Whether it’s intimidating tactics at school board meetings, arrests of pro-life activists, or attacks on parents who won’t support their child’s expressed desire to change genders, voters have seen the weaponization of government resources.
They have also seen the House of Representatives Oversight Committee present piles of evidence from bank records, whistleblowers and more that point to corruption from President Joe Biden and his family members.
What voters haven’t seen is more than scant or biased coverage of these events from traditional media or any attempt at accountability for the people involved.
“Is there any accountability for any of these elites ever?” Hogan Gidley, communications director for America First Policy Institute, asked on American Family Radio Friday. “The one word we need to be focused on moving into this next election year is accountability,” Gidley told show host Jenna Ellis.
Major media outlets that control much of the national conversation aren’t focusing on the evidence, Gidley says, but some non-traditional outlets are. Some individual people are, too.
“We know the people who've lied to Congress. We know the people who've broken the rules. We know the reporters who've lied. We know the reporters who've gotten it wrong,” Gidley said. “The American people are frustrated by the fact that if you like the wrong tweet or download the wrong podcast, or attend the wrong speech, the government's coming after you."
He believes the American people are "furious" watching their government punish dissent and protest, such as arresting school parents and charging pro-life activists, so it is past time for a strategy to push back.
Lawmakers say the investigation into the Bidens will see an uptick in its pace now that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced an impeachment inquiry.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) was challenged by a reporter who questioned the validity of accumulating evidence of Biden family corruption. His response went viral on X, formerly Twitter.
Media trapped by its bias
Earlier this week, the White House sent a memo to major news organizations telling them how they should do their jobs, and from the White House perspective that means to take a strong look at House Republicans who they say have opened a “baseless” impeachment inquiry.
Gidley, himself a journalist in the early 2000s, said the media will eventually abandon Biden, but that day may not come before or during a possible Senate impeachment trial.
“It’s kind of a two-pronged approach: They get Trump and they stop attacks on Biden. That's just the way it goes," he observed.
In the radio interview, Gidley compared modern-day journalism to true journalists chasing after a story.
"If you had called me and said, ‘Hey, I got emails here from Dr. Fauci colluding with the Wuhan lab folks about gain of function research. Hey, hey, my name's James O'Keefe. I got hidden video here of three-letter agencies going after folks. I got Twitter files here, emails showing collusion between the government and Big Tech. I got all this laptop information, terabytes of information of Hunter and Joe working together.’ If you'd have told me that, I'd have verified it and run it on the news in a loop,” Gidley said.
Gidley, though, says actual reporting by traditional media outlets has waned. Reporters lack curiosity. They don’t ask questions, and because of that, when evidence mounts, they still refuse to cover a story because their earlier takes on the same story make them look bad.
“These people just refuse to acknowledge what's actually in front of them," he observed. "And when it does finally get verified after they said none of it was real, none of it was true, they can't then go on and say, 'Hey, we were wrong.' They can't cover it at all because they've been saying this whole time it was debunked. It wasn't real. It was fake. So they put themselves in a box.”
'No evidence' if media doesn't mention it
Gidley, a deputy press secretary under Donald Trump, estimates as much as 93% of the White House press corps votes Democrat.
Trump’s press people faced a far different environment in daily media interactions, he said.
“It seemed like every time we stepped into that briefing room, it was filled with reporters who were against us for whatever reason. We had to fight to get information out. We had to fight to stop bad information from getting out,” Gidley said.
A few networks were exceptions to that rule, Gidley said, mentioning Fox News and Newsmax specifically.
Now the news script has flipped. Gidley said bias is obvious and occurs in two ways: what the media covers and how they cover.
A Thursday exchange at the close of a briefing between White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and media caught his attention. One reporter had asked Jean-Pierre about connections between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
“Only one reporter was curious enough to find out the linkage, if any, to talk about it," he said of that moment. "It just blows my mind."
On one hand, Gidley said, the American people are ignorant if the news media fails to cover the Biden scandal. On the other hand, if it is mentioned, the media cries 'no evidence!' and tells the public to ignore it.
"That is absolutely a dereliction of duty, a horrible performance by the press," he summarized.
