Shades of LBJ’s Cronkite Nightmare: Biden Loses CBS

AMAC Exclusive – By Shane Harris

In a stunning reversal from their prior blackout of the story, CBS News released an exclusive interview this week with an IRS whistleblower who is alleging that the Department of Justice intentionally stymied an investigation into potential tax law violations by Hunter Biden. The moment recalls memories of another famous incident of CBS suddenly turning on a Democrat president, when anchor Walter Cronkite broke with Lyndon B. Johnson’s stance on the Vietnam War, an incident that reportedly caused Johnson to remark, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.”

That watershed moment came on February 27, 1968, in the midst of the Tet Offensive. As American troops saw heavy casualties, Cronkite broke with the by then well-established media position of toeing the Democrat line and offered a devastating analysis of the U.S. position in Vietnam.

“It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate,” Cronkite told his millions of viewers. “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.”

Such comments may seem mild by today’s standards of bombastic and sensational media coverage, but they were shocking for a 1960s audience that was used to at least the veneer of objectivity.

For Johnson, it was a watershed moment. One by one, other media outlets also began breaking with the White House and criticizing the war. After Johnson “lost Cronkite,” he made a major rhetorical shift in his portrayal of the war effort, beginning to talk about moving toward “peace” rather than “victory.”

Just a few weeks after Cronkite’s famous dissection of the war, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election amid quickly evaporating public support. Media observers ever since have credited Cronkite with playing a large role in forcing Johnson out of the race.

Now, the country could be witnessing a similar watershed moment as CBS signals its willingness to treat the Biden family’s corruption with the scrutiny it deserves.

In the CBS report, 14-year IRS veteran Gary Shapley, who supervised the probe into the president’s son, said he felt duty-bound to sound the alarm about federal law enforcement’s mishandling of the investigation.

“There were multiple steps that were slow-walked — were just completely not done — at the direction of the Department of Justice,” Shapley said. “When I took control of this particular investigation, I immediately saw deviations from the normal process. It was way outside the norm of what I’ve experienced in the past.”

More details of the story could be uncovered soon as Shapley is scheduled to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday. Although the testimony will not be open to the public, it could provide more evidence to aid in House Republicans’ ongoing investigation of the Biden family’s shady business dealings.

CBS’s coverage of the story signals the liberal media’s willful ignorance of the president’s corruption scandals could be coming to an end. That’s bad news for Biden, who has relied on the silence of the media to hide the growing mound of evidence pointing to his involvement in Hunter’s schemes.

After then-candidate Biden angrily claimed in 2019 that he had “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” a series of revelations showed Hunter’s top staffers made more than 100 visits to the Obama White House to meet with the elder Biden.

As the narrative that he “never” spoke with his son about business began to implode, Joe Biden went on CNN last October in a feeble attempt to distract from the damning truths coming to light in spite of the White House’s attempted cover-up. In an interview with Jake Tapper that many slammed as “soft” and “weak,” the CNN host asked Biden how he responded “politically and personally” to the investigation into his son, then allowed the president to drone on about how “proud” he was of Hunter for “overcoming” his drug addiction.

Tapper failed to ask any follow-up questions, even though the Washington Post had reported just days earlier that federal agents alleged they had “sufficient evidence” to charge Hunter with tax and gun crimes.

But Biden’s personal baggage may now be more than even his media allies can ignore. CBS’s reversal could be the first sign that corporate newsrooms – and many in the Deep State who helped shield the Bidens from scrutiny – are getting nervous about potentially being implicated in the deepening scandal.

The media may also be concluding that the momentum building against Biden – evidenced in his increasingly dour poll numbers – will be too much to overcome in his bid for a second term. Rather than continuing to try and prop up the floundering president, the media might fully embrace the story in an attempt to drive Biden out of the race and replace him with someone who stands a better chance of winning in 2024.

Biden, for his part, may, like Johnson, come to the conclusion that if he’s lost CBS, he has indeed lost America.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio.