During Noam Dworman's contentious, revealing interview with Washington Post columnist Philip Bump earlier this month, the topic of National Magazine Award winner, Matt Taibbi, came up. Dworman (owner of downtown Manhattan's Comedy Cellar) asked Bump if Taibbi, whose current beat is media bias (which includes serial partisan offender Washington Post), had an agenda. "Absolutely. Of course he does," he replied. When asked if he had his own agenda, Bump replied, "I do my best to present accurate information to the public, and I have an institution behind me that holds me to account when I don't do that."
Not really. Bump portrays Democrats in the most positive light, and his institution, the Washington Post, led the 2019 mainstream and social media mob in attacking the character of Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann by distorting a photo of him in a peaceful confrontation with an aggressive Native-American activist who'd approached him. The Post, with no due diligence, made the teen look like a racist bully. Sandmann would go on to successfully sue the newspaper, and other media outlets, for defamation.
Bump, like so many of his deluded MSM peers, believes he has a pure, fact-based agenda free of bias. Those with nefarious, anti-democracy agendas are confined to right-wing media, despite biased, bungled MSM reporting on Sandmann, acquitted (self-defense) teenage gunman Kyle Rittenhouse from the Kenosha riot, and disgraced actor, Jussie Smollett.
Bump, who once demanded investigations of a wide array of Republicans without "direct evidence," is certain there's no direct evidence linking Joe Biden to Burisma and other shady dealings his degenerate son participated in. Faced with an adversary citing inconvenient facts, Bump behaved more like Biden's attorney than a curious journalist open to lines of inquiry running counter to his employer's set narrative. Perhaps Bump soon realized he was in over his head with Dworman, who has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, as he quickly resorted to smugness and the tactic of constantly interrupting his interviewer.
The interview built slowly up to a petulant meltdown at the end, with the reporter's voice gradually ascending in pitch, his blood pressure presumably spiking. Dworman maintained his cool, despite being repeatedly talked over and condescended to. It was disconcerting to watch a major journalist in such a state of agitation and panic over a political discussion he couldn't control, but hardly surprising given the state of current journalism marked by a lack of interest in facts.
The record shows that Bump doesn't always "do his best" to present the facts. Without "direct evidence," he claimed that, for Donald Trump's egregious, Bible-thumping photo-op in front of a church in D.C.'s Lafayette Park, AG Bill Barr had the park cleared of protesters. The Inspector General of the Department of Interior's investigation concluded that the clearing wasn’t done "to allow the President to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church."
Bump trashed Trump for claiming the FBI spied on his campaign under the Obama administration. Subsequently, it came out that the allegation was true. In 2021, even after the media finally admitted that the Hunter Biden's laptop story was authentic, Bump was still insisting that it was a conspiracy theory "seeded by Russian intelligence."
So Bump had some chinks in his armor when he sat down with Dworman, but he didn't allow that to rein in his hubris. Bump started off in control of his emotions, but soon he abandoned the calm facade as his "expert" (his word) narrative got roughed up. Dworman had shown up prepared like he was going to trial, which caught his interviewee off guard. Near the end of the interview, he claimed Dworman had set him up, making him sound like Trump at his whiniest. Since when do journalists, who are supposed to be truth seekers, get "set up"? Bump also told Dworman, "You came into this with a preset understanding," as if the Washington Post's designated Joe Biden guard dog came in neutral and open to factual persuasion.
Bump became visibly irritated when Dworman brought up the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma—specifically the fact that VP Joe Biden, whose job it was to oversee corruption in that nation, had dinner with a top Burisma official after the US government had determined Burisma to be corrupt, which Dworman said was the last thing someone ostensibly policing the firm should do. This indisputable fact got Bump worked up. He fell back on Devon Archer's sworn testimony that Joe Biden was not involved with Hunter's business, as if Hunter would've told his business partner about the specifics of money flowing from son to father that wouldn't require the overt involvement of the vice president in his son's business dealings with Burisma. A vice president assigned to Ukraine picking up the phone and talking about the weather when the son calls as he meets with his Ukrainian business partners can be worth big bucks, and maybe dad wants a cut of that to maintain a lifestyle that appears to be beyond the means of a lifetime public servant.
Bump certainly knows that Joe Biden, with all of his years in politics, could’ve benefited financially in a number of ways that wouldn't include specific favors granted to Burisma, but the possibility of that being revealed scares the reporter so much that his nerves get frayed. He knows there will be no "direct evidence" in this case—like a check written out to Joe Biden—so his strategy's to promote the narrative that that's the only valid kind of evidence, even though he's well aware how damning in court an accumulation of circumstantial evidence can be. But admitting this messes up his game.
In the end, it was the most damning piece of circumstantial evidence (so far) in this case that prompted Bump to find an excuse to end the interview. Dworman asked Bump about the Hunter Biden email to his daughter claiming that he had to give 50 percent of his income to "pops." "I have no idea what that means," replied Bump, characterizing it once again as mere "circumstantial evidence," while adding, "You prefer that to direct evidence." The old media narrative that there was "no evidence" of Biden's corruption has been abandoned in favor of "there's no direct evidence," just like the Joe Biden lie that he never talked to Hunter about his son's business is now that he didn't "do business" with his son.
When Dworman asked Bump if any reporters had contacted Hunter's daughter to clarify what the email meant, the reporter said he didn't know, but he meant, "I don't care." Dworman asked him what the email "could mean," and the answer, once again, was "I don't know."
A lot of people not calling themselves experts in this matter know what this "could" mean, but a high-profile Washington Post journalist has no idea why a drug-addicted son who's on the make for easy, influence-peddling cash would be doing something as odd as paying his father's bills while the father—who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $10 million—was vice president? Bump then began looking for a way out. He told Dworman, "I feel you want me to leave." On the contrary. Bump leaving was the last thing Dworkin wanted. He wanted the reporter to stay to address what's become a very uncomfortable email for the Democrats he shills for. Realizing that wasn't happening, Dworman told his clearly frightened guest he could leave, but he couldn't hide the disgust in his voice.
Bump would claim in a subsequent column that he didn't walk out on Dworman, but anyone can watch the video and see what he did to get out of that room ASAP, with his tail between his legs.