How POLITICO suppressed Biden stories

Jim Geraghty writes:

We always knew that large swaths of the mainstream media were going to treat Joe Biden with kid gloves for much of his presidency. Part of this was the usual preference for Democrats over Republicans. A lot of this was the widespread belief among media elites that Donald Trump’s first term had been an unparalleled catastrophe, and Biden needed all the boosting he could get to keep Trump from coming back. And perhaps a bit of this was a naïve belief that Biden really was the kindly ice-cream-eating grandfather that his team wanted America to see.

Forgive the long except from our old friend Isaac Schorr, writing at Mediaite, but the whole exchange just gets more revelatory as it goes on.

“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation. Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true,” he observed.

“But then Facebook also pulled all stories down about the Hunter Biden laptop, and I think Twitter did at the same time, too,” jumped in Palmeri.

“Correct, they punished The New York Post, that didn’t help. I mean, Politico, my former employer and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors,” said Caputo. “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”

“Yeah, I mean, I had a hard time — you know I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted — the story on the gun” replied Palmeri, delving into her own trouble to publish stories that could hurt the elder Biden’s political prospects.

On March 25, 2021, Palmeri and her colleague, Ben Schreckinger, wrote a story with the headline, “Sources: Secret Service inserted itself into case of Hunter Biden’s gun.” (That story is now behind a paywall.) On September 14, 2023 — nearly two-and-a-half years later — the U.S. Department of Justice charged the president’s son with making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by Federal Firearms Licensed Dealer, and possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. He was convicted on all three charges on June 11, 2024. Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced on December 12, 2024, but after emphatically promising for more than a year that he would not pardon his son, on December 1, President Biden pardoned his son for all crimes committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024, announced it via a brief written statement, took no questions, and then flew to Angola.

Back to the Caputo and Palmeri conversation:

. . . I spent three months on it, I went to the laptop shop, and I did all of the reporting in Delaware, and I did all of that. But yeah it had, it had to be like much, it had to be 100% nailed down. I had everything, you know, the police reports, every, like, you know, I’m a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have, if it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type of story,” reflected Palmeri. “It was the beginning of his administration, it was a honeymoon period — you know what I mean?”

“Since we’re spilling tea about our former employer, I still have a copy of the story on my external hard drive. In 2019, a rival presidential Democratic campaign of Joe Biden’s gave to me the tax lien — the oppo research — the tax lien on Hunter Biden for the period of time that he worked at Burisma,” recalled Caputo. “And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.’”

“That story was killed by the editors, and they gave no explanation for that either,” he said. “So that general experience, you know, obviously the public doesn’t know about those things, but as a reporter having witnessed the way in which the two candidates-”“We just get called, like, ‘the terrible mainstream media.’ It’s like you don’t understand the process there,” interjected Palmeri.

“Well, you also don’t understand the dumb decisions of cowardly editors that are made above us,” agreed Caputo.

For what it’s worth, Politico called the accounts of Caputo and Palmeri “a case of false memory.” The fact that they both remembered editors at Politico either refusing to run or dragging their feet on running stories critical of the Biden family makes it hard to believe this was misremembered or an isolated case.

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Climate Disasters?

There’s not much evidence that the climate disasters the news media talks about are human-caused climate change disasters.

Here are some highlights from a recent X post:

❌ Hurricanes have 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 in frequency since at least 1980.

❌ Major hurricanes show 𝒏𝒐 𝒔𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒊𝒇𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒅 since at least 1980.

❌ Wildfires have 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 in frequency over the last two decades globally. So has burn area.

✅ Wildfires have 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 such as the western U.S., but this is largely due to increased human ignitions in conjunction with poor city planning and forest management practices.

⚠️ Reductions in fire risk must focus on addressing the root problems. CO₂ emission reduction will not be very helpful, especially in the short term.

✅ Heatwaves have 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 in frequency, intensity and duration since 1950 at a global scale, and are projected to increase through 2100. However, these trends are not yet observed everywhere (e.g., eastern North America and in parts of South America).

⚠️ Future increases in heatwave occurrence may be partially offset by reduced atmospheric blocking highs that cause them due to Arctic amplification. This may also negate increases in duration, but it’s still a highly debated matter.

❌ Cold waves have 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆𝒅 since 1950 virtually everywhere and those trends are projected to continue throughout the remainder of the 21st century.

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Rumblings About Barack and Michelle Obama Divorce (and Jennifer Aniston) Getting Louder

Daily Mail today:

Inside former VP Kamala Harris marriage turmoil as Doug Emhoff’s scandals are blamed for losing presidency

Kamala Harris was all smiles and affection for her ‘beloved’ second gentleman Doug Emhoff in the immediate aftermath of her crushing presidential election defeat.

But now that President Donald Trump has been sworn into office, for sore loser Harris, it is now all about the blame game, and her target has flipped to her ‘dead weight’ husband.

And as she weighs her political future – maybe a 2026 run for Governor of California or another try for the nation’s top job two years later – she has to consider whether Emhoff is an asset or a liability.

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The Left Is Losing The War Of Ideas (1-23-25)

01:00 WP: Johnson aide advised against Hutchinson subpoena over concerns about lawmakers’ ‘sexual texts’, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/23/cassidy-hutchinson-lawmakers-texts/
02:00 Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tight Young Sexual Allure Trapped Republicans, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=158711
34:00 Should You Go To Law School?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf3KSPNkNBc
54:30 Trump’s New Social Contract with America, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAWVMPQWv_g
1:19:00 The Trump Immigration Fire Hose, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwsyznL0XlQ
1:38:00 La Cienega Heights Was Known As Corning-Cadillac When It Was Dominated By The Playboy Gangster Crips, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=145230
1:39:00 Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries in La Cienega Heights, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=145237
2:00:00 What Must Happen to Avoid Having a Fire Tragedy like this in California Again, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=varqS7P5NYY
2:11:00 Mark Halperin on Trump’s First 100 Days, Democrats & Today’s Political News , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7t_CoA7WqU
2:20:00 Pete Hegseth nomination for SecDef

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WP: Johnson aide advised against Hutchinson subpoena over concerns about lawmakers’ ‘sexual texts’

Washington Post today:

The move was intended in part to prevent the release of sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent Cassidy Hutchinson…

Before that meeting, a Johnson aide told Loudermilk’s staff that multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of “sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” with Hutchinson, according to correspondence produced at the time that detailed the conversation. Separately, a member of Johnson’s staff told Loudermilk aides that Hutchinson could “potentially reveal embarrassing information,” according to an email reviewed by The Post.

…In a statement, Hutchinson’s lawyer, Bill Jordan, did not address the existence of texts and said his client has cooperated voluntarily with the investigation.

A major reason that men go to extraordinary efforts such as running for public office is to achieve sex with attractive young women.

After Hollywood, the most sexually charged place I have ever been is the California Capitol in Sacramento where almost all legislators seem to have young gorgeous women working for them and boinking lobbyists is taken for granted as one of the perks of the job.

Many men like sluts because they figure they have a better chance of going to bed with a loose woman. If a bloke sees a woman sleeping her way up, they might well think — I’m important, why shouldn’t she blow me too?

June 29, 2022, I posted: Is The Washington Post Hinting That Cassidy Hutchinson Was Sleeping With Mark Meadows?

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The Washington Post makes Cassidy Hutchinson sound like Tracy Flick (the Reese Witherspoon character in the movie Election):

Cassidy Hutchinson was about to turn 24, already a key official at the White House after a meteoric ascent from obscurity, when she heard a startling noise. It was early December 2020, and President Donald Trump was livid because his attorney general said the election had not been stolen.

Upon investigating the noise, Hutchinson was told by a White House valet that Trump had thrown a porcelain plate against the dining room wall, which was now dripping ketchup. Hutchinson grabbed a towel to wipe up the mess as the valet told her to steer clear of the president because “he’s really, really ticked off about this right now.”

It was a turning point in an extraordinary effort to subvert the transfer of presidential power, as Hutchinson recalled it in dramatic testimony Tuesday before the House Jan. 6 committee. In a riveting two hours, Hutchinson added layers of stunning detail from her one-of-a-kind vantage as principal assistant to Mark Meadows, then White House chief of staff, which put her steps from the Oval Office….

On paper, Hutchinson had been one of the youngest and least experienced members of the White House staff. Yet on Tuesday, there she was: Now 25, in a bold white jacket, confidently and calmly testifying that the most powerful man in the country, Trump, had been out of control and stoking an armed insurrection….

In Trump’s White House, Hutchinson had extraordinary access and in the eyes of many White House staffers, she had inordinate power. Some derisively called her “Chief Cassidy,” and even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staff asked White House aides why she was in on legislative meetings….

Hutchinson had a sudden rise to find herself as the center of power.

During the first impeachment trial, Hutchinson grew close to Meadows as a legislative affairs staffer in the White House, former advisers said. Once he was named chief of staff in March 2020, he immediately elevated her, a former adviser said, and she eventually became his principal assistant. She was given an office next to his, which in turn put her a few doors away from the Oval Office.

Brendan Buck, a former aide to House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), said in an interview that Hutchinson “was always by his side … when there were meetings you’d expect to be principal level or very small senior staff level, he would always insist she was in the room.” Buck said she was usually a quiet presence. “She was largely there to take notes,” Buck said. “It’s just unusual to have a relatively junior aide to either be in principal level or senior staff level, but it was his call, so we deferred to him.”

She was viewed throughout the White House as speaking for Meadows when she gave other staff members orders, and regularly said “Mark wants” or “the chief says” — the chief being Meadows.

A former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions, said that Hutchinson traveled constantly with Meadows, going on Air Force One, answering his calls, and getting texts from members of Congress. Key members of the White House staff who wanted to get a message to Trump or Meadows often went through her.

The Washington Post article makes it clear that she was not liked, she was not respected, and that she was out of place at the top. The Post implicitly says that she did not rise on merit.

If Cassidy Hutchinson maneuvered her way to the top ala Tracy Flick, and now has fallen out with the powerful men who made her, then she may have an agenda beyond telling the truth. If she wasn’t intimate with Mark Meadows, then her rise makes no sense. So when faced with a choice between sense and nonsense, I choose to make sense. The simplest explanation for Cassidy’s rise and turn is the Tracy Flick story.

On Steve Bannon’s podcast Friday (July 1, 2022), Peter Navarro says: “The joke around the White House was when Meadows came in, he brought his harem in. There’s like five women he brings in, three to personnel the outer office (including Cassidy Hutchinson) and two for the press office… [Cassidy] was a running joke… The only time I saw [Cassidy], she was sitting with a big bag of candy doing nothing. I couldn’t figure out why she was there. Meadows gave these people high ranks.”

Report: “Cassidy hasn’t divulged much about her personal life for good reason. As of now, there is no record of Cassidy’s marriage to anybody and she has never mentioned her spouse, hence it is assumed that Cassidy is not married and has no husband as of June 2022.

Because she is obviously so private about her personal life, there is no record of her dating anybody today, hence it is thought that she is single. Our efforts to learn more about her love life were futile because there was no sign of her lover on the internet.”

Meadows makes only one reference to Cassidy in his 2021 memoir The Chief’s Chief but links that reference to Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with President Bill Clinton:

I remembered that earlier in the afternoon, just after we’d arrived, Cassidy Hutchinson, my White House assistant, had dropped off a few boxes of candies and gifts with the presidential seal on them. These weren’t much, just cardboard boxes that said “President Donald Trump” with an eagle and a presidential seal, but they were valued by supporters. It was the best we could do on short notice. Most of the time, we kept these gifts in a small room off the Oval Office—what we jokingly referred to as the “Monica Lewinsky Room”…

In her testimony to the January 6 Committee, Cassidy seems upset that Meadows doesn’t look up enough from his phone to gaze into her eyes and that he’s not taking her input with sufficient seriousness:

* What was Mark’s reaction — Mr. Meadows’ reaction to this list of weapons that people had in the crowd?

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: When Tony and I went in to talk to Mark that morning, Mark was sitting on his couch and on his phone which was something typical. And I remember Tony just got right into it. He was like, sorry, I just want to let you know and informed him, like, this is how many people we have outside the mags right now.

These are the weapons that we’re going to have. It’s possible he listed more weapons off that I just don’t recall. And gave him a brief but — and concise explanation, but also fairly — fairly thorough. And I remember distinctly Mark not looking up from his phone, right? I remember Tony finishing his explanation and it taking a few seconds for Mark to say his name.

Because I almost said, Mark, did you hear him? And then Mark chimed in. It was like, Alright, anything else? Still looking down at his phone.

* Mark still hadn’t popped out of his office or said anything about it. So that’s when I went into his office. I saw that he was sitting on his couch on his cell phone, same as the morning where he was just kind of scrolling and typing. I said, hey, are you watching the TV, Chief? Because his TV was small and I — you can see it, but I didn’t know if he was really paying attention.

I said, you watching the TV, Chief? He was like, yeah. I said, the rioters are getting really close. Have you talked to the President? And he said, no, he wants to be alone right now; still looking at his phone. So I start to get frustrated because, you know, I sort of felt like I was watching a — this is not a great comparison, but a bad car accident that was about to happen where you can’t stop it, but you want to be able to do something.

* LIZ CHENEY: Not long after the rioters broke into the Capitol, you described what happened with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. [Begin videotape]

CASSIDY HUTCHINSON: No more than a minute, minute and a half later, I see Pat Cipollone barreling down the hallway towards our office; and rush right in, looked at me, said, is Mark in his office? And I said, yes. He just looked at me and started shaking his head and went over — opened Mark’s office door, stood there with the door propped open and said something to — Mark is still sitting on his phone.

I remember like glancing and he’s still sitting on his phone.

She sounds a bit like a scorned lover enacting revenge.

According to The Sun:

DEBBIE Meadows is the wife of Mark Meadows — the 29th White House Chief of Staff.

The power couple has been married for 42 years, and they originally built a bond off of their shared love for business.

Debbie and Mark have two children together named Haley and Blake.

Tim Alberta writes October 4, 2020:

In my book, American Carnage, I wrote that [Mark] Meadows is the only politician I’ve encountered who stacks up to a real-life version of Frank Underwood, the cunning main character in the show “House of Cards.”

We resemble the people we come close to. Cassidy Hutchinson came very close to Mark Meadows.

The Washington Post has a history of slyly making its points about adultery among the powerful.

David Talbot writes in Salon September 14, 2004 about Kitty Kelly’s book on the Bushes:

George H.W. Bush and wife Barbara dismissed Bill Clinton as a pathetic hillbilly when he challenged the incumbent in 1992. But, Kelley writes, Clinton was one of the few Bush opponents who knew how to back them down. As colorful stories from Clinton’s sexual past in Arkansas began to surface during the campaign, a Clinton aide began digging into the senior Bush’s own robust adultery. This included, writes Kelley, two long affairs — one with Jennifer Fitzgerald, Bush’s White House deputy chief of protocol, who, as the Washington Post once slyly put it, “has served President-elect George Bush in a variety of positions,” and one with an Italian woman with whom he set up house in a New York apartment in the 1960s. The Clinton aide told Kelley, “I took my list of Bush women, including one whom he had made an ambassador, to his campaign operatives. I said I knew we were vulnerable on women, but I wanted to make damn sure they knew they were vulnerable too.” After the eruption over Clinton’s mistress Gennifer Flowers died down, sexual infidelity did in fact become a moot issue in the campaign.

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