Sam Harris responds to online furor over his argument that the media should have covered up Hunter Biden laptop story

An atheist podcast known for criticizing Christianity and Islam responded to a social media furor over his comments, arguing that the media should have covered up the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Harris made the comments while a guest on the "TRIGGERnometry" show, which is sponsored by the Epoch Times. He argued that the media created Trump and that news outlets had a responsibility to help keep the former president from power, even to the point of obscuring the truth.

"Listen, I don't care what's in Hunter Biden's laptop, I mean, at that point, Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement, I would not have cared," he declared.

"Whatever scope of Joe Biden's corruption is, if we could just go down that rabbit hole endlessly and understand that he's getting kickbacks from Hunter Biden's deals in Ukraine or wherever else, right, or China, it is infinitesimal compared to the corruption we know Trump is involved in," Harris explained.

"It's like a firefly to the sun, right?" he added.

Harris went on to say that that the media trying to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story was a "leftwing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump," and added, "Absolutely it was, absolutely, right. But I think it was warranted."

When one of the show's hosts pressed him about his statement, Harris said it didn't matter because Trump was such a great threat.

"If there was an asteroid hurdling toward Earth, and we got in a room together with all of our friends and had a conversation about what we could do to deflect its course – is that a conspiracy? Some of that conversation would be in public, some of it would be in private. We have a massive problem. We have an existential threat, right?" Harris explained.

"Politically speaking, I consider Donald Trump to be an existential threat to our democracy," he concluded.

Many saw the admission as an insight into the thinking of many in the media and popular culture when it comes to feigning objectivity about political stories that might be damaging to President Joe Biden.

'I was speaking narrowly'

Harris later explained on Twitter that he thought people were misunderstanding his claims.

"There is a podcast clip circulating that seems to be confusing many people about my views on Trump (which is understandable because I wasn’t speaking very clearly). So, for what it’s worth, here is what I was trying to say," tweeted Harris.

"I was essentially arguing for a principle of self-defense (where there’s a continuum of proportionate force that is appropriate and necessary to use). I’ve always viewed Trump as a very dangerous person to elect as president of a fake university," he argued, "let alone the US, and when he became a sitting president who would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power, I viewed him as more dangerous still. (However, I’ve never been under any illusion that he is Orange Hitler.)"

He went on to tweet that he was speaking narrowly about whether the media should have ignored the laptop story until after the election.

"Nothing I said on that podcast was meant to suggest that the Democrats would have been right to commit election fraud or take other illegal measures to deny Trump the presidency (nor do I think they did that)," he concluded.

Harris spoke on other topics during the podcast, including tribalism and how many people on the left exaggerate how many white officers shoot and kill unarmed black men in the United States.

Here's the full video of his comments:

Sam Harris: Trump, Religion, Wokenesswww.youtube.com