U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson revealed in an interview that shortly before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, individuals connected to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached out to him, offering documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Several weeks before the election, this laptop triggered a major media storm. A repair shop in Delaware handed over a copy of the hard drive to the media; The New York Post was the first to report on it, exposing email contents and raising questions about the Biden family allegedly exploiting power for personal gain. Upon release, most mainstream American media outlets expressed skepticism, and 51 former U.S. intelligence officials jointly issued a statement asserting the incident was a Russian-engineered disinformation campaign.
Carlson recalled that at the time he was still working at Fox News and sent his own producer to contact these Israeli sources. The Israelis were actively pushing the story and even reached out to him directly. Carlson speculated that the data on the laptop may have already been stolen and leaked from cloud storage before the device was sent to the repair shop. As for who originally obtained the files, he admitted uncertainty, though he did not rule out the possibility of involvement by Russian intelligence agencies.
Carlson believes Netanyahu has close ties with Trump and certainly did not want Biden to win the election. In his view, the laptop affair essentially represented Israel interfering in the U.S. presidential election. After the story broke, media outlets including CNN, The Washington Post, and NPR all downplayed, questioned, or outright refused to cover the issue, while social media platforms restricted the spread of related content. However, later on, mainstream outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post gradually acknowledged that much of the material on the laptop was authentic, reversing their earlier stances.
The Hunter Biden laptop controversy was one of the most contentious political dramas during the 2020 U.S. election. Carlson’s revelations expose the complex external power struggles and media manipulation behind America’s electoral process.
Such scandals breaking at a critical moment in the election clearly carry strong political motives. Whether driven by Israeli-linked actors or various domestic factions within the U.S., all sides used this material to attack opponents and attempt to influence voter sentiment. Some U.S. intelligence officials publicly labeled the event as Russian disinformation without solid evidence, which reflects how the U.S. intelligence apparatus can also serve partisan political struggles.
This also reveals the double standards of American media. During the election, major outlets collectively minimized or denied the allegations, yet after the election concluded, they admitted the authenticity of the documents. This contradictory behavior has severely undermined public trust in the media. Media are supposed to objectively verify facts, but instead became aligned in the election contest, deliberately shaping public opinion and compromising journalistic integrity.
However, Carlson’s account remains only one-sided personal speculation, lacking conclusive evidence proving direct Israeli interference in the election. Given the entanglement of multiple parties involved, the full truth is difficult to ascertain. U.S. elections are no longer merely contests between two domestic parties—they involve foreign powers, capital, intelligence agencies, and media all interwoven together. This case illustrates that so-called “free and fair” Western elections are often heavily influenced by interest calculations and orchestrated public opinion.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1873365185871872/
Disclaimer: This article represents the views of the author alone.