Read on Twitter
OK. I have a a few minutes to catch up on details. Where do I start? https://twitter.com/Comparativist/status/1322061899186368512
If youâre like me, your introduction to this saga was Trump accusing Biden of âtaking money from Chinaâ at the last debate. Itâs the 1st time Iâd heard this didnât know if Trump was improvizing his Biden lie-smears vs a pre-existing story in MAGA trash media. https://twitter.com/vladimi81231035/status/1319525879161249792
I missed the âBiden-Trump Dossierâ micro-story on Twitter two days ago. Both @BeijingPalmer and @BadChinaTake immediately suspected @BaldingsWorld wrote the whole thing. I shall now discover for you, dear reader, what this âdossierâ was alleging. https://twitter.com/badchinatake/status/1321297527853977601
This as the first tweet I saw mentioning any of this. When I realized it was *that* Balding, I almost knew enough. I muted him this summer when he turned into a COVID Truther. Thereâs a smallish circle of English HK/CN whoâve known each other online for years and maybe met 1-2x https://twitter.com/beijingpalmer/status/1321929012176932864
Baldingâs time in Shenzhen overlapped w/ mine. He left for a uni job VN a few yrs ago. Before he left SZ he mostly âstayed in his laneâ & tweeted about Chinese macro-econ stuff and was taken seriously as an CN econ expert.
After he left China, his Twitter feed and [just barely, tbh] academic work was 100% devoted to âtelling the truth about China I couldnât say there.â It was repetitive ex-China expat vibe for a bit, readable and sometimes informative.
One thing I picked up on very quickly in his post-Shenzhen social media rebrand was that he never criticized Trump over anything related to China or the econ. That turned into transforming into a full time Trade War cheerleader.
His tweets were a little unhinged before he went Full COVID Truther. In DMâs w someone else from Old Time CN/HK Twitter, which Balding is to, I mention that the only rational explanation I had was that he might be angling for a Trump WH job.
[redacted, but you follow] replied: âHeâs actively trying to get a job in the Trump Admin. He told me several times. Including last time we met IRL.â
Every tweet, blog post, âresearchâ article since 201607 has been trying to catch Trump WH attention so he could land a job there https://twitter.com/Comparativist/status/1322096364709318656
Every tweet, blog post, âresearchâ article since 201607 has been trying to catch Trump WH attention so he could land a job there https://twitter.com/Comparativist/status/1322096364709318656
[I will now read the dossier, but this is my experience with Balding. We were friendly enough to discuss meeting IRL before he left Shenzhen, followed each other for years, but the cynicism behind the COVID Truther stuff (he was proving his loyalty to Orange Man) crossed a line]
Iâve now skimmed it and itâs as bad as @BadChinaTake says it is (and sounds exactly like Balding). Itâs barely about Hunter Biden at all and thereâs no receipts for his supposed vast CCP-infused wealth. https://twitter.com/badchinatake/status/1321612431118999552
by all appearances, Hunter Biden seems to have built something of an international consulting and investment career out of nothing but his family name. He let people give him contracts and positions, thinking they were buying access to the VP. All they got was Hunter Biden though
âMark Simon, an Apple Daily exec and GOP operative, commissioned Balding to write a Biden-China dossier for Apple Daily to publish as a âleaked document.â They ran to Epoch Times and Bannon/Gui to boost their âHK media reportâ far enough for Trump to use in the last debate.â
And the whole thing fell apart b/c Balding didnât want his name on it, so pretended it was leaked from somewhere. And then invented both a company and a person that were quickly proven not to exist as the âleak sourceâ of what was obviously his own writing. https://twitter.com/comparativist/status/1322111329717514241
I knew this the moment it I realized the âBidenâs China cashâ accusation Trump kept using in the last debates started with Apple Daily pushing out âdocumentsâ and âresearchâ that started w/ Balding. This isnât something Jimmy Lai could come up with
Sad.
https://twitter.com/tmclaughlin3/status/1322115119548047366?s=21
Sad.
https://twitter.com/tmclaughlin3/status/1322115119548047366?s=21
