'Some F*ckery is Afoot': Joe Rogan Slams Media 'Fabricating Narrative' on Hunter Biden Laptop Story
05:59 GMT 22.03.2022 (Updated: 06:16 GMT 22.03.2022)
© AP Photo / Nick Wass
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The Hunter Biden laptop story, dating to 2020 when the New York Post reported on the contents of a hard drive copied from a computer that the US president's son ostensibly left at a repair shop in 2019, had been swept under the rug by Big Media until The New York Times admitted on 16 March that the recovered emails had been "authenticated".
Podcast star Joe Rogan has called out mainstream media outlets for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story that originated in 2020, in the weeks before the November presidential election that year.
First reported by the New York Post and revealing incriminating text messages, photos, and financial documents that exposed alleged corruption by the former vice president's son and apparent involvement of Joe Biden in Hunter's business deals, the bombshell story was dismissed by outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post as unproven “misinformation” at the time.
21 March 2022, 15:31 GMT
Social media outlets such as Twitter and *Facebook echoed this stance, similarly censoring reports on the story.
However, now, after The New York Times finally admitted on 16 March that emails recovered from Hunter Biden's abandoned "laptop from hell" had been "authenticated", the podcast star said on the Saturday edition of The Joe Rogan Experience:
“This is the problem that I had with the New York Post article and the Hunter Biden laptop being suppressed… You’re looking at something that’s real information, and you’re hiding it from people cause you don’t like the result you think is going to come out of that information. That's not how we're supposed to be doing things”.
The presenter went on to slam the liberal media for fabricating a “narrative” around the laptop story while deliberately “ignoring facts”.
“That’s what scares me. What scares me is I think there are objective journalists that work for The Washington Post and The New York Times and there’s real solid journalists out there, but I don’t necessarily know if you’re getting all of the information. I think it’s safe to say that some f*ckery is afoot”, insisted the former Fear Factor host.
Rogan also levelled a barrage of criticism at Hunter Biden’s father, US President Joe Biden, who repeatedly dismissed reports regarding the laptop as untrue throughout his presidential campaign, when he was running against Donald Trump.
“We remember from the debates with Trump bringing it up to Biden, and Biden saying it’s bullsh*t. It’s a lie… It’s a flat-out lie. Everybody knew it was a lie”, emphasised Rogan.
‘Interference’ in Election
The POTUS was similarly accused of lying over the laptop story and dismissing it as “Russian disinformation” by former Attorney General Bill Barr.
“I was very disturbed during the debate when candidate Biden lied to the American people about the laptop. He's squarely confronted with the laptop, and he suggested that it was Russian disinformation and pointed to the letter written by some intelligence people that was baseless - which he knew was a lie”, said Barr, appearing on America Reports on Fox News.
“And I was shocked by that”, added Barr, who served under former President Donald Trump.
Barr, who has been promoting his book One Damn Thing After Another, added:
“When you're talking about interference in an election I can't think of anything more”.
As to whether Joe Biden might face legal problems over the contents of the laptop, Barr acknowledged that the narrative could be “politically problematic”.
“From a political standpoint now that this is in people's consciousness, it had been suppressed up until now, obviously they have a hot potato and just to see how they handle it will be interesting”, added Barr.
On 18 March, Fox News underscored that the NYT's Hunter Biden story was being ignored by the established US media, such as CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
"It was once routine that damning reports about the president published by The New York Times would lead nearly every news programme… That is no longer the case, at least under President Biden… Since Wednesday evening, the Times' report has received zero attention on the five major networks".
The Laptop ‘Narrative’
Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, found himself in the crosshairs in October 2020 after The New York Post first reported on the contents of a hard drive copied from a laptop that the US President's son purportedly left at a Delaware repair shop in 2019.
The younger Biden faced scrutiny after information discovered on the Mac, dubbed “the laptop from Hell”, shed light on his numerous and sometimes controversial business dealings, such as securing a spot in the Ukrainian gas company Burisma following the 2014 coup supported by the then Obama-Biden administration, and a dubious deal with a Chinese business tycoon with suspected ties to the Communist Party.
Thus, in a May 2014 email, Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi ostensibly asked Joe Biden's son to "use [his] influence" to politically support the Ukrainian company. In another email, dated April 2015, Pozharskyi thanked the younger Biden for arranging a meeting with his father, then-US Vice President Joe Biden.
The laptop was one of three that had purportedly been owned by Hunter Biden, but had fallen out of his possession. They all contained sensitive information, including emails revealing how Joe Biden's son leveraged his US government connections and, in many cases, incriminating photographs, videos, and communications sent by Hunter.
The second laptop was seized by federal agents shortly after reports first surfaced regarding the contents of the first MacBook Pro.
Contents leaked by the Daily Mail from a third laptop, still missing, revealed footage of a naked Hunter Biden seemingly doing drugs with a prostitute in a Las Vegas hotel room.
The current POTUS has repeatedly insisted that he never had anything to do with his son's business dealings, while dismissing allegations against Hunter Biden as "smears from [former US President] Donald Trump's henchmen".
In its report on 16 March about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden's unpaid tax bills, the NYT said that when looking into the younger Biden's business dealings, certain emails had been examined by prosecutors.
The outlet also noted that those emails were obtained by them from "a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr Biden in a Delaware repair shop". According to the newspaper, "the email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation".
Previously, the NYT had claimed the New York Post story on the Hunter Biden laptop was unsubstantiated.
After the U-turn by the outlet, several Republicans have called to hold US mainstream media and Big Tech companies accountable for hushing the story in 2020.
House lawmaker Claudia Tenney (R-NY) called for an investigation into their actions, should the GOP take back Congress in the November 2022 midterms.
*Facebook is an extremist organisation banned in Russia.
