The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg was a featured guest at the University of Chicago’s “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference, the same conference where the Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum claimed that the mainstream media’s (and social media’s) very deliberate efforts to ignore or outright attempt to stifle the Hunter Biden laptop story were basically justified because, after all, the story just wasn’t “interesting.”
As an ostensible conservative at the conference, Goldberg was in an excellent position to explain why Applebaum’s nonchalant dismissal of the story is problematic.
Instead, he did this:
“Disinformation” conference’s token conservative, Jonah Goldberg, calls out Chicago Thinker’s Daniel Schmidt. Goldberg says he “doesn’t buy” the Hunter Biden laptop cover up had any impact on the 2020 election and it’s “a preposterous counterfactual.” pic.twitter.com/mTQProoFdu
— The Chicago Thinker (@ThinkerChicago) April 7, 2022
@RealDSchmidt’s stats are apparently irrelevant if @JonahDispatch cries “preposterous!” https://t.co/pDTDWacEPU
— The Chicago Thinker (@ThinkerChicago) April 7, 2022
Goldberg is correct in that it’s impossible for him to prove the negative at this point. He can’t prove that Joe Biden would not have won the 2020 election if the Hunter Biden laptop story hadn’t been buried. But that’s pretty much all that Goldberg is right about it in that clip.
A poll of Biden voters found that if they had known the story before Election Day, 17 percent wouldn’t have voted for him, and Trump would have thus been re-elected https://t.co/zOIsexvlJA https://t.co/EmH1iPPl9K
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 7, 2022
It’s pretty low to outright dismiss a whole group of voters just because they care about an important story that you would’ve preferred be a nothingburger because it might’ve confirmed that Not-Trump could also be really corrupt.
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I'm sure no one at this conference would object to facebook and twitter blocking the sharing of an accurate article they authored, and twitter suspending their account for over 2 weeks. I'm sure they'd be fine with that. https://t.co/g9NiQyUyAK
— Chief Impact Officer BT (@back_ttys) April 7, 2022
Oh, for sure. After all, not like their article would affect the outcome of an election! That’d be preposterous.
would it have changed the 2020 outcome? well, all we have is that MRC polling data.
but not exactly "preposterous" to argue things *could've* turned out differently. the many, many people who blocked the story did so precisely because they believed it would affect the election. https://t.co/k3s8GPeeNC
— Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) April 7, 2022
I agree that it was blocked out precisely because of that fear. Perhaps preposterous is the wrong word, but I had in mind the people I hear from who insist the election was “stolen” because of Twitter and Facebook refusing to link to a story (that hardly disappeared).
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) April 7, 2022
But the story did disappear. Worse than that, it was buried. The New York Post was punished on social media. Anyone who shared the story was punished on social media. Only after the New York Times and Washington Post recently acknowledged that the story was legit did it become OK to discuss publicly. Only after the 2020 election was well over and done with.
some argued *explicitly* at the time the story should not be shared lest they repeat the sins of 2016 (as in, they believe Russian disinformation lost Clinton the election).
— Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) April 7, 2022
put more simply, how is it "preposterous" to argue it could've changed the election outcome when the story was censored precisely because editors thought it would/could change the election outcome?
*some* people clearly didn't think it was so preposterous.
— Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) April 7, 2022
again, i'm not theorizing. it was clearly stated at the time the story should be blocked because "we learned our lesson from 2016" (paraphrasing). many editors believed Russian memes or whatever cost Hillary the election. so, they justified censoring the NYP on those grounds.
— Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) April 7, 2022
2020 was a very close race & there are polls showing that a not insignificant number of people would’ve switched their votes had they known more about the Hunter Biden laptop emails. It is certainly a counterfactual, but even if it isn’t dispositive, it also isn’t preposterous. https://t.co/VA8fLb2RbY
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) April 7, 2022
We don’t know if having the Hunter Biden laptop story out there for everyone to see freely would’ve swung the election against Joe Biden … but we don’t know for sure if it wouldn’t have, either.
As I've said before I personally don't think it would have turned this election either, but I'm not on stage at a disinfo conference dismissing that possibility and ignoring the bigger issue. The voters should have been allowed to decide if it mattered. https://t.co/UwzCXYG18T
— Chief Impact Officer BT (@back_ttys) April 7, 2022
Exactly.
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