someone on this exact email thread corroborates that the email thread is all real, and claims that "H" is Hunter Biden and "the big guy" is Joe Biden, which seems plausible given the email context.
The smartest move, if they're true, is to be silent. The smartest move, if even a single email is doctored, is to protest that it's fake.
There's already been tons of reporting in non-left-aligned media about the emails and the fact that his silence is suggestive of them being real. If he were to deny it, the very little bit of reporting that NYT etc. did about it, suggesting it's likely disinformation, likely from Russia, could be even more strong with its claims that it's total bullshit.
Combined with the corroboration of the person in that email thread, and the fact there isn't anything that interesting in the emails (why doctor something so boring? like with the DNC emails hacked and leaked by Russian intelligence), I'm happy to bet money with you that they'll be proven to be legitimate within a few months. I don't think it's proven at all, but I think it's more likely than not.
There was an article I saw recently quoting from a right-wing political operative about smears. The takeaway was that a smear has little value if it stays contained within right-wing echo chambers. The goal is to get the mainstream press to talk about it non-stop. That is the mark of a successful smear campaign (this is tangential to the information's accuracy).
The fact that the mainstream press hasn't talked about the controversy much outside of the context of twitter et al blocking its dissemination, or it being a suspected disinformation campaign is a win for Biden. Denying the content of the controversy suddenly allows the story to be reported as a he-said, she-said, giving the story a life of its own. This does a disservice to Biden because now the reporting can be neutral between the parties. The battle here is over swing voters, and a he-said/she-said controversy is exactly the kind of nebulous "concerns" the GOP hope to raise about Biden. It was the specter of something going on that defeated Hillary and they're hoping to repeat this with Biden. Not addressing the specifics of the controversy allows the story to stay where it belongs, as a right-wing media hail mary.
As a comparison, mainstream press didn't report on the Trump dossier until Buzzfeed's reporting of the dossier became the story. Once the story becomes reified, mainstream outlets can then report on the controversy. The winning move is to keep the story from becoming its own controversy. Not addressing it directly helps to accomplish this.
Exactly. And the acquisition here also has a very sketchy story. It kind of sounds made up. If it's true, it's very unethical. If it's untrue, it very likely still was. But the method of acquisition doesn't say anything about the content itself.
The drug use and pornography is not relevant and more of a distraction. But the indications he may have been paid off by the CCP is troubling, and would mean he's a compromised candidate. We've spent the last four years of dire warnings from the media about Russian information, only to see them ignore the vast influence of CCP money around the globe.
I don't think the emails show clear signs of any improper behavior with respect to China. It's not necessarily unethical for his family to have had businesses or business relationships in other countries, and it's not necessarily evidence of any relationship with the CCP. The CCP technically controls all business, so it could be said that any business dealing with any part of China is dealing with the CCP, but I think that'd be unfair if there's not an actual, concrete governmental relationship.
And so far, there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence that Joe was profiting from or involved with any of the deals himself (though there are some accusations of this).
The leaks are worthy of fair assessment and research, but people definitely shouldn't jump to conclusions of corruption.
I don't know. Watch Tucker Carlson's Bobulinski interview. He's got nothing to gain from this and comes off very credible. He accounts messages from the Biden family, even Biden himself that are very troubling. Not to mention the "plausible deniability" line chortled by his brother Jim. It deserves an accounting from the candidate. The company they got money, the CFEC was controlled by the CCP.
If Biden came out and said it was false, he’d (a) be giving this garbage more air time than it deserved, and (b) embolden people who think it’s a cover-up. There’s no reason to believe that making such a statement would actually improve things; rather, it would probably make things much worse.
You say there’s nothing damaging in there. If that’s the case then the Biden campaign has even less reason to respond.
At this late stage, yeah, you'd probably be right. But when the story first broke - before a cover-up, before most of the air time - if someone completely forged some emails, it would be the reasonable thing to do.
There's probably nothing really damaging. But some things in it could still potentially be interpreted that way, to the point that if someone had completely fabricated the emails, I think it'd be worth coming out and saying "to be clear, these are blatantly made up, my son never sent this email/these emails" even just once. Even in just an off-hand comment in an interview.
Is this a smoking gun of corruption of any sort? Obviously not. But could it raise some questions, before an important election? It could. If someone had completely fabricated this email, in my opinion almost any rational person would, at least once, somewhere, say or write that it was absolutely completely fabricated. Additionally, someone on this exact email thread corroborates that the email thread is all real, and claims that "H" is Hunter Biden and "the big guy" is Joe Biden, which seems plausible given the email context.
I think it definitely is a cover-up. Not because of some collusion between Biden and the media; I think it's all social forces and incentives.
Optically, the media doesn't want accusations of having helped Trump win if he wins.
At the object level, a large percentage of people in the media lean left and strongly dislike Trump and don't want to do anything that might help him win.
And, probably, some percentage may also be so biased that they really think there's no possible way the emails could be real.
In the last case it wouldn't be called a cover-up, but it's being awful at one's job. In all of the cases, it's not a cover-up in the sense of a nefarious conspiracy, but it's journalists not being journalists due to strong political bias.
I think if this were leaked emails about Trump, the right-leaning media would've done exactly the same thing and not reported on it, or only reported that "the left-wing media is spewing conspiracy theories again!", as the inverse of what's happening here. I think the lesson that's reinforced here for me is just that all media organizations of any kind once again can't be trusted when it comes to actually caring about truth and epistemology.
It's not about the holes, it's about if it's newsworthy to even discuss, and in my opinion it is newsworthy to discuss. There's a difference between holes and bullshit. The emails are real; the extrapolations and Bobulinski's claims are what's unclear. Some of his claims are objectively true, and some may not be.
If they were a fabrication, the smartest thing to do would be a vehement pronouncement that it's all doctored, fake bullshit. It'd make sense to do that once and then never talk about it again and refuse questions, but the fact that there's not a single denial is telling. It's definitely not proof, but it's a sign.
Also, at least one email thread was corroborated by someone else on the thread as being real. That doesn't prove the rest of the emails are real, but it increases the likelihood.
Again, I don't even think there's anything damaging in there. But the absolute kneejerk insistence that they're fabricated, and that even trying to be impartial about it is giving into propaganda, by so many people, is pretty bizarre to me. There's a reasonable, rational, balanced middle ground here that very few people (besides some actual journalists like Matt Taibbi, Ross Douthat, and perhaps Glenn Greenwald - pending exactly what he says in this forthcoming article) seem to be taking.