Much Too Little, Much Too Late

media

Mikkel Danielsen is Berlingske Tidende’s USA correspondent.

I don’t know how I missed it, but on April 4 he actually came across with the goods on Hunter Biden—and that’s a full six days before I wrote my post about the “ongoing silence.” I screwed up. There was at least one story in the Danish media about the Hunter Biden saga having been verified by the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN.

US Media: Email on Hunter Biden’s hard drive is authentic
Mikkel Danielsen, Berlingske.dk, Apr 4

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. That’s Latin for I really screwed the fucking pooch on that one.

I’m not being ironic or saracastic. I feel stupid.

Of course, although Danielsen’s story was published six days before I wondered (angrily) aloud where all the coverage was, that’s still more than two weeks after the Times acknowledged the authenticity of the emails… and about 17-18 months after the actual story broke in the New York Post.

That much said, have a look at the only portion of the article where Danielsen discusses how things played out back in 2020:

The story looked like an election campaign bombshell. For it suggested that the Biden family mixed the son’s overseas business and the father’s political power together.

Fox News, of course, went into breaking (news mode). But major and more left-leaning media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post broadly dismissed the story as unbelievable. Not least because the New York Post had received the hard drive as a gift from Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, just before the election—what timing.

50 former intelligence officials claimed that the revelation had “all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Twitter blocked all links to the New York Post article, and Facebook’s algorithms kept it out of users’ feeds for fear of “misinformation.”

The conservative United States was furious because it seemed that the tech and media elite were protecting their favored candidate.

Now—17 months after the election—both The New York Times and The Washington Post write that at least parts of the hard drive’s contents can be confirmed as being “authentic.”

That’s my emphasis in the penultimate paragraph. Danielsen says the American right was angry because it seemed like the oligarchs and the media were covering for Biden.

You know: the way Americans were angry on 9/11 because it seemed as though they’d been attacked.

The way the governments of the world freaked out because the Wuhan virus seemed to be highly contagious.

The way men seem to like boobs.

Danielsen seems to be missing the point.

This story no longer has anything to do with the American right. It never did. That was his “error” back in 2020: reporting on the conservative reaction to the story in the NY Post without informing his readers what the article itself was about. Now he’s finally ready to inform his readers that the Times and WaPo and CNN actually do concede it’s all for real, and he’s even willing to concede it could cause trouble for Biden himself. So far, so good.

But he’s apparently unable to say in simple declarative sentences that Hunter Biden was up to his bloodshot eyes in filth and grift and dirty dealings, much of which seemed to implicate his father, and every American institution that Berlingske trusts and relies on for their coverage of America squashed the story and tossed out a smokescreen of conspiracy theories to protect their disastrous mush-brained candidate.

That’s not a theory. That’s not an interpretation. That’s a verified fucking fact. It’s what happened. The vulgarity and shamelessness of the establishment have been exposed completely.

But then, of course, “what difference, at this point, does it make?”

None, says Mikkel Danielsen.

Because despite having acknowledged two long weeks ago that the entire American establishment is corrupt, which you’d think might get a journalist’s juices flowing, Danielsen seems to have washed his hands of the entire episode and returned to his usual beat.

The author called Trump an idiot. Now Trump wants to make him a political star
Mikkel F. Danielsen, Berlingske.dk, Apr 19

Yep. It took him damn near three weeks to let his readers know that the New York Times had grudgingly acknowledged its own complicity in misleading the American public, but Danielsen was apparently ready to bust his nuts working straight through a holiday weekend to be sure his readers wouldn’t have to wait more than four days to learn that Donald Trump had endorsed J.D. Vance for the Ohio Senate.

A former president is endorsing someone who’s not leading the polls.  That’s the big American story right now, according to Mikkel F. Danielsen. That’s what matters. It’s what Danes need to know about America.

Note, by the way, that the headline is basically saying “Trump is supporting this guy who called him an idiot!”

But the story makes clear that Vance very publicly acknowledged he was wrong about Trump and regrets the things he said.

The headline could have been, “Author who called Trump an idiot recants, and regrets his earlier opposition to Trump.”

Or it could have been, “Trump supporting multiple candidates who face opposition from their local parties.”

Or it could have been, “Former Never-Trumper J.D. Vance regrets his previous stance, goes all-in on Trump as he seeks Ohio senate seat.”

Or, you know, it could have been ignored entirely in favor of a story about any of the other things going on in America right now.

See? This is why I’m not an editor.

It’s coming from a different direction, but it’s the same reason Mikkel Danielsen can’t be a journalist:

Neither of us understands journalism.