2020 Presidential Election
July 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In “The new Kremlinology” Matt Taibbi gives a lesson in how to read the New York Times. The text of Taibbi’s column is available only in part to nonsubscribers, but it gives you the idea. We’ve been reading the Times in the Kremlinological style for quite some time now. This week’s sympathetic Times profile of January 6 agitator Ray Epps by Alan Feuer presents a serious challenge to interpretation. The
»
July 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward
So my pseudonymous guest author “Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov” notes that his Trump-phobic comments here the other day didn’t sit well with some Power Line readers! As the greatest movie superhero of the 1980s put it, Welcome to the party, pal! Now, what readers should know is that “Molotov” and I are part of a regular three-person email chain for the last three years or so, where we cogitate about all
»
June 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
John Eastman counseled President Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election. I have commented critically on his contribution to the events of January 6 previously, but today I want to draw attention to his close encounter with the FBI last week. Tucker Carlson included the video in his brief segment with John last night. It is chilling. Our increasingly totalitarian government seems to have adopted the infamous mantra of
»
June 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
We have covered the FBI’s investigation of the case of Ashley Biden’s diary in a series of 17 posts under the heading of “The O’Keefe Project.” This is the eighteenth. I don’t think anyone has devoted as much attention to the story as we have. The collaboration of the FBI with the New York Times attracted my interest, but my judgment is that every aspect of the story merits attention.
»
June 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
TV Rating Guide’s Rebecca Bunch posts the ratings for the January 6 Committee’s show trial hearing this past Thursday evening. The headline declares the ratings “decent.” Well, that is disappointing if accurate. If you take your television viewing from the broadcast networks, however, your only choice was to turn the thing off. The networks graciously handed their prime time slots over to the committee’s motley crew in unison, Soviet style.
»
June 5, 2022 — Scott Johnson
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
»
May 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
John Paul Mac Isaac is the Delaware computer repairman with whom Hunter Biden dropped off his infamous laptop for repair in April 2019. In a long-term drug-induced stupor, Biden abandoned the laptop with the repairman. When the New York Post obtained a copy of the laptop’s hard drive and revealed some of its scandalous contents in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, all involved (excepting Hunter Biden) were tagged
»
May 14, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There are so many things that seem . . . wrong about the 2020 election, and lot of listeners and readers have been asking about the new documentary film “2000 Mules,” which offers some visually compelling circumstantial evidence, along with a few examples of direct testimony of voting misbehavior in nursing homes and other locales. So Lucretia and I both took it in this week, and try to give an overview
»
May 7, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The New York Post debuts an excerpt of John Paul Mac Isaac’s memoir American Injustice: My Battle to Expose the Truth. The Post has published the excerpt under the headline “The night I met Hunter Biden: Mac Shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac recounts fateful encounter in exclusive excerpt.” It is the story the Post reported before the 2020 presidential election, but it is the story that could not be
»
April 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
MSNBC hosts will remain free to reveal themselves as fools and tools on Twitter, but Ari Melber is exercised about the threat posed by Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform. Melber explains: “If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself, you don’t even have to be transparent, you could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all
»
April 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Special Counsel John Durham’s false statement charge against former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussman is scheduled to go to trial next month. Durham has subpoenaed documents from Fusion GPS, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign in connection with the trial. A funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. Everyone involved has asserted attorney-client privilege to withhold documents. Perkins Coie of course served as a cutout in
»
April 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
This post is a footnote to the adjacent post on Daniel Schmidt’s close encounter with Anne Applebaum last week. Reading Anne Applebaum’s 2020 Atlantic essay on the Hunter Biden controversy, I infer that the “reporter” whom Schmidt credits with breaking the “Hunter Biden Files” is Matthew Tyrmand. Applebaum links to Laura Ingraham tweets touting Tyrmand at the top of her essay. I called author and Biden family business expert Peter
»
April 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Daniel Schmidt is a University of Chicago freshman and senior editor at the Chicago Thinker. He is one of the Alinskyite gadflies who turned up at the Institute of Politics/Atlantic Disinformation Conference last week. Schmidt posed a good question to Anne Applebaum that turned the theme of the conference back on itself (tweet below). Schmidt now recounts his story in the Compact column “The question Anne Applebaum refused to answer.”
»
April 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Chicago Thinker editors Audrey Unverferth and Evita Duffy take a look back at the Thinker’s subversion of the nauseating University of Chicago Institute of Politics/Atlantic Disinformation Conference last week. They give their after-action review the headline “The Chicago Thinker Staged a Media Regime Takedown This Week—Here’s How We Did It.” They write: This week, the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP) and The Atlantic magazine hosted a “Disinformation and
»
April 9, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In its lead editorial this morning the Wall Street Journal turns its attention to President Obama’s performance at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics/Atlantic Disinformation Conference this week. The editorial is headlined “Barack Obama rewrites his Russia history.” It opens this way: “As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction [this time],” Mr. Obama
»
April 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Peter Van Buren looks back at the question of “disinformation” that was floated by 51 former intelligence officials to suppress the news extracted by the New York Post from Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election. Van Buren’s Spectator column notes in the subhead “The only disinformation op in 2020 was run against American voters by their own intelligence community” (the Spectator has taken the column out from behind its
»
March 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
You might call the Washington Post’s attention to the riches inside the Hunter Biden laptop a day late and a dollar short, but it does not do justice to the facts. It is a considerable understatement, akin to the Black Knight’s “Tis but a scratch” and a “It’s just a flesh wound” to describe his dismemberment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Indeed, it’s worse than that. Reading the
»
