{"id":1414616,"date":"2022-04-01T09:44:54","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T13:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1414616"},"modified":"2022-04-01T09:44:57","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T13:44:57","slug":"blue-state-blues-the-2020-election-gets-a-giant-asterisk-over-hunter-biden-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/blue-state-blues-the-2020-election-gets-a-giant-asterisk-over-hunter-biden-laptop\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue State Blues: The 2020 Election* Gets a Giant Asterisk over Hunter Biden Laptop"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fblue-state-blues-the-2020-election-gets-a-giant-asterisk-over-hunter-biden-laptop%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1414616&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">The 2020 election must forever be tagged with an asterisk, given that the country\u2019s establishment media have finally admitted that Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, which they suppressed during the campaign, is authentic, despite President Joe Biden\u2019s denials.<\/p>\n<p>When the\u00a0<em>New York Post<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/10\/14\/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad\/\">published<\/a> the story in mid-October 2014, suggesting that Joe Biden was aware of, and participated in, his son\u2019s shady foreign business deals, the establishment media claimed the laptop was likely Russian misinformation.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Facebook and Twitter censored the story, and the\u00a0<em>Post<\/em> was locked out of its own Twitter account for weeks, with Twitter insisting that the story violated company policies. Even journalists who shared links to the story found they were blocked.<\/p>\n<p>Network news ignored the story, and so did cable news, with the exception of Fox News. CNN\u2019s now-disgraced president, Jeff Zucker, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/the-media\/2022\/03\/30\/cnn-admits-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-authentic-532-days-after-initial-reporting\/\">called<\/a> the story a \u201cBreitbart \u2026 rabbit hole\u201d and refused to cover it, even when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2020\/10\/22\/tony-bobulinski-says-he-met-with-joe-biden-to-discuss-family-business-plans-with-the-chinese\/\">presented<\/a> with hard evidence.<\/p>\n<p>The Biden campaign denied that the laptop was real, and Biden himself echoed claims that it was Russian disinformation. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/national-security\/2020\/10\/19\/clapper-brennan-hunter-biden-emails-russian-disinformation-whether-genuine-or-not\/\">pointed<\/a> to a letter by 50 former U.S. intelligence officials who speculated Russia was to blame, though they had no evidence.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Only later, after the election, did the public learn that Hunter Biden was in fact under federal investigation for tax violations. And now, 18 months later, the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em>, and CNN have admitted the laptop is, in fact, authentic.<\/p>\n<p>There is much more reporting to do: if the laptop is authentic, then so are emails alleging that Biden was to have held a 10% stake in a joint venture with a Chinese company controlled by the communist regime; so are emails confirming that Biden, while serving as Vice President, met with an executive from Burisma, the controversial Ukrainian energy company on which Hunter Biden was a board member; and that Biden met with his son\u2019s other foreign business associates while in office.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, the 2020 election can no longer be recognized as free and fair.<\/p>\n<p>You cannot have a free and fair election when the media, the tech companies, and the intelligence community censor information about the foreign business connections of one of the two presidential candidates.<\/p>\n<p>The effort to cover up the laptop was not merely a matter of error, or uncertainty: it was a misinformation campaign all on its own, because several of the leading players \u2014 including Biden \u2014 knew they were lying.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>As I noted in my e-book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Neither-Free-nor-Fair-Presidential-ebook\/dp\/B08PNN54BB\"><em>Neither Free Nor Fair: the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election<\/em><\/a>, it is not necessary to point to theories about voting machines, missing ballots, or election fraud to know that the 2020 vote fell short of basic democratic standards:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The international community recognizes a \u201cfree and fair\u201d election as one in which the secret ballot is \u201cabsolute\u201d; where individuals may \u201cexpress political opinions without interference\u201d; where voters may \u201cseek, receive and impart information\u201d; and where candidates have \u201cequal opportunity of access to the media.\u201d \u200bThese standards were violated by the 2020 election.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Social media companies with unchallenged monopolies interfered unabashedly with the election. Google manipulated search results to bury conservative news. Twitter and Facebook both suppressed legitimate content, including allegations of corruption against Joe Biden\u2019s family. And Twitter also censored the president himself. Democrats and many journalists encouraged such censorship to continue.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Each of these factors violated the criteria for a free and fair election, as established by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Those <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ipu.org\/our-impact\/strong-parliaments\/setting-standards\/declaration-criteria-free-and-fair-elections\">criteria<\/a>\u00a0include the\u00a0<em>right<\/em> \u201cTo seek, receive and impart information and to make an informed choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Americans were denied that right.<\/p>\n<p>The reason some Trump supporters were later inclined to believe conspiracy theories about the vote is that there really <em>was<\/em> a conspiracy to censor the news. The 2020 election gets a big asterisk.<\/p>\n<p><em>Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of <\/em>Breitbart News Sunday<em> on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Neither-Free-nor-Fair-Presidential-ebook\/dp\/B08PNN54BB\">Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election<\/a>. His recent book, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.centerstreet.com\/titles\/joel-b-pollak\/red-november\/9781546099840\/\">RED NOVEMBER<\/a><em>, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at <a class=\"x5l\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joelpollak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">@joelpollak<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2020 election must forever be tagged with an asterisk, given that the country\u2019s establishment media have finally admitted that Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, which they suppressed during the campaign, is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}