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Why Did Major Newspapers Chase Hunter Biden And Airbrush Jared Kushner?

Why Did Major Newspapers Chase Hunter Biden And Airbrush Jared Kushner?

Several of the nation’s leading newspapers failed to thoroughly scrutinize a potentially major scandal involving a president’s close family member using influence in the White House to establish lucrative international business deals.

In this case, the person trying to enrich himself s is none other than former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose multibillion-dollar sweetheart deal with Saudi Arabia has gotten just a fraction of the attention devoted to baseless stories about Hunter Biden.

The contrast could not be clearer. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter never held any official role in the Obama or Biden administrations, but Republicans and their media allies are investigating his business dealings — including those conducted during a period in which it appeared as if his father had permanently retired from politics.

Jared Kushner, on the other hand, had an “unrealistically broad policy portfolio” in his father-in-law’s administration, ranging from health care to foreign policy. Kushner, who served as one of Trump’s closest White House advisers, even reportedly led the administration to its early determination to ignore the COVID-19 pandemic in Democratic-leaning states. And, contrary to Hunter Biden’s private sector work, Kushner’s current business ventures are happening as his father-in-law tries to lay the groundwork for a political comeback in 2024.

Saudi Arabia’s $2 Billion Investment In Kushner’s Firm Raises Serious Questions

Last Sunday, The New York Timesreported that, just six months after leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner had secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Arabian government to capitalize his newly formed private equity firm Affinity Partners. In addition to comprising the majority of the firm’s initial portfolio, the deal will also pay $25 million in annual fees to Affinity.

Professional Saudi investment analysts had internally questioned the decision to inject capital into the Kushner-led venture, citing Kushner’s inexperience in private equity and the financial risks involved — only for the fund’s board headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the despotic heir apparent in Riyadh and a political ally of Kushner and Trump, to order that the deal should go ahead.

Documents also show Saudi investment fund staff explaining that the deal was made “to form a strategic relationship” with Kushner, rather than on the basis of its financial merit — an outright admission of a political relationship.

During the Trump administration, Kushner helped broker $110 billion in arms sales to the Saudi government, to assist in the ruthless Saudi military intervention in Yemen, while he also provided political cover to the regime after the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Times reported that ethics experts argue the deal “creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.”

USA Today Rewrites Recent History To Scandalize Biden Family

By an eerie coincidence, USA Today also published last Sunday a profile of Valerie Biden Owens, the president’s sister, which appeared on the front page of Monday’s print edition under the headline “President's sister defends 'Joey,' Hunter.”

“Not since John F. Kennedy has a president been surrounded by such a large and close-knit clan, one that has been a source of both emotional support and political trouble for the commander in chief,” wrote the paper’s Washington bureau chief Susan Page. She further asserted, without a hint of irony, “For years, Donald Trump has hammered Joe Biden with accusations of corruption involving multimillion-dollar contracts that son Hunter and brother James won in China and Ukraine when Biden was vice president.”

Even if the Times hadn’t just published the story about Kushner’s deal with the Saudi regime, it would be simply astonishing that Page could write such dramatic statements about the perception of impropriety in the Biden family without acknowledging the well-known history of Trump’s children making millions in overseas business deals during his presidency.

Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner worked in the White House with direct access to sweeping policy portfolios, and Trump’s adult sons were involved with his political campaign while also ostensibly managing his business as his proxies. And, of course, Trump himself used the presidency to routinely patronize his hotels and resorts at government expense, siphoning millions in taxpayer dollars through his properties in Florida, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and even Scotland.

If Page wanted to tell a story about the president’s family serving as a source of “political trouble for the commander in chief,” her fixation on President Biden’s sister is a perplexing choice.

In the past five days, USA Today still has not published anything in its print edition about Kushner’s deal with the Saudi government.

Washington Post Pushes Republican Talking Points About Hunter Biden

Also last Sunday, The Washington Post’s print edition ran a story about Republican accusations against Hunter Biden, titled “Unraveling the tale of Hunter Biden and $3.5 million from Russia.” The story, which first appeared online two days earlier, made the mistake of prioritizing the misleading Republican attacks over explaining the truth of the matter.

For example, after opening with two accusatory quotes from Trump and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who had every reason to launder their political smear through the press, the article waited until seven paragraphs later to actually declare, “We found no evidence that Hunter Biden was part of those transactions.” So, what exactly was the news value of reprinting these Republican lies?

Two articles the Post published in response to the Times story about Kushner’s actual deal with the Saudis could have been useful counterweights to the Republican smear campaign currently targeting the president’s son.

Post staff writer Aaron Blake wrote an article titled, “After Trump’s contentious courtship of the Saudis, $2B for Jared Kushner,” which detailed how Kushner may have secured his financial backers through political favors. Furthermore, national correspondent Philip Bump also wrote a piece titled “You say a president’s relative is part of iffy international deals?” which confronted the right-wing fixation with Hunter Biden by juxtaposing it with the seemingly obvious corruption inherent in Kushner’s investment firm.

But, unfortunately, these articles appeared only online and not in the paper’s print edition, where prime real estate was reserved for rehashing attacks on Biden.

The Wall Street Journal Hammers “Hunter’s Laptop,” But Remains Silent On Jared

The Wall Street Journal, the quasi-respectable news operation of the Murdoch media empire, has not run any articles on Kushner’s business deals. However, opinion writer Holman W. Jenkins Jr. ran a column in Thursday’s print edition titled “Media Bias and Hunter’s Laptop,” with the somewhat ironic declaration, “The press won’t claw back its credibility until it admits why it buried the story.”

In the past, the Journal’s news side actually helped to debunk Republican accusations against Joe Biden regarding his son’s business deals, during the controversy over Trump’s attempted extortion of the Ukrainian government in an effort to create political dirt against the Biden family. However, the opinion side summarily ignored it at the time.

Methodology

Media Matters searched articles in the Factiva database for The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today for the term “Kushner” and any of the terms “Saudi,” “crown prince,” “Salman,” “billion,” or “fund” within the headline or lead paragraph from April 8, 2022, through April 13, 2022. We also searched articles in the Factiva database for the same newspapers for the term “Hunter” in the headline or lead paragraph during the same time period.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters. Research contributions from Rob Savillo.

How The Press Botched Coverage Of Covid Relief For A Year

How The Press Botched Coverage Of Covid Relief For A Year

Reprinted with permission from Press Run

President Joe Biden stands poised to pass one of the most substantial and popular pieces of spending legislation in half-a-century, following the Senate's passage of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill. The American Rescue Plan will not only provide $1,400 checks for most American families and extend jobless aid, the bill provides money for vaccine distribution and financial relief for cities, schools, and small businesses hit hard by the pandemic.

The sprawling legislation also represents the largest increase in safety net spending in a generation. It includes huge assistance for day care, broadens eligibility for Obamacare, helps renters, and will likely cut the U.S. poverty rate by one third this year.

Reporting on the six most important "takeaways" from the bill's Senate passage this weekend, guess what USA Today ranked as the most significant detail about the American Rescue Plan? Answer: The fact that Biden wasn't able to win over Republican backing for the wildly popular bill, which has 83 percent public support.

Chalking that up as a White House failure, USA Today stressed, "Biden campaigned on bipartisanship following four divisive years under Donald Trump. Yet he was not able to win over a single Senate Republican." The paper made sure to penalize Biden: "The lack of bipartisan support shows that breaking through the gridlock isn't as easy as Biden predicted as a candidate."

Detailing the GOP's deeply radical and dangerous tendencies is not a story the press wants to dwell on. That's a key reason the media screwed up Covid relief coverage for the last twelve months, constantly presenting a false picture of legislative negotiations, told through the prism of the GOP.

USA Today didn't include one sentence about how bizarre it was that every Republican member of the House and Senate stands opposed to a bill that 70 percentof Republican voters support. Instead, the press continues to depict the GOP's obstruction as being normal and understandable. That way they can ding Biden for failing to make the bill "bipartisan." (Beltway media Golden Rule: Democrats alone are responsible for creating bipartisanship.)

Republican behavior over Covid relief last weekend at times bordered on madness, as they tried to drown the process with sure-to-fail amendments. At one point, they even tried to strip out funds specifically targeted for poor women and children. But that was definitely not the dominant media narrative in recent days. The New York Times insisted it was Democrats who faced an "awkward episode" on late Friday when details over extending unemployment payments had to be ironed out after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) raised objections. The event "threatened to defect and derail" passage, the paper reported excitedly.

Like USA Today, the Times was oblivious to the idea that Republicans faced any awkwardness for unanimously objecting to an emergency spending bill that the vast majority of Americans support, and doing everything in the party's power to slow down its passage, including the demand that the massive bill be read out loud in its entirety in the Senate, a move that wasted hours.

The Times waved off the GOP's extreme behavior as nothing more than, "a minority united in opposition." (i.e. Nothing to see here!)

Over the last twelve months, Republicans sabotaged all Covid relief negotiations, including Trump who routinely, and publicly, gave wildly contradictory statements about the need for assistance. Yet since last April, the press tagged Both Sides for failing to pass a relief package that was universally seen as crucial to the country's economic survival. ("Capitol Hill's failure to compromise" is hurting America, CNN emphasized.)

Fact: House Democrats in May passed a massive $3 trillion Covid relief package. To win over Republican support in the Senate, they then agreed to pass a smaller $2 trillion version. They were then ready to sign off on a further reduced $908 billion proposal. Republican leaders wouldn't even agree to that, yet the press consistently blamed "Congress" for not being able to meet halfway and pass much-needed assistance.

CBS News wondered, "Why hasn't Congress done more at this point?" The Congressional Covid failure represented "an institution gripped with paralysis," the Times stressed, while the Washington Post claimed the lack of legislation was due to "bickering."

Last summer, journalists claimed "Congress" was to blame for weekly $600 relief checks being cut off. Wrong — the payments were ended because Republicans forced them to end. In October, CNN's Wolf Blitzer launched into a heated argument with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, demanding to know why she wouldn't accept a White House relief proposal, even though Senate Republicans didn't support it, which meant the White House proposal would never be voted on.

Twelve months ago, the Beltway press echoed GOP talking points by loudly claiming Democrats were "blocking" the first Covid relief bill, which was eventually signed into law under Trump. The Times stressed that Democrats "risked a political backlash," by lobbying hard for additional unemployment aid, as well as more money for hospitals, healthcare workers, and local governments. (Democrats won, and improved the bill.) Today, there's very little media coverage of Republicans "blocking" the recent Covid bill, or facing "political backlash."

Republicans never supported a second Covid relief bill, yet the press spent the last year pretending otherwise — insisting that of course GOP leaders urgently wanted to aid struggling Americans, where there was little evidence that they did.

The country will be well served by the American Rescue Plan, but the slow-motion train wreck of Covid relief coverage represented a distressing failure of journalism.

New Poll: Majority Says Trump’s Racist Attack Is ‘Un-American’

New Poll: Majority Says Trump’s Racist Attack Is ‘Un-American’

Just hours after Republicans voted almost unanimously in favor of Trump’s racist attack on four Democratic congresswomen, a new poll shows that most Americans consider Trump’s actions to be “un-American.”

On Tuesday, 187 House Republicans refused to vote for a resolution condemning Trump for telling the congresswoman to “go back” to where they came from. All of the women are of color and American citizens.

The measure passed with the support of the entire Democratic caucus. Only four Republicans voted for it, along with newly independent Rep. Justin Amash (MI).

A USA Today/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday revealed that Republicans are extremely out of touch with how most Americans feel — 59 percent of the people responding to the poll said Trump’s attack was “un-American.

“Two-thirds of those surveyed, 65 percent, said that telling minority Americans to ‘go back where they came from’ was a racist statement,” USA Today reported.

The sentiment stands in stark contrast to senior Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who insisted that Trump’s racist comment was not racist.

Advisers close to Trump’s reelection campaign told the press on Tuesday that they believed the racist attacks could help to motivate bigots to turn out to vote for Republicans.

That likely explains why Republicans won’t rebuke Trump’s racism despite how far outside of American opinion the Republican position is. The party tried a similar tactic during the 2018 midterms, but the reliance on racist voters ended up with the GOP losing control of the House.

Americans overwhelmingly oppose Trump and his racism, echoing the Democratic position and putting Republicans outside the mainstream of national opinion.

 

Published with permission of The American Independent.

Trump Tweets Poll Showing Distrust In Mueller (But It’s Wrong)

Trump Tweets Poll Showing Distrust In Mueller (But It’s Wrong)

A new poll released by USA Today and Suffolk University on Monday renewed the political commentariat’s fears about President Donald Trump’s ability to shape the narrative about the Mueller probe through sheer force of will.

The headline for the poll sounded dire: ‘Half of Americans say Trump is victim of a ‘witch hunt’ as trust in Mueller erodes,” USA Today said. Many observers on Twitter voiced fears that Trump’s endless, repetitive attacks on the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation had finally sunk in.

Trump himself celebrated the result:

But others noted that the poll seems dubious — in particular, the question that led to headline-making result seems quite poorly worded.

The question was written as follows:

President Trump has called the Special Counsel’s investigation a “witch hunt” and said he’s been subject to more investigations than previous presidents because of politics. Do you agree?
The poll found that 50.3 percent of respondents said “yes,” 46.8 percent said “no,” 2.7 percent were undecided, and 0.2 percent refused to answer.

But it’s far from clear they knew really what they were responding to with such a poorly phrased query.

“This is a badly written poll question, because it is asking two different things at the same time,” said Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research Associates. “Are respondents agreeing that the investigation is a witch hunt or that Trump is subjected to more investigations than other presidents?”

And The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand noted another possible confusion in the question: “Among other issues, it could be read as asking whether the respondent agrees with the fact that the president has said that.”

With such an unclear poll question, there are few inferences one can reasonably draw from it.

And in contrast to USA Today’s headline and Trump’s celebration, the poll suggests little reason for Trump to think his rhetoric has been all that successful. About 54 percent of respondents said they had “a lot of” or “some” trust in Mueller and his investigation to be accurate and fair (which, incidentally, isn’t what you’d expect if 50 percent of people though it was a “witch hunt.”). Only about 43 percent of people said they had “a lot of” or “some” trust in Trump’s denial that his campaign colluded with Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

There’s still the possibility that Mueller will conclude that Trump did nothing wrong, and so the majority of the public’s trust in his probe would turn out to be a good thing for the president. But Trump himself doesn’t seem to be acting as though that’s likely to happen — he’s instead working to discredit Mueller before the investigation wraps up, even as the special counsel diligently remains silent.