Politico frequently reads like an internal house organ of the Democratic Party and a key component of the Democrats’ public relations adjunct. Natasha Bertrand’s October 2020 Politico story promoting the line that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop coverage constituted Russian disinformation is a classic disgrace. Bertrand’s story ran under the headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
Moving on from Politico, Bertrand has failed upward. She is White House reporter for CNN.
And Politico marches on.
In the June 2 edition of Politico’s West Wing Playbook, Alex Thompson and Max Tani lead with “The trials of being an ex-Biden.” Covering the memoir of Hunter Biden’s ex-wife to be published on June 14, the story reads like advance damage control.
The story inadvertently reveals the lack of introspection on Politico’s disgrace. Thompson and Tani disparage the New York Post in passing (link in original): “[T]he personal life of the president’s son’s has become daily fodder for The New York Post, the Daily Mail and other right-leaning tabloids, all while his overseas business relationships remain a focus of major mainstream news outlets.”
The story also offers a quote from the book:
“Hunter tried to tell me that he came from a middle-class family,” she writes. “Months later, when I went to his house for the first time, I explained to him: ‘Hunt, a kid from a middle class family does not have a ballroom.’”
The editors of the New York Post have not taken kindly to the slight administered to the Post by Thompson and Tani in passing. The Post editorial is “Politico’s pusillanimous pandering on Hunter Biden.”
In this case the Post’s response seems to me somewhat disproportionate to the offense. The Post editors should hammer on Bertrand’s story, its manifestation of the deep state working to support its preferred presidential candidate in the 2020 election by utterly foul means, and Politico’s service as the willing instrument of a transparent lie.
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