Hacker News Reader

Comment by laidoffamazon | Hacker News Reader

The net effect of this will be small, but the money quote is literally in the first line (emphasis mine)

> Covert Chinese accounts are masquerading online as American supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and *attacking President Biden* ahead of the election in November, according to researchers and government officials.

One must wonder why almost all foreign interests opposed to the United States maintaining our superpower status - the Russians, the PRC - are opposed to a particular candidate (President Joe Biden). The same thing happened in 2016 too, against a particular candidate (Hillary Clinton) by the Russians.

As a former President said, "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made."

View on HN

They're not. Your perception is based on selection bias.

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ICA-dec...

It may be more informative to wonder why misinformation in support of one candidate is so over-represented in the discourse.

It may be related to why the same outlets that share this perspective were participating in disinformation with the Democrat-led federal government to suppress negative news about the Democratic candidate in the 2020 election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

As the wikipedia article says, the Hunter Biden laptop story was an obvious October surprise that ended up proving nothing about Joe Biden. There sure was disinfo being peddled during that saga, but not from the Democrats.

"There sure was disinfo being peddled during that saga, but not from the Democrats."

Good one. Please pull my other leg.

Update: if it's sincerely not clear why the precious comment about "not from the Democrats" was a farce, read the "Reactions" section. The efforts to quash the Post story and characterize it as misinformation are what I'm talking about.

Given the extremely sketchy provenance of the story’s data, the timing of the story’s publishing, the fact it was published by a tabloid and that even the reporters who wrote it questioned its validity, and that two subsequent investigations found no evidence of corruption by Joe Biden, I would say the media was right to treat the Post story as misinformation.

Looking at new stories with skepticism is always warranted. As you point out, the original sources provided just that.

Immediately quashing them as "misinformation" is not legitimate in a free society.

That the report was true makes calling it "misinformation" exceedingly naive, at best.

> That the report was true …

And now you’re pulling my leg

> One must wonder why almost all foreign interests opposed to the United States maintaining our superpower status - the Russians, the PRC - are opposed to a particular candidate (President Joe Biden). The same thing happened in 2016 too, against a particular candidate (Hillary Clinton) by the Russians

Because 95% of journalists oppose that candidate, and “our enemies want $CANDIDATE to win” is a comforting and easy to promote notion.

Or maybe it's journalists quoting the candidate: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1GG03P/

> "He's now president for life, president for life. And he's great," Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump's remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday," Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.

> It is not clear if Trump, 71, was making the comment about extending presidential service in jest. The White House did not respond to a request for comment late Saturday.

> U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat, said on Twitter that "whether this was a joke or not, talking about being President for life like Xi Jinping is the most unAmerican sentiment expressed by an American President. George Washington would roll over in his grave."

That’s a joke. Trump’s superpower is not speaking like a company-wide HR email. And even if taken literally, that doesn’t suggest anything about doing anything favorable for China. Trump was the one who started the recent anti-China trend in American politics, which Biden has run with: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36185012

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr... (“An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.[1]”)

Yeah, it's all a joke until it's not (see: the attempted autogolpe in 2021).

It's obvious that the current approach is more threatening to the PRC than the old one...perhaps that's why the PRC wants to bring him back? Seems like his recent flip-flop on TikTok fits into the equation too.

It looks to me that our enemies actually want Trump to win.

I wonder why that is. (I don't actually wonder this).

Didn't Putin explicitly say he preferred Biden in a recent interview?[0][1]

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-says-biden-better-r...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-biden-trump-fb2fece0...

Indeed he did.

I care more about actions than words in this respect though (given Biden pushes for massive lethal aid to kill Russian invaders until recent House obstruction).

You actually take this at face value?

> Because 95% of journalists oppose that candidate

Well, as do like, 100% of the high-level bureaucrats that served said candidate in their previous presidency.

So, given that little tidbit, are those journalists actually unreasonable? And as a followup: if their position is mostly supported by facts, isn't "comforting and easy to promote" a secondary concern?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com