The Great Unraveling

It was supposed to be a laptop that would save them, again.

Trying to determine the definitive clinching event in a close election is perhaps a fool’s errand. However, for the 2016 presidential contest, one event loomed large over the final days of the campaign: the discovery of Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

After the FBI found the device, Director Jim Comey decided to send a letter to Congress making it known that it was tangentially involved in the Hillary Clinton private email server saga. Of course, the public would later find out that the laptop contained no new evidence of anything really—something that was probably pretty clear at the time.

Yet, Comey sent the letter anyway, the media pounced on the story, the race was shaken up, and the rest is seared in our collective cortices as the Last Four Years.

This time around, the Republican apparatus saw the same opportunity to shake up the presidential race in closing days—and by the very same mechanism too. A laptop, allegedly left by Joe Biden’s son Hunter at a repair shop in Delaware made its way into the hands of none other than Rudolph Giuliani. From there, Rudy claimed that it held all sorts of evidence of corruption and wrongdoing, not just on the part of Hunter Biden, but by his father as well. We got screenshots of emails, pictures of text messages adorning the cracked phone screens of Blackberrys past, even the damning evidence that Joe Biden might have once hugged his son. Scathing.

To the right, this was explosive news, the kind that could not be ignored by the mainstream media or the voting public. It was surely going to lead to seismic shifts in the presidential race. 

And yet, it didn’t.

As a morbidly curious observer of the other side and their information consumption habits, it was fascinating to watch the right-wing internet’s reaction to this story as it peaked and then petered out, all within a relatively short period of time and without any major implications for the political landscape at large. There was such certainty about its importance and legitimacy, such hostility toward those who weren’t taking it seriously enough, and such desperation in the need to make it play that you couldn’t blame someone for thinking they might be able to will a scandal into existence. But it didn’t work and the episode ended up being a fascinating unraveling taking place in the following steps.

1. Bombshell

The first stage of the story was that it was obviously the biggest news development possible for this campaign. Originally published in the New York Post, the right latched onto it pretty quickly as a silver bullet against Joe Biden’s polling lead. It eventually made its way to the president’s Twitter feed where he proclaimed it a disaster for not just Joe Biden, but his entire family.

Nothing gold can stay, however, and Twitter eventually stepped in to put some constraints on this sketchy story. The Post was locked out of their Twitter account until they removed a tweet about the story. Other media sites and figures outside the feverish right approached the story with extreme wariness due to its provenance. The bombshell that the right was so hoping for was already floundering.

2. Media Criticism

As cooler heads tried to get to the bottom of what was happening with Hunter Biden’s laptop, the right decided to do what they do best: screech about unfairness. They play-acted indignation that the “liberal media” was covering up the story because they were clearly in the bag for Biden.

The truth is, due to their own lack of ethical standards, the Trumpist media was confounded that actual journalists would want to verify details of the story without uncritically amplifying it first.

Those willing to delve into the story were met with roadblocks. Most were denied the raw materials needed to do the work. NBC News eventually wrote a piece about their attempt to report on the Hunter Biden laptop and related materials only to be stonewalled by those involved when it came to production of evidence.

Other outlets had better luck getting into the meat of the story. Unfortunately for the conservative pundits, both the Wall Street Journal and Fox News reported that after obtaining certain documents from Hunter Biden’s business dealings they found no evidence of a corrupt or unethical role for Joe Biden. The debunks were coming from inside the house.

Additionally, the criticism wasn’t reserved for the media. Commentator (?) Jesse Kelly saved some of his ire for the FBI, noting that the deep state was also out to quash this earth-shattering development. Woe was them.

3. But His Emails

The story having fallen flat both in its initial impact and the follow-up throughout the mainstream media, the frothy right decided to move on to a new tactic. Confront Joe Biden directly. Or at least complain about those who didn’t.

This strategy is best encapsulated here by another righty political commentator, Liz Wheeler:

Never mind that major outlets were either unable to corroborate any of the allegations against Hunter and Joe Biden or that some debunked them outright, there were still questions raised from this dud of a story. Why wasn't the media training its focus on the implications of wrongdoing from bad faith actors perpetrating a smear? Sure, nothing unethical or illegal may have actually happened, but shouldn’t Joe Biden be forced to deny it anyway?

Unfortunately, this isn’t how most journalists operate (at least not anymore) and any skilled political candidate will be able to deflect flimsy accusations with ease. It is astounding that anybody thought Joe Biden would actually take time to engage with bad faith accusations on his own time, as if those calling for his answers would be satisfied by his denials. People shouldn’t be forced to deny the legitimacy of wildly unsubstantiated claims and journalists—whose time with top-tier political candidates is limited to begin with—aren’t going to waste their precious resources on getting wrapped up in a right-wing hit job.

Perhaps the most brain-poisoned proposition came from none other than radio host Mark Levin.

Yes, I cannot imagine why former Vice President and presidential candidate Joe Biden isn’t immediately sliding into your DMs with his son’s phone number so you can ask Hunter a bunch of questions in hopes of manufacturing a political smear job, Mark. Baffled, really.

The steam left the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before it ever really had time to collect. Yet, the right was so convinced of its gravity that it has continued to try and build a narrative that they believe will be the antidote to Trump’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic (and therefore his disadvantageous position for re-election). This tweet from Curtis Houck, an editor at NewsBusters, is a partricularly perfect piece of art:

Read that over a few times and see how much you understand. Bobulinski! Gilliar! Things are escalating! There are audio clips! Siren emojis! All the moving parts of an implied scandal are there, but what does any of it mean? Well, I’ll let you know as soon as they do.

I am writing this before the election takes place, so I have to preface my conclusion with the obligatory "anything could happen." However, if Joe Biden wins, I guarantee that there will be howling from the right that the Hunter Biden laptop story was never given its proper consideration and that is why Donald Trump lost. Don’t worry that he has been a uniquely unpopular president who utterly failed when faced with his biggest test of leadership and who only became president in an insanely narrow election to begin with. The right has so cocooned themselves within their own media environment that any post-2020 autopsy will likely be littered with mentions of Tony Bobulinski and the attempted character assassination of Rudy Giuliani by the actor who plays Borat. 

There will be no reckoning with how they created an alternate universe and shoveled it down the throats of their unquestioning audience. Nor will they easily leave the reality they constructed where Trump is not reviled by most Americans, uniquely unfit to be the president, and the overseer of a disastrous pandemic response that led to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people. There will simply be more bad faith and lies.

The laptop was never the miracle cure the right-wing mediasphere thought it was because it couldn’t save them from the real ailment: themselves.