WATCH: The Atlantic writer calls Hunter Biden’s laptop ‘totally irrelevant’

At the "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy" conference co-hosted by The Atlantic, the outlet's staff writer was grilled by University of Chicago freshman Daniel Schmidt about the mainstream media's collective avoidance and suppression of the bombshell report in the lead-up to the election.

During the question-and-answer portion of the event, the college student, also the editor of the university's student newspaper, reminded Applebaum that in an Oct. 23, 2020, article for The Atlantic, she casted off the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

"Those who live outside the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need to learn any of this stuff," Applebaum wrote in the 2020 piece.

Schmidt quoted Applebaum's writing and asked if she and other figures were premature in their initial assessment dismissing the importance of the scandal.

The student then cited a poll that found later that if US voters had known about the contents of the Hunter Biden's laptop, 16 percent of Biden voters would have cast their ballots differently.

"Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation, and what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation, and not reality?" Schmidt pressed Applebaum for an answer.

Applebaum doubled down in her response. "My problem with Hunter Biden's laptop is I think it's totally irrelevant," she replied. "I mean, it's not whether it's disinformation … I didn't think Hunter Biden's business relationships have anything to do with who should be President of the United States."

"I don't find it to be interesting, I mean, that would be my problem with that as a major news story," Applebaum declared, side-stepping the student journalist's question on the corporate media's culpability in burying and discrediting it.

For a-year-and-a-half, a majority of legacy media outlets either wrote off the Hunter Biden laptop story as "Russian disinformation" or ignored it altogether.

The New York Times finally acknowledged the legitimacy of the laptop in mid-March. Meanwhile, left-wing pundits who pushed the Russian disinfo narrative have remained radio silent on the matter now re-entering the national spotlight.

"Almost 2 million views of a college freshman eviscerating a regime propagandist with a single question," political commentator Mike Cernovich remarked.

"Atlantic propagandist Anne Applebaum says Hunter Biden laptop shouldn't be reported on," Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec commented.

The University of Chicago Institute of Politics and The Atlantic hosted the three-day conference starting Wednesday through Friday, exploring via multiple events the "organized spread of disinformation and strategies to respond to it."

Applebaum's conversation Wednesday with the Institute of Politics's founding director David Axelrod focused on how social media as well as other technology have enabled the "rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation."

CNN's Brian Stelter was also placed on public trial at the conference when he, too, was called out by a college freshman for a laundry list of major hoaxes the left-wing cable news network has pushed in recent years. Stelter was quick to deflect the student's characterization as a "popular right-wing narrative about CNN."