Washington Times, Jan. 22, 2023
It doesn’t happen that often, but President Biden has been getting some bad press lately.
The media have suddenly awakened to challenge the White House over the classified documents scandal. Meanwhile, a major news network painted an outrageous picture of a Biden family that constantly tries to cash in on its access to power.
These were legitimate stories because they either are now, or soon will be, major problems for Mr. Biden. And reporters covered them that way. The question for the media now becomes: Can they keep it up?
There’s no doubt that reporters have sunk their teeth into the drama over Mr. Biden’s mishandling of sensitive government documents in multiple locations. On the ongoing day-to-day story, the White House press corps has done a solid job — better recently, for sure — of staying on top of press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and (unsuccessfully) demanding transparency.
And some are even faulting the White House’s response and its shifting story.
“That looks, in these early days, like the kind of dodgy, hide-the-ball behavior that Biden should have been above,” wrote Time columnist Mona Charen. “That is demoralizing for those who believe that Biden’s chief accomplishment — and purpose — as president has been to restore a modicum of trust to a nation that has been sunk in suspicion and bitterness for too long.”
(To be fair, this bit of criticism was in the second half of a column that was mostly about Ms. Charen’s described sadness that the document scandal has robbed Mr. Biden of the moral high ground over former President Donald Trump, who has had his own issues with classified materials after his presidency.)
And then, you knew there would be a Hunter Biden angle, because there always is. That’s what happens when selling access to “the Big Guy” is the family business and the ne’er-do-well son is the bagman.
So, it was not surprising that Hunter’s name has appeared in some (mostly conservative) coverage of the scandal because he once lived in the Delaware house where a batch of the classified documents were found, even claiming to own the place at one time. The idea that he had access to secret government documents, which could have been relevant to his foreign business deals, is not far-fetched at all. … [To read the full article, click here]
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