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Comment by zmgsabst | Hacker News Reader

No.

Media has always been salacious nonsense — at least, judging from the 1880s English newspapers I’ve read as part of a research writing class: they’re full of complete lies about Jack the Ripper, for instance.

Most of the discussion from government is using that perennial fact to justify suppressing true information — eg, suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story or people’s personal experiences with the COVID vaccine. Even though that collapsed both trust in media and trust in medical institutions.

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The chain of custody issues alone render the laptop story incredible

To add to the sibling comment about the courts, from Wiki:

> Starting in 2021, news outlets began to authenticate some of the contents of the laptop. In 2021, Politico verified two key emails used in the Post's initial reporting by cross-referencing emails with other datasets and contacting their recipients. CBS News published a forensic analysis which examined a "clean" copy of the data obtained directly from Mac Isaac. It concluded that the "clean" data, including over 120,000 emails, originated with Hunter Biden and had not been altered

This whole thing is sounding alot like the one about Bill Murray, the son of famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (not the famous one from SNL).

His mom really influenced his behavior, so it has to be a conspiracy: William J. Murray III is an American Baptist minister, and social conservative lobbyist. Murray serves as the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. that lobbies Congress on issues related to aiding Christians in Islamic and Communist countries.

It's fascinating to see the true believer. It's like those cult members that stayed in the cult when the day of the end of the world came and passed and nothing happened. They just said "well, it's probably going to happen next year". It's both sad and fascinating - there's literally nothing too ridiculous that people couldn't believe given the opportunity.

Tell that to the courts, I guess.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/business/media/hunter-bid...

Excerpt:

> The laptop and some of its contents played a visible role in federal prosecutors’ case against the president’s son, who was charged with lying on a firearm application in 2018 by not disclosing his drug use. A prosecutor briefly held up the laptop before the jury in Delaware, and an F.B.I. agent later testified that messages and photos on it and in personal data that Mr. Biden had saved in cloud computing servers had made his drug use clear.

iCloud isn’t the laptop, let’s be clear

Incredible that in this comment thread there are suggestions the Biden government is fascist, even though Biden allowed his son to be prosecuted but if the reverse happened Trump would obviously interfere.

Federal prosecutors tried to make an extremely favorable plea deal with Hunter Biden that granted immunity to a host of crimes he wasn’t charged with. The judges ended up throwing it out.

Don’t rule out a lame duck pardon, either. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton pardoned their ne’er-do-well relatives, and it’s very common for Presidents to issue pardons during their final days in office.

>Don’t rule out a lame duck pardon, either.

Biden was asked if he would pardon his son, and he said no. But this is entirely beside the point, because Trump would pardon his son without a second thought and Trump supporters wouldn't blink.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-tells-muir-wouldnt-par... https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/06/politics/biden-will-not-p... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c133mdjkl7go

He also said he wouldn’t drop out of the election.

Yeah the party spent weeks arguing with him to put the country before his desire to be a two term president. Something Trump is far too egotistical to do. But this is entirely beside the point, because the Democrat politicians are held to a far higher standard than the Republicans politicians are, especially Trump.

It's weird how every single example of supposed suppression of information is something like "hunter Biden laptop" that has been reported in news ad nauseam.

The comment you are replying to has two examples, only one of which has to do with Hunter Biden.

The Hunter Biden laptop story is highly improbable and has many typical hallmarks of Russian Disinformation. It also happens to be true. That is all there is to it.

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