Donald Trump Jr. has posted a meme to his Telegram page depicting the attention Americans have placed on recent UFO-related incidents in US airspace compared to the virtually non-existent coverage of revelations by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh last week that the US was directly responsible for the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines.
The image - based on the obscure Tumblr meme called "Can we address the elephant in the room?" - shows a woman in a supermarket looking at items labeled “UFOS,” while a giant, pink inflatable balloon elephant labeled “THE US BLEW UP NORD STREAM” looks on from behind her.
Legacy media have for the most part shied away from reporting on Hersh’s Substack article, which detailed how US Navy divers placed C4 charges on four Nord Stream pipelines off Denmark’s island of Bornholm during a NATO exercise last summer.
Outlets that did cover Hersh’s report largely limited themselves to trying to smear him. Reuters ran a piece titled “White House says blog post on Nord Stream explosion ‘utterly false’” in an apparent bid to diminish the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, who has over 50 years of investigative experience under his belt, by labeling his work a “blog post.” Business Insider ran an even more aggressive piece, titled “The claim by a discredited journalist that the US secretly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline is proving a gift to Putin.” Snopes, a “fact-checking” service known for attacking narratives that challenge the establishment line, dubbed Hersh’s report a “conspiracy,” and pointed out that his story “relies on [an] anonymous source” (but apparently that’s not a problem if The Washington Post or Politico does it).
Among mainstream outlets, only Fox News’ Tucker Carlson (but not his network) reported on Hersh’s work with any pretense of neutrality, pointing out that his own program had been attacked for asking questions about the official line on the Nord Stream attack – that Russia blew up its own pipelines.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly hinted at US involvement in sabotaging Nord Stream last year, warning in September that the act of terror was a “major escalation” that could spark “World War III” with Russia.
14 February 2023, 12:27 GMT