Fully 69% of U.S. likely voters say accusations of foreign influence-peddling by Pres. Biden and his family are a serious scandal – but, ABC, NBC and CBS didn’t spend even one second reporting on breaking news Wednesday when Rep. James Comer (R-KY) detailed how the Biden family may have received more than $10 million from foreign nationals.
At his Wednesday (May 10) press conference, House Oversight Committee Chairman Comer reported several additional findings that the Biden family and their business associates may have received more than $10 million from foreign nationals during Joe Biden’s term as vice president.
Results of a national Rasmussen Reports survey of U.S. likely voters released Thursday reveal that more than half (52%) consider “accusations of foreign influence peddling by Joe Biden and his family” a “very serious” scandal, while more than two-thirds (69%) say it’s at least a “somewhat serious” scandal.
Two-thirds (66%) also agree with Rep. Comer’s claim that the scandal is about the entire Biden family, including the president, with half (51%) strongly agreeing.
What’s more, nearly two-thirds (63%) of voters believe Pres. Biden “personally profited” from “a pay-for-play scheme, in trying to set up a deal to receive funds to he and his family, in exchange for foreign policy decisions” (44% “strongly believe”).
Nonetheless, in the evening of, and morning after, Wednesday’s breaking news, news shows on ABC, NBC and CBS gave zero seconds of coverage to the scandal, a NewsBusters analysis finds.
The NewsBusters study found that other breaking news about the Biden family influence-peddling allegation scandal have been completely ignored (zero seconds of coverage on news shows) by the three networks:
- The House Oversight Committee revealed Wednesday that more than $1 million flowed from a crooked Romanian businessman to the Biden family, while then-Vice President Joe Biden paid lip service to cleaning up corruption in the Eastern European nation,
- Pres. Biden’s former best friend, Devon Archer, made a last-ditch effort to avoid jail Tuesday when his appeal was heard in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan. Archer was present at meetings the then-vice president’s son, Hunter, arranged for his foreign business partners to meet with his father or talk to him on the phone,
- A May 3 report that Chairman Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced that a whistleblower had provided information about the alleged influence-peddling scheme, and they had subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray, demanding a document that they say contains information about the allegation. News shows on ABC, NBC and CBS spent zero seconds on the news, though CBSNews.com did cover it.
The NewsBusters study reviewed ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning shows and their Sunday roundtable programs from April 24, 2023 through the morning of May 11, 2023.
The Rasmussen survey of 982 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on May 8-10, 2023.