Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro urged reporters to ask Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tough questions about his embattled son Hunter instead of attacking the paper that reported allegations against him.
Last week, a bombshell report by the New York Post detailed allegedly corrupt business deals by Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden. Twitter and Facebook quickly acted to block the report from their platforms while much of the media ignored it and Biden has barely even been asked to address the allegations.
“I feel like after a three-year media-led campaign to portray the Steele Dossier as vitally important intelligence and Trump-Russia collusion as fact, it's not too much to ask media members to focus on the content of the Biden allegations rather than the @nypost,” Shapiro tweeted.
“I mean, seriously, this isn't that hard. Ask Joe Biden if the emails and texts are real, and if there's any truth to the email/text suggestions that he received any money or that any money has been held by Hunter for him,” Shapiro added in a follow-up message.
The New York Post report, entitled “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad,” touched on suggestions that the former vice president’s son had unscrupulous financial and business ties to a natural gas firm in Ukraine -- Burisma Holdings -- and that his father later stepped in to have a probing prosecutor fired for looking into the matter.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA IGNORES, DOWNPLAYS NEW YORK POST BOMBSHELL ON HUNTER BIDEN
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos ignored the report during Biden’s town hall event last week. Other media outlets have attacked the Post’s credibility while downplaying the allegations, which Shapiro feels is hypocritical after the same media salivated over equally unverified claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia back in 2016.
While some reporters have been accused of covering for Biden by ignoring the allegations, others might simply want to avoid being scolded by the former vice president.
Biden spoke to reporters outside his private jet Friday following his campaign events in Michigan and attacked CBS News reporter Bo Erickson for daring to ask about the report.
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"Mr. Biden, what is your response to the New York Post story about your son, sir?" Erickson asked.
"I know you’d ask it," Biden fired back. "I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask."
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates last week hit back against the New York Post story, saying: “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as 'not legitimate' and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”
“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story. They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani—whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported—claimed to have such materials,” Bates continued. “Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.