Whether or not this new blog is a spoof, or for real, I leave for the beholder to decide. Something juicy happened yesterday, which seemed about as good as anything to kick off this blog and cause me yet again to wonder if the Democrats are a branch of the mythical Fukawi tribe, which is forever getting lost and gathering in a circle and sitting down and holding hands and closing their eyes and chanting, "Where the fuck are we? Where the fuck are we?"
On the Tragedy of Hunter Biden
His father, our president, is one of the main victims of his abuse
Though I am very aware that former President Trump has been indicted for the third time — in fact, if you want to hear my views on that and more analysis of the charges, I’ll point you to the episode of Serious Trouble I recorded last night with Ken White — today I have something for you on Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden probably will be allowed to plead guilty to two counts of misdemeanor tax crimes, after the terms of his plea agreement get straightened out a little.
Whether or not Joe handled his son’s behavior as well as he should have — a matter I’ll discuss below — one thing that’s clear here is that one of Hunter’s many sins is causing a lot of political trouble for his father.
But that’s not the only trouble Hunter has caused Joe.
One of the most depressing aspects of the Hunter Biden saga is the emotional terrorism he has wrought on his family as they have struggled to keep him alive and sober. Here is one vignette from his memoir, as described by Time magazine:
There’s a too-brief scene late in Hunter Biden’s new memoir where Dr. Jill Biden tricks the crack-addled lawyer and consultant to come for dinner at the family home in Wilmington, Del. Upon walking through the door, Hunter sees the family gathered — along with counselors from one of the countless rehab facilities that pop up throughout his new memoir.
There is screaming and there are tears. Future President Joe Biden is described as terrified and pleading with his son. One of Hunter’s daughters takes his car keys away from him. He eventually agrees to his family’s plea to try another round of rehab, just not at the one they picked. He wants to go to one in Maryland. The family, after 15 years of rounds of rehab and relapse, agrees. Frantic phone calls follow and appointments are made for that evening. Hunter’s brother’s widow (and his ex-girlfriend) Hallie ferries him to the front gates. Once she drives away, Hunter summons an Uber, checks into a hotel near BWI, smokes the crack he had hidden in his bag and flies to Los Angeles for yet another bender.
The bit about Hunter’s brother’s widow also being his ex-girlfriend — that is, about Hunter having wrecked his marriage to have an affair with his sister-in-law just after his brother’s tragic and very public death — is a key and sordid point here: Hunter obviously has a big, compelling, charismatic personality, and he manages to draw people toward his desires against all common sense and good judgment. He gets the people who are close to him to excuse his inexcusable behavior, and to expend their resources — financial, emotional, and professional — to rescue him from his own mistakes. To love Hunter Biden is to expose yourself to being used and abused.
Joe Biden’s love for his troubled son is obvious. The “terrified and pleading” characterization of Joe Biden in that private meeting matches up with the way he talks about his son in public — emphatically emphasizing that he loves his son and is proud of him; declaring that he has done “nothing wrong” even when it is obvious to everyone that he has; hosting him at a state dinner just days after he agreed to plead guilty to failing to pay his taxes. What I see here is a father who knows his son has tremendous issues, including a deep-seated need to feel useful and successful (like his late brother was) even though he fundamentally isn’t. One of the main things Joe can offer Hunter is repeated public declarations of his worth and rectitude, and he offers them readily. Joe Biden is also a father who has faced tremendous loss: many of his loved ones have died untimely deaths, and Hunter, whatever his flaws, is one of the children he has left. I find Joe’s devotion to and accommodation of Hunter to be very understandable, human, and heartbreaking. It shows the costs and the hurt that Joe Biden is willing to endure for his love.
And this is the frame I start from when thinking about a question people have been discussing this week: why did Joe Biden take those various phone calls from Hunter, as he hung out with his shady foreign business associates? More broadly, why didn’t Joe get Hunter to knock it off — to stop trading on his father’s name to make money in a way that was, if not necessarily illegal, obviously corrupt?
In 2019, the New York Times reported that a diplomat who raised concerns about Hunter’s business interests in 2015 received a message from the White House that Joe Biden lacked the “bandwidth” to seek to correct one of his sons while the other was dying of cancer:
WASHINGTON — A career State Department official told impeachment investigators this week that he raised concerns with a senior White House official in 2015 about the son of then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. holding a position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
But the warning from George P. Kent, then a State Department officer stationed in Kiev, was not acted on, according to two people familiar with Mr. Kent’s testimony. Mr. Kent, now of the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said he told the official that Hunter Biden’s position could look like a conflict of interest, given his father’s role, and would complicate American efforts to encourage Ukraine to clean up corruption.
The White House official told Mr. Kent that the elder Mr. Biden did not have the “bandwidth” to address the concerns while his older son, Beau, was undergoing cancer treatment, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the private deposition.
I take this basically at face value. You don’t have to — you could instead think Joe put up with Hunter’s actions because he was financially in on the schemes, but I don’t think the math adds up for that: far from piling cash up for the Biden family, it sure looks to me like Hunter blew more than 100% of his corruptly earned earnings on hookers and drugs and extravagances — ending up without enough money to pay all his taxes and needing a bailout from one of his rich friends. It seems likelier to me that Joe Biden was motivated by love here rather than money: that he was not about to seek a conflict with his wayward son that he would have reasonably feared could send him into a relapse or worse.
Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (R) speaks as his son, Hunter Biden, looks on at the World Food Program USA's Annual McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at Organization of American States on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for World Food Program USA)
Besides, even if Joe had told Hunter to knock it off with the shady foreign business, how do we know Hunter would have complied, any more than he complied with that plea to go to rehab? Should Joe have publicly repudiated Hunter’s business affairs in a way that would have made it impractical for him to obtain lucrative contracts? Should he have stopped taking phone calls from his son — abandoning an approach of showing love to his son by maintaining constant availability — out of concern that he might sometimes have shady foreign businesspeople (their presence often undisclosed) listening into the calls? Should he tell the world not to buy his son’s art? It’s quite possible the answer to those questions is yes — that Joe owed it to President Obama, or the Democratic Party, or the country, to cast out his corrupt son who was causing all this trouble — but it’s extremely easy to understand why a loving father would be unwilling to do so.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden’s obligations extend beyond his family. One of his core professional obligations is to maintain his appeal to people who have less inclination to give him the benefit of the doubt than I do.And what Hunter has done is — to at least some extent — damaging to the trust people place not just in Joe Biden, but also in the Democratic Party and the American government. I think it’s important for the country that Joe Biden be re-elected, and as such I resent Hunter for making that more difficult at the margin, and I regret that Joe did not do all he could to stop Hunter from trading corruptly on his name and damaging his political position. But Hunter isn’t my son, and it’s easy for me to feel that way.
As Vice-President and later as President, Joe Biden's duty to his office and to the American public trumped his duty to his family, whenever there was a conflict between the two duty realms. President Biden must be an idiot to keep defending Hunter. Isn't loyalty to Donald Trump above all else, Trump's trademark? I think it's way past time for both men to turn toward their own respective houses and try to get them in order, which will require them to leave the public service realm entirely, because there is no way they can can put America first when their own personal houses are so totally disarrayed.
WRD
The premises here are that Biden allowed his personal issues to trump his duty to the American public and that such action is comparable with that of Donald Trump.
Both elements are not correct. A truly notable fact about the Biden situation is the total lack of evidence of Biden abusing his office.
The less said about the Trump comparison the better.
Sloan Bashinsky
Joe Biden's duty to the American public is to be a grown up man, who deals with reality personally and nationally. There is no way Joe Biden can be a level president with a son behaving like Hunter behaves. The proof of that is Joe Biden keeps taking up for Hunter. What Biden should have done was ask his own Justice Department to investigate Hunter, and thus trump the Republicans doing it instead. Donald Trump is the sorriest piece of shit in American politics today, perhaps in American politics ever, which don't say much good about his MAGAs and any non-MAGA Republicans who don't renounce him. It's a very sad commentary that Joe Biden, when he was Barack Obama's VP, didn't have enough sense to not let Hunter rope him into the Ukraine mess. It's just as sad a commentary that Joe Biden has not woke up yet to just how idiotic he looks to people who are political independents, thus don't have to keep pledging allegiance to the left, nor to the right, but to reality and sanity and, if they are so inclined, to God, they owe their allegiance.
WRD
I agree with Barro that Biden hasn't handled the situation perfectly, but you give the game away in your second sentence. You think Hunter's behavior disqualifies Joe as President regardless of Joe's behavior ("there is no way Joe Bide can be a level president with a son behaving like Hunter behaves"). I don't think that's true, even if I wish Joe Biden was handling the situation differently.
Sloan Bashinsky
By the way Joe Biden handled his son's actions, he proved he was not big enough to be president and put his office and his country and the American people and the truth first.
JES The arguments that the President is innocent or guilty of wrongdoing, justified or unjustified in his actions, are all just a red herring. The only thing we should be discussing is whether or not this mess rises to the level of needing a Special Prosecutor. And, OF COURSE IT DOES. There is a prima facia case being made that the President of the United States was involved in a scheme to trade political favors for money. For our current government to refuse to fully investigate this matter dramatically reduces its legitimacy. If you like Democracy, you should want enough light shed on this mess to determine what actually happened.
PhillyT Except that there have been investigations into this already by the FBI andHouse Republicans are still trying to investigate if anything Hunter has done can be used to impeach Biden. From the looks of it, it's still a red herring since no political favors were traded, nor money. What Hunter has shown is that he was using "access" or the ability to get access to his father. This is very unethical, and seems that Biden was not aware of his son's schemes. That doesn't mean anything illegal was done.
Sloan Bashinsky How could Joe Biden not been aware of his son's schemes? He was the Vice-President, and then he was the President?
smilerz Being VP/President doesn't make you omniscient. Are you aware of every bad thing all of your family members have ever done?
Sloan Bashinsky Of course not, but how could an American vice-president not know what his son was up to in Ukraine?
smilerz he knew he was in Ukraine - but, especially because he was in Ukraine, how could he know any details?
Sloan Bashinsky So, Hunter is in Ukraine, and suddenly he has lots of money, and it fell on him from out of nowhere?
smilerz He knew something was going on - which is different than knowing the details. He was on the board of a Ukranian gas company - this is public knowledge.
Sloan Bashinsky
How do you suppose Hunter got on the board of directors of a Ukrainian gas company, unless it was because his father was the American Vice-President?
smilerz Do you have evidence of wrong doing - or just using supposition to justify your dislike of Biden? (and yes, I think that's totally plausible)
Sloan Bashinsky
I doesn't take more than a moron to connect the dots between Hunter getting on that Ukraine gas company board and Hunter's father being the American Vice-President. If I were Joe Biden and Hunter were my son, I'd have raised bloody hell about it, in public, unless I was in on it.
