The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum told the Chicago Thinker’s Daniel Schmidt on Wednesday that she thinks the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is not “interesting” and, therefore, unworthy of discussion.
During a panel at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics’ (IOP’s) three-day conference on “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy,” Schmidt asked Applebaum about the corporate-media and Big-Tech suppression of the New York Post story on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, zeroing in on Applebaum’s rejection of the laptop’s importance.
Schmidt noted, “In 2020, you wrote ‘Those who live outside the Fox News bubble do not of course need to learn any of the stuff about Hunter Biden,’ referring to his laptop, of course. A poll later found that if voters knew about the content of the laptop, 16 percent of Joe Biden voters would have acted differently.”
Schmidt continued, “Now, of course, we know a few weeks ago The New York Times confirmed that the [laptop] content is real. Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation? And what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation and not reality?”
Applebaum dismissed Schmidt’s concerns, explaining, “My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is, I think, [it’s] totally irrelevant. I mean it’s not whether it’s disinformation — I don’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be president of the United States. So, I don’t find it to be interesting.”
IOP Director David Axelrod jumped in, quickly closing the panel by saying, “We’re going to talk about more of this tomorrow in our first panel, so, stand by.”
Applebaum’s dismissive response quickly went viral on social media, garnering over 2.2 million views on the Chicago Thinker’s Twitter account. Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell tweeted “Make College Newspapers Great Again” in response to a tweet by conservative political commentator Jack Posobiec, who praised Schmidt’s question.
The Columbia Bugle also posted a series of tweets about the clip, most notably writing, “Our Ruling Class has absolute contempt for the American people.”
Political commentator Clay Travis contended that Applebaum’s “arrogant reaction” is something that “perfectly encapsulates why so many distrust the media.”
Other notable responses included re-tweets from Donald Trump, Jr. and Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway.
The next day, the conference’s token conservative, Jonah Goldberg, criticized “the kid” (meaning Schmidt) for suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up had any impact on the 2020 election, despite numerous polls finding otherwise. Goldberg insisted that he “doesn’t buy” that the cover-up had any impact on the 2020 election and contended it is “a preposterous counterfactual.”
Following the firestorm of attention elicited by his question to Applebaum, Schmidt is still seeking answers. When asked for comment, he told the Thinker that “Applebaum’s response is yet another testament to our ruling class’ contempt for what the average American cares about. People like her do not actually care about fighting ‘disinformation’—they merely throw the term around when it satisfies their political goals. Her refusal to answer my question demonstrates that.”
I am a proud Chicagoan. Because today a college freshman in my city ended Anne Applebaum’s wretched career. Hallelujah!
LOL tone it down a notch. One bad answer is not going to end her career. At worst it’ll be a bit of mild embarrassment and some Twitter harassment before everyone forgets this happened.
It’s a breath of fresh air listening and reading about what these young college students associated with The Thinker. Americans are tired of all of the parroting disinformation carried out by the Washington Progressives and radical left wing Democrats constant orchestrated lies (DISINFORMATION IN DOUBLE SPEAK) and consistently legitimized by CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, N.Y. TIMES and publications along with social media’s sources owned or controlled by billionaire socialists. Keep up the good work. Americans deserve to hear the truth and not fabricated stories or character assassinations carried out by liberal members lusting for continued power for Democrats or whatever label they go by: Green New Dealers, Marxist BLM or ANTIFA groups with destructive narratives. Every problem America has right now was perpetrated on the American people by Joe Biden but more likely Barack Obama and the Clinton’s.
What it demonstrated is her commitment to suppress the truth…to gainsay the inconvenient truth that is contrary to the planned leftist propaganda. It also suggests she and Brian Skelter should get married. Just imagine the damage they could do to the truth; manipulating it, and suppressing it. Zuckerberg would be green with envy, but in the end would hire…I mean buy them, to enhance his truth suppression, cancel 1st Amendment enterprise.
He is 100% correct. Libs have been trained well to avoid discussing facts. It’s part of cancel culture – if they are not honest or intellectually capable enough to engage, they cancel with a “I don’t know” or a “It’s not relevant”. Call em out!
Ah yes, fighting against cancel culture by canceling a journalist. Cancel culture is not a non-issue, but it’s just as much abused by the right as it is the left.
Thanks for standing up to these fools who think they own the truth.. They just think it is preposterous that someone actually stood up to them when they have had the backing of social media censoring anything that went against what they say.. Fact checking should be done by each person as they discover information.. We can NOT trust any one corporation or government to “fact check” everything and expect a non censored result. It is ridiculous.
It was supposed to be a Kumbaya meeting for the Democrat Media. Instead, they showed the world what a pack of disingenuous crooks they are. This is why Safe Spaces and Censorship are so important on Left-wing campuses. Balloons full of hot air are easily deflated.
The fascists’ apologists are certainly going out of their way to cover for the Biden crime family. Goldberg and Applebaum are two similar media types who have decided that the money and career opportunities are best served by acting as fascist media lickspittles. Applebaum opportunistically comments on the Biden laptop evidence gift: ‘Nothing to see here, it’s boring, let’s MOVEON. Just like they said about the blue dress. When you have the tyrants cold, they warn you to forget what you’ve seen – just moveon.
Maybe this is exactly what we needed to spur this conversation outside of the media control. Beautifully executed with out malice and still facing up to their crooked disguise. Bravo and hats off to you!
Would absolutely love to see more independent thought on college campuses like this. Colleges/universities used to be incubators of free thinkers that could share opinions regardless of how different it might be with others. Sadly, that was decades ago and now what we have are “safe spaces” that solely serves to shut down free speech. Bravo to Daniel Schmidt and the Chicago Thinker. Your efforts of exposing how the mainstream media have changed their roles of watch dog for the people to the guard dog of the political left needs to spread throughout colleges campuses around the country.
Not interesting. HMM! So if one of Trumps kids ever had a laptop scandal The Atlantic would have said the same? Hard to believe but then again Trumps kids would never be so dumb to bring a laptop to a repair store. Goes to show two things. Hunter thinks he above everyone and Joe Biden fails as a parent
Good work Chicago Thinker! I was shocked when I read Anne Applebaum’s bio. The is a Pulitzer Prize winner. It is crazy how deception is rewarded in 1984. We must make inroads to the brainwashed masses that drink the MSM and SM koolaid.
Great piece that shows how FOS these leftist media toadies are. I think next year, we will hear more about the mail in vote, and how it was manipulated by more than just “zuck bucks”. When I went to bed on 2020 Election night, after 11:30 pm, Trump was stated to be so far ahead in MI that is was statistically impossible for Biden to win MI, days later he won MI and a few other states that Trump was way ahead in, late that evening.
Mitchell, very good article! You should also think about writing for MixReads.com – they would enjoy your writing style.
Many thanks to Scott Johnson for the link here. Applebaum is good in her lane (Eastern Europe) but here looks like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop “this is me not listening”. Interestingly was able to get a large portion of the original hard drive (minus the newly recovered portions) via Jack Maxey early last year. A cursory read through quickly gave two conclusions—too much of the correspondence is easily verifiable to be “Russian disinformation” and the Bidens (note the inclusive plural) are truly awful grifters. All there in black and white. Jack kindly omitted all the porn stuff—likely some of it is illegal underage stuff—which begets a whole different set of unrelated questions. But interestingly had a discussion about it with a friend who is an investigative reporter for one of the top 5 or so media brands and got the same “I don’t want to know” response. He was very invested in the Mueller report and perhaps the dissonance was too much for him.
I know I’m stating the obvious here but anyway….Jonah Goldberg is a never Trumper so any answer he gives to a question or topic that even tangentially covers something to do with an election involving Trump must be viewed with that in mind. His animus toward Trump is so great that he would vote for any democrat over Trump, including Bernie Sanders. He defines himself as a traditional conservative or something like that. I’m not saying I love Trump, but his policies were better for this country than 4 years under Hillary or now Biden. The fact that Goldberg can’t acknowledge that discredits anything else he would have to say as a so-called ‘conservative’….and that’s why he has no job now except tagging along at liberal conferences. No conservative is buying what he is selling…
Applebaum disappoints. Bigly. Or perhaps not so much, when one sees even rightly conservative journalism joining the anti-Orban crowd, even after his recent re-election in a clean election.
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