The White House announced a plan to partner with Facebook to flag problematic posts that it believed contained “disinformation” about novel coronavirus vaccines. But there were many stories labeled disinformation that turned out to be legitimate.
The Lab Leak Theory
For months after the coronavirus began its spread, Democrats and media talking heads alike dismissed the possibility that the virus could have leaked from a research laboratory like the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
They scoffed at Republicans like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and former President Donald Trump for saying they believed the virus had originated in a lab, and labeled it as a fringe conspiracy theory.
WATCH:
SUPERCUT!
Media mock Trump, @TomCottonAR for “debunked” Covid lab leak theory pic.twitter.com/nb0621y2e7
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 26, 2021
But over a year into the pandemic, the lab leak theory has gained stronger ground.
WATCH:
Russian Bounties on American Soldiers
Just a few months before the 2020 presidential election, the media began to circulate a report suggesting Russian officials secretly placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers — effectively paying the Taliban to execute Americans.
Everyone from The New York Times to now White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed the narrative.
taking a moment to re-up the fact that @realDonaldTrump knew about Russia offering bounties to Taliban to take out US troops in Afghanistan and still defends Putin. his undervaluing contribution of US troops not just horrific–but also dangerous https://t.co/iqylqMyvqA
— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) September 4, 2020
The Washington Post even gave Trump “four Pinocchios” for calling the story “fake news.”
But some six months after the election, the story changed dramatically. A new statement from Biden’s White House said what former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said from the beginning: that the intelligence community did not have high confidence in the information.
WATCH:
Hunter Biden’s Laptop
The New York Post — and a number of people who shared the Post’s exposé on Hunter Biden — found themselves at least temporarily suspended from Twitter. The reason, according to Twitter, was that the story revealed personal information and was considered to be the product of “hacked materials” — in spite of the fact that the Post did not appear to have published anything resulting from a hack.
The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a forensic analysis of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop — the source of the Post’s story — and determined the “smoking gun” email implicating his father in his overseas business dealings to be 100% authentic.
Just after the election, however, outlets like NPR that had dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as “not really a story,” suddenly reversed course.
The richest may be @NPR. Back in October they didn’t say a peep about Hunter because – I kid you not – they “don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”
Apparently, now it’s a story. pic.twitter.com/F38qKe5Gcv
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
And NPR was hardly alone.
@politico put out a piece back in October about how 50 “former senior intel officers” said it might be Russian disinfo, despite the entire American intel apparatus saying that was bunk.
Today they used the same picture of Hunter to report about…Hunter’s corruption. pic.twitter.com/AHYyZGEqQq
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
One of the most egregious displays was @CBSNews, who got upset with one of their reporters for daring to ask about Hunter Biden in October (h/t @CarmineSabia) but, all of a sudden, see it as a valuable story a couple of months later. pic.twitter.com/QWk0GMMNJg
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Here’s @NewsHour doing an about-face on Hunter’s impropriety with no recognition of how we got here. pic.twitter.com/2e8jyXLFAh
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
You had to assume that @nytimes would find their way on here. pic.twitter.com/juDtDz3dYK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 11, 2020
Russian Collusion
Democrats and the media spent the better part of Trump’s first three years in office trying to make the Russian collusion narrative stick — and Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell claimed to have direct evidence of that collusion.
.@TGowdySC on collusion: “The only person in the universe who claims to have evidence of collusion is Adam Schiff, and unlike any other secret he’s ever had, he’s actually kept this one.”
Watch the full interview at 2PM & 7PM ET @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/skuEKAeINZ— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) June 17, 2018
MSNBC plays montage of @ericswalwell calling Trump a Russian asset, saying evidence is in “plain sight” of collusion; Swalwell doesn’t back off and challenges Trump to prove otherwise that he “acts on Russia’s behalf.” pic.twitter.com/EsULRgroJ3
— David Rutz (@DavidRutz) April 24, 2019
After Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation came to an end with no indictment for Trump, Schiff doubled down, attacking then-Attorney General William Barr for summarizing Mueller’s report in a way that didn’t implicate Trump.
Barr misled the country about an investigation implicating the President. Then he lied to Congress. Then he did something worse:
He effectively said that the President of the United States is above the law.
That makes him the second most dangerous man in America.
He must go. https://t.co/pkRwgWwGUS
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 3, 2019
And the list doesn’t end there.
Claims that Trump snubbed veterans during a trip to France were rebutted by several close associates — including national security adviser-turned-Trump critic John Bolton.
Media outlets accused Trump of lying when he claimed senior members of former President Obama’s administration spied on his campaign — but those concerns turned out to be legitimate.
The question is obvious: with a record like that, should the White House — or anyone else, for that matter — have the authority to universally determine for Big Tech what qualifies as “disinformation”?