Don’t take the bait

| 9:09 am EST January 12, 2023
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

We’re now a few days into the Biden classified documents story, and a few things are becoming clear. First, there’s no story here. Some documents were uncovered internally, and were immediately dealt with in the correct manner. The end. Second, after a couple days of flirting with it, the mainstream media appears to be getting bored with the story already.

So at this point my advice to all of you – for now at least – is to stop giving the Biden classified documents story any more oxygen. It’s not going anywhere. We’ve consistently seen that something in politics only becomes a “scandal” if the entire mainstream media decides it can milk ratings from it on an every day basis. Thus far CNN has given this Biden docs story more airtime than Fox News, but even CNN now seems to be getting bored with it.

If you want to know if something is going to become a political scandal in the eyes of the general public, look to see whether CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News are all breathlessly hyping it in the same manner in every block. That’s how you knew the Hillary Clinton email story was going to be an influential scandal. The fact that it was a made-up fake scandal didn’t matter; the entire mainstream media decided it was going to milk the fake scandal, so it became real in the eyes of the mainstream public.

On the other end of things, there’s a reason the “Hunter Biden scandal” never became a thing: major news outlets (outside of Fox News) didn’t think it was a ratings-friendly story that they could milk every day. And so Hunter Biden has had zero impact on politics, and has swayed the minds of zero persuadable voters, because no one outside the Fox bubble is hearing about it on a daily basis anyway.

If the mainstream media continues to grow more bored with the Biden docs story (again, Fox News does not count), then House Republicans won’t be able to make any headway with it either. They can hold sham hearings about it until they’re blue in the face, but no one outside of Fox will ever air such hearings, so it’ll once again fail to impact any persuadable voters.

There’s also another reason why the right wing propaganda machine will have a tricky time of trying to milk the Biden documents story for partisan gain. The DOJ is about to indict Donald Trump for actual crimes involving classified documents, in a way that makes it painfully clear that Trump is a traitor against the United States – something that right wing pundits are going to try to sweep under the rug and pretend isn’t happening. At that point they won’t be able to talk about the Biden classified documents non-story without reminding everyone about the Trump classified documents criminal scandal.

So as things now stand, there is no reason to expect that the Biden classified documents story is going to gain any traction. If the mainstream media isn’t willing to help, then House Republicans won’t be able to get anywhere with it. And since there’s no criminality involved, it’s not like the tight lipped DOJ is going to be weighing in at any point. As of now, this phony “scandal” appears dead on arrival.

At this point we seem to be giving the Biden docs story more publicity, by picking it apart, than anyone else is giving it. So let’s stop doing that. If this story grows legs down the road, we can revisit our approach at that point. But for now, let’s remember that Republicans often throw lies out there about our side in the specific hope that we’ll give the allegations more publicity by spending every day earnestly refuting them. We don’t always have to take the bait.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.