There has been a pattern in U.S. politics that once your time is up as president, you go off and do whatever you want on the $400K pension we pay and the multiple millions that Simon & Schuster et al. offer for your memoirs written by someone else.
Ronald Reagan went to his beloved ranch. Gerald Ford played golf in Palm Springs. George W. Bush took up painting. Jimmy Carter helped build scores of houses for others.
Barack Obama successfully suppressed his oft-professed fears of global warming to buy two ocean beachfront estates. Hillary’s still hanging around for unexplained reasons, but Donald Trump took care of her political ambitions.
Now comes Hunter Biden back in the public eye. Wait! THE Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, the disbarred lawyer, influence peddler, philanderer, and presidential adviser?
Yup, the 56-year-old prodigal son who should be in ongoing rehab and a long prison term, but isn’t. Thanks to Daddy’s auto-pen pardon covering a sordid 11-year period through father’s hapless White House term and 2024. Tony Fauci got a blanket one too.
Someone with a past as thoroughly sordid and prolonged as Hunter might be expected to seek help and perhaps redemption in private. Like, say, fellow Democrat and ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), who disappeared back to a personal-injury law practice after being charged with financial campaign violations and fathering a child in an affair as his wife died of cancer.
Why would Hunter Biden be putting himself in front of a series of B-team podcasters this summer? Presenting himself as just a candid, affable, debt-ridden guy burdened by fame who, as one reporter put it, “has been long demonized by right-wing media.”
Hunter has provided ample ammo for demonizing. Here’s an incomplete list of his offenses:
- His arranged Navy officer career was terminated after nine months and a positive cocaine drug test;
- he built a lucrative influence-peddling career in Ukraine and China using his father’s name, reaping millions in payments;
- while married, he had an affair with his dead brother’s widow;
- his abandoned laptop, the one that was not Russian disinformation, documented hours of self-incriminating drug and alcohol abuse with prostitutes;
- it also provided information on grudgingly paying 10 percent of his influence income to the “Big Guy”;
- he fathered a child with a stripper whom he employed, denied meeting, and failed to make child-support payments to;
- he was convicted of three federal felony gun charges;
- he pleaded guilty in federal court to six misdemeanor and three felony tax charges, including filing false returns and failing to pay.
Other than that, Hunter Biden seems trustworthy. Like father, like son: "I give you my word as a Biden."
Hunter's sudden media availability suggests possible political ambitions. Given the loony way lost Democrats are voting these days for a jobless Nazi tattoo guy for the Senate, socialists, and communist mayors, that seems doable.
No one would care about Hunter if he was off holding Dad’s hand during radiation treatments or even undergoing his own therapy. But instead, Hunter is offering himself up as a famous, garrulous guest to podcasts like "WTF," "At Our Table," "Moby Pod," "VladTV," and others.
Any consumer of modern media knows that famous people suddenly appearing in public means they’re selling something – a new book or movie, maybe a candidacy. Hunter was asked about that: “I’m not running for anything.”
Uh-huh. If Hunter Biden says something, you can take it to the bank — in China, for transfer into a Biden shell company stateside.
Now that Joe Biden is gone, what’s left for Hunter to sell? No more influence to peddle. The board of directors job for a Ukrainian energy company is gone. The market for amateur paintings by a president’s infamous son has dried up. Is Hunter trying to cleanse himself by discussing his alleged recovery? Spare us the trite trying-to-help-others line.
Maybe sell a positive mention in Dad’s memoirs? Publication has been postponed now until after the midterm elections because the Democrat Party is trying to forget the Joe they once loved because he wasn't Trump.
Or at least not remind voters about the dark days of Joe's foggy, misbegotten presidency with the inflation, the supply-chain failures, the open border for millions of illegals, the botched Afghan troop withdrawal that turned out deadly.
So, what is the point?
One case Hunter is trying to make is that the party’s elite were out to get his father. His evidence is that two years ago, right about now, Joe’s forever friend, Nancy Pelosi, single-handedly dumped him for Kamala Harris as the 2024 nominee.
I remember those days differently. I remember Democrats like Pelosi and D.C.’s sycophant media as the ones propping Joe Biden up like a years-long weekend with Bernie. Ignoring his frozen moments, his unprovoked yelling, the nonsense chatter, the falls.
Those people were constantly assuring everyone that President Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack.” In private, he was bowling aides over with his memory and incisive intellect, they said. And he was totally prepared for four more years as the oldest commander in chief ever.
I remember it was an arrogant Joe Biden who challenged Donald Trump to an early debate in June 2024 to finally finish him off politically, as the hoaxes, contrived impeachments, and inflated indictments had so miserably failed to do.
I remember it was Joe Biden’s wife Jill, his family, and friends who wanted him to stay president so they could hang around too. Why keep the fading guy in the basement for the 2020 campaign, end his "workday" at 10:30 AM? They saw him fall asleep during debate prep. But no one intervened because they wanted what he could bring. That was elder abuse, plain and simple.
They knew the truth all along.
I remember too that scary stare in Biden’s beady eyes during that career-ending debate as his 81-year-old mind kept buffering silently but failed to reboot so he could say something, anything, sensible in front of 55 million shocked television viewers.
People understand a second son and the sole surviving son defending Dad. But why now? It’s kinda late to rewrite the records of Joe, Jill, and Hunter.
Joe Biden claimed he never discussed Hunter’s business with him, although photographs show him with the clients. Originally, Joe Biden said he had no intention of pardoning his son. Then, he did. Now, Hunter claims his pardon was never discussed with the father:
Was it good for the Constitution?
Was it good for the American people?
Was it good for my Dad’s legacy?
No, on all counts.
But it was good for Hunter. So, he’s not giving it up.
Hunter told Shawn Ryan that he has “$14, $15 million dollars in debt that I have no idea that I’m going to pay.” Court documents suggest it’s more like $17 million or perhaps $20 million and that Hunter is living abroad on undisclosed income due to troubled finances and lawyer debt.
"You know," Hunter says, "nobody's riding to the rescue of Hunter Biden."
Apparently, the $10 million that father Biden’s getting for his memoir and the undisclosed sum Jill received for hers, and whatever Hunter got for his bad-boy book are not accessible.
Joe Rogan aside, the current crop of podcasters is known for entertainment, not tough questioning, which is no doubt why Hunter goes there.
Since Hunter is voluntarily on hand and pardoned, it would be interesting, for instance, to ask about his role in hiding the president’s infirmities. Was the “Big Guy” mentioned on his laptop really Dad? What happened to the “Suspicious Transfers” of millions into Biden shell companies that the Treasury Department cited and the president claimed never happened?
It would be equally interesting to see how he dodges them.
Perhaps in the end, Hunter soliciting invites to podcasts is just some kind of self-therapy, letting it all out now that Dad gave him a Stay Out of Jail card.
There’s an apt story making the internet rounds about a psychiatrist advising a troubled therapy patient to write individual letters to everyone he ever wronged or was wronged by. And then throw them in a fire.
And the angry patient replies: “OK. What should I do with the letters?”
