Bill Maher: The 'left-wing media' buried the Hunter Biden scandal because 'it wasn't part of their narrative'
The HBO star said it shouldn't take 'two years' for NYT, WaPo to verify the New York Post story
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Real Time" host Bill Maher blasted the "left-wing media" for failing to report on the Hunter Biden scandal during the 2020 presidential election.
During his panel discussion on Friday night, Maher offered a history lesson about how in the "John Adams day" the country had "different newspapers for different parties" and what "brought it home to me" was how The Washington Post as well as The New York Times authenticated the laptop the New York Post first reported on nearly two years ago.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I remember reading about this a couple of years ago, the New York Post came across… Hunter Biden's computer, which he apparently left at a computer repair store. I didn't even know they existed. And if anyone should not leave his computer with other people, it would be Hunter Biden just for the personal stuff," Maher said. "But it also had stuff about how, you know, c'mon, he's a ne'er-do-well. I'm sorry, Hunter Biden, but you are… You made a living being ne'er-do-well who was taking money just because you were the vice president's son and you had influence."
"He got, I think $4.8, yes, million from Chinese energy companies to sit on the board and consult. Yeah, that was his passion in life," Maher quipped. His exploration, hooker exploration, was his passion."
The New York Times and The Washington Post both verified Hunter Biden's laptop after dismissing the New York Post's bombshell reporting during the 2020 presidential election. (Getty images | New York Post)
Maher continued, "So the New York Post got a hold of what was in the computer. And, you know, because the New York Post is a Republican paper, and The New York Times and The Washington Post are the Democratic paper[s]… And the Republican paper, Twitter… canceled their account! They can't even report on this story. And now two years later, The New York Times and The Washington Post have come around and say, ‘Okay, there was something there.'"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The HBO star conceded that the laptop story should have been taken with a "giant thing of salt" since the New York Post retrieved it from Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, but "not two years."
"It looks like the left-wing media just buried the story because it wasn't part of their narrative and that's why people don't trust the media," Maher said.
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Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang agreed, pointing to polling that showed trust in media "falls very sharply along party lines" where 69% of Democrats say they still trust the media while just 15% of Republicans and 36% of independents say the same.
"This is part of the erosion of institutional trust, where one side feels like the media is on their side," Yang said. "And it does seem like this Hunter Biden laptop story did get buried because of the timing. I mean, it was coming out during the height of the election in 2020. And they did not want that out in the mainstream."
CNN legal analyst Laura Coates attempted to offer a more nuanced rationale to downplay the media's culpability. Notably, Coates' network was caught spiking the Hunter Biden laptop story as it broke according to recordings obtained by Project Veritas released in December 2020.
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"I think it can also be about the idea of you know, one, the priorities that the media has about what stories to put forward. And sometimes it's tied to obviously what is in the national zeitgeist," Coates said. "Other times, it's according to what actually is there to report on? What is the new information that's going to better inform the population? And of course, here we are in the world, as you well know, where not only do we have different slants for different media they are suggesting, but also you've got people who want these silos. They just want echo chambers. We used to say things like… 'You're preaching to the choir.' Well, now it's, 'Why aren't you preaching to the choir? It's all I'm here for.' So you preach to as a member of the choir."
"And so you've got to balance the idea – this is a consumer-driven business at times more than it can be an information-driven business, which of course, tells a lot about where we are as a society," the CNN star added.