#The press can’t handle the truth and other commentary

“The corporate media has refused to cover the substance of the New York Post’s bombshell reporting” on Hunter Biden’s e-mails, observes The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson, “not because there’s nothing to the story,” but because it’s “harmful to Joe Biden.” Instead, they’ve focused on The Post’s reporting itself — “the story about the story — while studiously ignoring” what the e-mails reveal about the Biden family’s “overseas business dealings and influence-peddling.” The press simply isn’t interested, “just like they weren’t interested in a recent US Senate committee report on the Bidens’ complex financial transactions in Ukraine and elsewhere. I mean, if you’re not curious why the wife of the former mayor of Moscow would pay Hunter Biden $3.5 million, then you’re not going to be curious about any of this other stuff.”

From the right: Biden’s Union Lie

At last week’s ABC News town hall, Joe Biden “flat-out lied” about supposed endorsements from the boilermakers’ union, infuriating Shawn Steffee, a board member of the largest US boilermaker local, reports the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito. Though many members are registered Democrats, Steffee notes his local endorsed President Trump in September because “Biden’s inconsistency on trade and fracking is a problem, and . . . members can’t find a way to believe him.” Yet Biden’s lie will likely go unreported by most mainstream media, who “seemingly only chase candidate lies that ruffle their sensibilities,” notes Zito. The left can pretend “voters like Steffee will go away, that their issues will go away, and their concerns will go away,” but “they won’t.”

Satirist: Facebook Has No Sense of Humor

At The Wall Street Journal, Babylon Bee editor Kyle Mann laments that in 2020, “no article is so absurd” people won’t believe it true. “Snopes has even fact-checked articles as bizarre” as the Babylon Bee’s “Ocasio-Cortez Appears on ‘The Price Is Right,’ Guesses Everything Is Free.” Now there’s a new threat to satire: social media. Facebook, for example, actually deleted a Bee satirical post, headlined “Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against a Duck to See If She Is a Witch” (a reference to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), saying the article “incited violence.” Mann blames social-media algorithms: “Instead of writing jokes for the audience,” he says, “we’re writing jokes for a robot with ever-changing standards.”

Legal beat: Why Wasn’t Toobin Fired?

It “should not be an unreasonably high standard to ask people not to engage in sex acts while talking to their work colleagues,” snarks National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. Yet New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin “has yet to be fired, when nearly anyone else would be,” for “visibly exposing himself while masturbating” on a work Zoom call. Toobin is “insulated” by his “star status” and liberal politics, with a “bizarre and unsettling” “rush of voices in journalism trying to excuse or normalize Toobin’s behavior.” His “CNN colleagues Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, who glory in every foible and scandal over at Fox News, bemoaned that Toobin ‘has been sidelined at a pivotal moment in the run-up to the presidential election.’ ” The sort of “super-valuable insight” they’re missing? McLaughlin points to Toobin’s June 2018 tweet: “Anthony Kennedy is retiring. Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months.”

Foreign desk: The Coming Clash Over Taiwan

The United States faces a seemingly impossible challenge in protecting Taiwan against China, which “has been carrying out the most provocative and sustained show of force” against the country “in nearly a quarter-century,” notes Michael Beckley at Foreign Policy. Yet with Taiwan’s “enormous geographic advantage” and the strength of the US military, the question is ultimately “not whether Taiwan can be defended — it definitely can — but whether Taiwan and the United States can revamp their militaries in time to deter a Chinese attack.” Meanwhile, China’s belligerence “offers an opportunity for Taiwan and the United States to have national conversations about the growing Chinese threat and the sacrifices both societies will have to make to contain it.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board