Iker Jiménez did not give Abascal's wife what he did give to a man accused of serious crimes

I have been following Iker Jiménez on television for many years, first on his program "Cuarto Milenio" and more recently on "Horizonte".

The PP and foul play: the consequences of having a party devoid of principles
Iker Jiménez's devastating response to the attack by pro-government media

I have defended Iker on this blog on several occasions when he has received harsh attacks from the left. Today I have to say that after watching his programme this Thursday I feel somewhat disappointed. One of the issues that Iker decided to bring up is the information published by a media outlet close to the PP (and repeated by other media outlets close to the PP and also by media close to the PSOE) accusing Lidia Bedman, Santiago Abascal's wife, of supposedly working for a publisher close to the PP.

As I already indicated here on Tuesday, that same day Lidia Bedman denied that information, pointing out that she has never worked for the company with which that media linked her. To my surprise, yesterday on the program "Horizonte", Iker did not mention Bedman's denial. At the table, the only person who defended Abascal's wife was Carmen Porter, Iker's wife, in the face of attempts to equate the indictment of Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez's wife, for several corruption crimes, with that information about Lidia Bedman that she has already denied.

The treatment that Iker gave to Abascal's wife yesterday contrasts with what happened in his program on December 12, when the presenter of "Horizonte" showed a video of Víctor de Aldama justifying himself. Let us remember that on October 10, two months before a Supreme Court judge sent Aldama to prison after charging him with several serious crimes, specifically crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, money laundering and against the public treasury and fraud that would amount to 182,513,923.15 euros.

In his aforementioned program, Iker not only showed Aldama's video, thus giving him the opportunity to defend himself that he did not give to Abascal's wife (despite the fact that she has not been accused of any crime, not even of any illegal act), but he has also invited Aldama's spokesperson to his program several times, to expose what his client wanted to leak at each moment.

Yesterday, Iker also gave squatters the opportunity to justify themselves - that is, people who have illegally appropriated homes that are not theirs - letting them talk for several minutes without showing their faces, posing with their backs to the camera and wearing hoods. This spectacle ended when the squatters disqualified Carmen Porter, Iker's wife, for asking them an uncomfortable question.

Of course, I don't understand this double standard from Iker Jiménez and I find it outrageous, but at this point it doesn't surprise me. After all, in all the years he's been running his two shows, Iker's mentions of Vox on his Twitter account can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and there are fingers to spare. The most recent was when Vox left the regional governments with the PP after the party gave in to Pedro Sánchez's approaches to immigration. At the same time, Roberto Vaquero, leader of two far-left parties - the Workers' Front and Communist Reconstruction - frequently appears on "Horizonte", even though neither of these two parties has parliamentary representation. The Workers' Front has only one councillor in Mandayona (Guadalajara), a town of 292 inhabitants.

The most surreal thing about yesterday's program, by the way, was seeing a guest on the talk show criticize Abascal's wife for collecting money from a company that was making losses, thus trusting the version published by a media outlet and denied by Lidia Bedman herself. It just so happens that the guest is a columnist for El País, a media outlet that is close to Pedro Sánchez's government and whose media group has a bank debt structured in long-term obligations of 799.3 million euros. Furthermore, on her LinkedIn profile she appears as a scriptwriter for RTVE's Playz, a media group owned by the state and controlled by the Sánchez government, which has a debt of 430 million euros. Should we assume that, consistently, she has renounced receiving payment for her work on those two media?

Finally, Iker Jiménez and his channel, Cuatro, have every right in the world to criticise a political party, whichever one, and to take sides with whomever they want. That is what democracy and freedom of expression are all about, which also allows the rest of us to criticise the double standard of giving a voice to someone accused of serious crimes and to squatters, while at the same time denying it to a woman who has not committed any illegality. Why, because she is Santiago Abascal's wife? Anyway, as I said: what a disappointment.