Broadly speaking, Americans are divided into three groups over charges that Joe Biden participated in his family’s corrupt influence-peddling schemes.
First are those who, like me, are convinced the “big guy” secretly got his share of the foreign millions paid to his son and brothers over many years.
Second, are those who are undecided because they haven’t heard of the charges or don’t know enough about them.
The third group refuses to consider the charges because they are serious enough to send Biden packing and elect a Republican, possibly the dreaded Donald Trump.
This third group comprises hardcore Democrats and the mainstream media, which are often indistinguishable.
The differences in public opinion were on vivid display last week when two Republicans, Kentucky Rep. James Comer and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley (lower), said a whistleblower told them the FBI has a document that links Joe Biden to a “criminal scheme” involving “money for policy decisions.”
Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, issued a subpoena to the FBI demanding the document, which supposedly covers events when Biden was vice president.
“We’re very confident that this does exist,” Comer told Sean Hannity Thursday.
“We’re very confident in the whistleblower.
“And look, this fits a pattern of behavior that the Bidens have done.”
Predictably, White House spokesman Ian Sams dismissed what he called more “unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks against the president and his family without offering evidence for their claims.”
In fact, there is lots of evidence for earlier claims, including bank records showing nine Biden family members got unexplained payments from a deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate.
That follows the voluminous messages, emails and photos on Hunter Biden’s laptop, many of which document his father’s involvement.
But the real meat of Sams’ response came later, in a tweet.
There he seized on how the Democratic media poured cold water on Comer’s claims as proof there’s no there there.
His not-so-subtle message is that, if the mainstream media is skeptical, you should be, too.
“How this innuendo is being covered,” he began, before quoting from three left-leaning outlets, starting with the Associated Press, which wrote that “The lawmakers used the word ‘alleged’ three times in the opening paragraph,” and “offer no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details.”
Well, if CNN says so
Sams quoted Politico’s report that the charge is “guaranteed to spark fierce pushback and skepticism” and noted CNN called it an “unverified allegation.”
Sams might have noted that others, notably the New York Times, hasn’t deigned to cover the subpoena or Comer’s claims at all.
The Times remains obsessed with Trump and, as if to deflect attention from Biden’s scandals, adds more space and anonymous sources to its coverage of the former president’s legal entanglements by the day.
Still, Sams’ tweet and the Times’ silence on Comer’s claim capture the dispiriting media moment we live in, one where partisanship is a dominant factor in coverage, which in turn warps public opinion.
In many cases, we are what we read, watch and listen to, which gives Dems, even corrupt ones, an enormous advantage because most media serve as the party’s echo chamber.
Trump feels the sting of that disadvantage, where everything he says and does is instantly caricatured as evidence of a crime or his unfitness.
Meanwhile, Watergate offers a different kind of example, one where the media relatively quickly agreed on a single set of facts.
The break-in of the Democratic headquarters took place in June of 1972, and in less than a year, in May of ’73, the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities began four months of televised hearings.
At the start, The Washington Post drove the story, with the Times and a few others a distant second.
But the hearings produced compelling evidence against President Richard Nixon and media coverage exploded.
When the secret White House tapes were released and showed Nixon actively engaged in a coverup, Republicans and media defenders abandoned him.
Despite his landslide victory in 1972, when he captured 520 electoral votes to George McGovern’s 17, Nixon resigned Aug. 8, 1974, a little more than two years after the break-in.
By comparison, more than 2¹/₂ years after The Post broke the first laptop stories in October of 2020, Joe Biden still benefits from a vast media protection racket.
As a result, much of the public remains in the dark about the growing evidence of his involvement.
There is no way to explain this media dereliction as anything other than a willful decision to ignore facts that are politically inconvenient.
Consider that a few of the big outlets, including the Times, Washington Post and CBS, say they have authenticated much of the laptop, but still won’t take the logical next step of pursuing the president’s role in the family schemes.
Even the statements and testimony of Tony Bobulinski, the former Hunter Biden partner, that Joe is the “big guy” slated to get a secret 10% stake, has not sparked wide media interest.
Indeed, to my knowledge, no reporter from any of those outlets has asked the White House a simple question: Did Joe Biden meet Bobulinski in May of 2017 and discuss the Chinese deal, as the former naval officer claimed publicly and to the FBI?
They don’t ask because they don’t want to know.
As the Jack Nicholson character memorably put it in “A Few Good Men,” they “can’t handle the truth.”
Still, I remain optimistic that the deniers will eventually have no choice.
I say that because the evidence already available and common sense point in the same direction.
Without Joe, the influence peddling wouldn’t be possible.
No one would pay Hunter Biden tens of millions if Joe’s participation was in doubt.
That explains the meetings Hunter arranged between his father and his paymasters — they were signals that Joe was all in.
GOP’s torch-bearers
I also believe the young Turks leading the GOP charge — Comer, Reps. Jim Jordan, Mike Turner and others — reflect a new breed of Republicans.
Coming of age politically during the past decade, they learned to fight like Democrats, meaning they will be relentless and ruthless.
Although the party lacks a coherent and disciplined message to push the facts out to a wider public, at some point, the drip-drip-drip about Biden’s corruption will turn into a gusher that can’t be hidden.
That will take the decision out of the media deniers’ hands and force them to act like real journalists, which will in turn force the partisan FBI and Department of Justice to do their jobs.
Of course, there is also a race against time.
Once the calendar turns to 2024, media and public attention will focus increasingly on the presidential horse race.
That leaves about six months for the GOP to get its evidence in order and make its case too compelling to ignore.
The alternative is that America remains under the thumb of a corrupt media that hides facts that don’t fit its narrative.
