Do D*ck Pics Trump the Constitution?
Pictures of the President’s son’s genitals found on a discarded laptop were supposed to be the Trump campaign’s October surprise in 2020. The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, was given first crack at the story, full of innuendos, with source material not available for other publications.
The ploy failed, in part because people reading voter guides couldn’t find a “Hunter Biden” not to vote for. Ultimately, the big scandal turns out to be that Joe Biden loves his son, despite a history of addiction and association with unsavory characters.
Elon Musk is desperate to keep his $44 billion social media investment in the news and, in keeping with the philosophy that any publicity is good publicity, went public with a claim that the government had a role in suppressing the story.
This turned out not to be the case once the details were revealed, but unproven news has never stopped the former President from going ballistic. Donald J Trump, after all, had a horrible week, losing big time in court amid the usual hyperbole saying he was about to be finally charged with something. (I’ll believe that when I see him wearing an orange jumpsuit.)
What is astonishing is that much of the nation’s media didn’t run to cover a story about a former president and candidate for the office in 2024 calling for termination of the constitution–not suspension, as the Washington Post suggested.
Headline: White House rebukes Trump’s suggestion to suspend Constitution over 2020 election
My morning cruise of the newspapers in Southern California (UT & LAT) didn’t cover it; the New York Times Sunday edition was silent. Only the Post (of the papers I scanned), with its milquetoast headline, carried the story. (I’m assuming they’ll get around to it on Monday)
Meanwhile elected officials at the GOP downplayed or bought the story at face value:
Serial nihilist Matt Taibbi was retained by Elon Musk to blast out the details, the most sensationalist of which was that the social network the billionaire now owns removed images at the request of… wait for it… the Biden political campaign.
What Musk and his minions were calling a violation of the First Amendment occurred in October, 2020. Biden didn’t assume the office until January 2121. And what was removed were images of Hunter Biden in the buff, a sex tape, and smoking crack.
Ordinary citizens not affiliated with political campaigns ask social media to take down explicit or threatening images all the time, and, after looking into it, their requests are often accommodated. Of course, now that Elon Musk has taken the reins at Twitter, we’re already seeing more unwanted garbage since most of the humans charged with moderation have been dismissed.
As is usually the case, the propaganda machine that serves America’s corporate interests will obfuscate the Musk/Twitter/HunterBiden matter with crosstalk and speculation.
The best account of refuting the claims being made is to be found at the Bulwark:
1. Campaigns of all ideological stripes have direct lines into social media companies and make requests about offending content. There is nothing at all strange about what is shown in these emails. If Jeb’s kid’s grundle was posted by a Chinese troll, we surely would’ve flagged that for the company in the hopes they deleted it, and I suspect their internal correspondence on the matter would’ve been identical. This would not have been a “demand” or a “dictate” from our campaign, mind you. Companies can do what they want.
2. In this specific instance, the requests came from a campaign that has absolutely no government authority at all. At the time of the correspondence in question, Joe Biden was a private citizen running for office, while Donald Trump was the president. Taibbi acknowledges that Trump’s White House made requests that “were received and honored” and that “there’s no evidence—that I’ve seen—of any government involvement in the laptop story.” So if there are any First Amendment issues at play here—and I don’t believe there are since neither Musk nor Taibbi have demonstrated that the government made any mandates on Twitter—they would, in this case, only relate to the material that Trump wanted removed.
3. Why MAGA Republicans and Elon Musk are so adamant that people be able to post photos of Hunter’s johnson is something that should probably be explored with their respective preachers or psychiatrists, but it is certainly not a matter for constitutional scholars or litigators. While Mr. Lisbon from the Virgin Suicides may derive a depraved type of happiness from publishing pictures of other people’s genitals on a private company’s public bulletin board without the approval of those pictured, the First Amendment does not bestow upon him the right to prevent the company from taking down the offending material.
To sum up what we learned: Big penis, little news, First Amendment not under threat.
There is another part to this story, and since next year’s Republican House has promised Benghazi-style hearings focusing on a man struggling with addiction who happens to be the child of an elected official, I’ll share it, since these nattering nabobs are agog about it.
Earlier in 2020, the FBI and Homeland Security warned the various campaigns and members of the media about suggestive reports of a misinformation campaign being injected into the media landscape by a foreign power.
They didn’t say what such a campaign would be about, or who it would be aimed at.
It is undoubtedly possible that major media organizations took a look at the New York Post’s reporting and said “nah,” we’re not getting fooled by this nonsense, especially since the source material was being withheld.
I’m reasonably convinced that Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop belonged to him at some point. But, given that its chain of possession includes Rudy Giuliani, I would expect that law enforcement would be tasked with assessing its contents… oh, except that the FBI, etc, are supposedly all part of the deep state.
The Hunter Biden story will, I predict, end up nowhere but into the heap of QAnon “truths,” and in the speeches of the Pillow Guy.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t care whether there’s any truth there. His hyperbole is just performative nonsense designed to keep the faithful engaged and the donations flowing.
Sorry about mentioning the never-Trumper Bulwark twice in one post, but A.B. Stoddard’s Yes, He Will Burn It All Down, describes the situation perfectly while speculating about a possible third party run in 2024:
Chaos always wins. Trump can just grab Kari Lake or Marjorie Taylor Greene or whoever the MAGA Girl Wonder is that month and go nuts. He can pretend to start some candidacy somewhere, raise money, and sabotage the GOP nominee. And some portion of his voters will believe he has been cheated again, sold out by RINOs, and that voting Republican would be no different than voting for a woke socialist.
Trump has prepared perfectly for this final conflagration, because his supporters know fraud follows him everywhere. When Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses it was rigged. When Hillary Clinton won the popular vote it was rigged. 2020—obviously rigged. And so the 2024 contest is his to be had—or it’s rigged, too.
Most importantly, this campaign is a shield for Trump. He trusts his supporters will believe that any criminal charges he faces will be fake witch-hunts. He expects to raise a lot of money off of the outrage, and he also expects these developments to flummox his Republican opponents and adversaries.
Heather Cox Richardson's December 3 Letter To America concludes with:
" ... But Republicans, so far, are silent on Trump’s profound attack on the Constitution, the basis of our democratic government.
That is the story, and it is earth shattering."
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image via @bleedblue46VSG