On the 8th, early evening, it appeared in the digital headlines of the New York Times and part of the world that the FBI was searching “Trump’s house”. Until then, the headline was “Biden has winning streak: Is this a turning point?”, referring to the approval of new spending packages, for climate, health, etc.
The White House had initiated a “digital strategy” image recovery, distributing Biden’s pictures on social media, smiling and eyes flashing, in a character dubbed “Dark Brandon” (below, embracing and seeking to reverse an online slur used against the Democratic president).
Three weeks later, a Gallup poll has just responded that the 8th appears to have been, in fact, a turning point for Biden and the Democratic Party’s chances in the midterm elections for Congress. In Bloomberg and others, “Biden sees a six-point gain, broadening political ground.”
In the excerpt from Gallup’s own analysis, highlighted by CNN’s White House correspondent, John Harwood“Biden’s improvement in overall approval puts him in a better position in August ahead of the midterm elections than predecessors” such as Clinton in 1994, Obama in 2014 and Trump in 2018.
The news gives as reasons the billion-dollar packages for the climate and health and also for the semiconductor industry and even the most recent, student debt forgiveness, in addition to the assassination of the leader of Al Qaeda carried out and publicized on the 2nd, opening August, and the gradual reduction in the price of gasoline.
Data analysis website FiveThirtyEight, evaluating other numbers, also cites the overthrow of abortion rights at the federal level as a reason for the Democratic recovery.
Nothing, however, to link the turn to the headline on the 8th, about the action of the federal police in Biden, on the order of his secretary of justice.
‘BIDEN GESTAPO’
On the other side, in that and the following days, Fox News led the Republican response, with commentators calling the FBI action “Third World stuff” and “Banana Republic.” A Rasmussen poll last week found a majority of voters agreeing that the FBI was “Biden’s Gestapo.”
But the main reaction, as is increasingly happening in coverage more critical of the Biden administration, was from the Joe Rogan podcast. “Is he really in trouble? Because I think the objective was to get him out of the elections, trying to try him for crimes. What did he do?”, he asked insistently.
FBI & FACEBOOK
The same Joe Rogan, last Thursday, went on the offensive during an interview with Mark Zuckerberg (above), questioning Facebook for acting against the New York Post’s news about Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, in the final stretch of 2020.
The businessman said that “the FBI, which I still see as a legitimate institution in this country, came to us” and warned against “Russian propaganda”, leading to a reduction in the sharing of the news by the platform. It echoed the day after from Wall Street Journal editorials to liberal Bill Maher’s HBO Max talk show.
