Analysis: Should anyone pay attention to Hunter Biden?
'I don't give a shit what George Clooney thinks,' Biden told former DNC chair Jaime Harrison in a podcast.
Clooney's New York Times op-ed about President Joe Biden's decline may have energized pressure for him to step down as the Democratic nominee in 2024, but it was fed by the conventional wisdom, obvious to anyone who watched Biden's fumbling performance in CNN's 2024 presidential debate that he was going to lose the election.
Biden's decision to step down after a disastrous debate performance came after the primary process — too late for Democratic voters to pick his replacement, but soon enough for Vice President Kamala Harris to launch a last-minute and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to keep the White House for Democrats.
Now Democrats are contending with a lurch to the right engineered by the Trump administration, which has initiated mass deportation efforts; downsized the federal government; directed the Justice Department to investigate the president's political enemies; all but ended foreign aid programs; clamped down on diversity efforts; cut taxes mostly for the wealthy; and engineered cuts to Medicaid spending that will kick millions of Americans off their health insurance in the years to come.
In the aftermath of the Democrats' disaster, Hunter Biden has it in for Clooney, James Carville and other Democratic luminaries, all of who he thinks undercut his dad, who got a lot done and is now watching much of it be undone by Trump. He has also been dismissive of former President Barack Obama.
And Hunter has an excuse for his dad's bad debate performance: Joe Biden was tired and on the sleep aid Ambien, Hunter Biden said during a three-hour interview about politics and his recovery from addiction on Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.
That may be true, but there are also no excuses if your one job — as Joe Biden's was for Democrats — is to stand in the way of Trump's resurgence.
And so most Democrats probably, to borrow Hunter Biden's words, don't give a $!@# what he says.
Controversy around Hunter Biden, who has been accused of trading on his last name to secure work for foreign companies, allowed Trump and Republicans to impugn Joe Biden. There was never proof that Joe Biden abused his position, but after years of investigations, there didn't need to be.
The special counsel investigation into Hunter Biden's illegal ownership of a firearm while addicted to drugs and his tax evasion were sideshows that also probably damaged Joe Biden's presidency.
Joe Biden's decision to pardon his son and others on his way out of the White House door will tarnish his presidential legacy, even as it accurately predicted the Trump administration's use of the Department of Justice.
All of that makes it easy to pile on Hunter Biden for not seeing that his father's flagging approval rating and the perception that his decline was being hidden from Americans made his reelection extremely unlikely. Hunter Biden is sticking up for his dad's legacy. Clooney's op-ed, on the other hand, seemed to come from a place of genuine concern both for Biden and for the country.
An autopsy the party is preparing to assess why it lost the 2024 election will sidestep Biden's decision to bow out, as well as Harris' campaign, according to a report in the New York Times — which almost sounds like the punchline of a joke.
'An autopsy should address the actual cause of death,' Rep. Ritchie Torres of Texas said Sunday on CNN's 'State of the Union.'
Torres argued a Democratic nominee would have benefited from a primary process and exposure to voters, which is Politics 101.
Another Democrat, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, told CNN's Kasie Hunt that he's looking forward to the next election, not back at the last one.
'You can't go back in time and change that decision, which, of course, was consequential to the outcome. So why don't we focus on what people expect from us right now,' Swalwell said Monday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump fired him over white supremacist links. Now he's leading the US Institute of Peace
Darren Beattie, a top State Department official who was fired from the first Trump administration after speaking at a conference attended by white supremacists, has been appointed to lead the U.S. Institute for Peace, an independent nonprofit funded by Congress. Beattie, who will continue serving as U.S. Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy while leading the institute as acting president, has a history of inflammatory views. The former academic has lauded eugenics-style population control and mass sterilization, praised the Chinese Communist party and dismissed its repressive campaign against the Uyghurs, claimed the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol was a conspiracy by federal agents, and wrote on social media last year that 'competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.' 'We look forward to seeing him advance President Trump's America First agenda in this new role,' the State Department said in a statement on Friday. The Trump administration has tried to exert control over the peace-keeping organization as part of the president's radical restructuring of federal agencies and diplomacy. In February, the president signed an executive order slashing most of the group's staff, part of a wider effort to drastically change U.S. tools of foreign influence and diplomacy that also saw the administration gut the U.S. Agency for International Development. The following month, Elon Musk's so-called DOGE initiative seized the peace institute's headquarters with the help of police and the FBI, ejecting staff from the building. Staff members then sued over the takeover and mass firings, and a federal judge in May temporarily blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the institute. The administration then appealed, and a federal appeals court in Washington last month returned control of the building to the administration as the legal process plays out. In March, Democratic members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who sits on the board of the U.S. Institute for Peace, expressing alarm over Beattie's appointment in February to his diplomatic post. 'Darren Beattie's white nationalist loyalties and public glorification of our adversaries' authoritarian systems make him unqualified to serve as the top diplomat representing American values and culture to foreign audiences,' the members wrote. The Independent has requested comment from the State Department and U.S. Institute for Peace for comment. After his dismissal from the Trump administration in 2018, Beattie returned to the government two years later, with the White House appointing him to the Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, a body that preserves historical sites, including those related to the Holocaust. The Biden administration forced Beattie's resignation from the commission in 2022. Beattie isn't the only Trump staffer welcomed back into the government after controversy over their views. Marko Elez, a DOGE staffer who previously praised eugenics, declared himself 'racist before it was cool,' and said he wanted to 'normalize Indian hate,' according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, resigned from the administration in February, but soon found a new position in the Social Security Administration.
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Mike Johnson says Ghislaine Maxwell coming clean on Epstein case would be ‘a great service to the country'
Speaker Mike Johnson called on Jeffrey Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, to come clean and told Americans that he "hoped" she could be trusted as he faces the growing uproar around the White House's handling of the investigation. Johnson appeared Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, where moderator Kristen Welker asked him point-blank if the convicted sex-trafficker girlfriend of Epstein could be trusted to accurately testify about the crimes she and Epstein committed. Epstein was awaiting prosecution for sex trafficking underage girls after a previous conviction on similar charges when he died in federal custody. Maxwell has been thrust back into the spotlight as the MAGA base has grown frustrated with President Donald Trump and his administration's shutting down of the so-called Epstein files release. Last week, a top Department of Justice official met with Maxwell about the case. "Well, I mean, look; it's a good question. I hope so," Johnson told Welker in response. "I hope that she would want to come clean." "I hope she's telling the truth. She is convicted, she's serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking. Her character is in some if she wants to come clean now, that would be a great service to the country. We want to know every bit of information that she has." The House Oversight Committee voted this week to issue a subpoena for Maxwell after the Justice Department announced its own plans to speak with her. Agency officials did so for nine hours between Thursday and Friday, after making a statement seeming to confirm that her testimony hadn't been aggressively sought before. Some have called Maxwell to testify and suggested she should be given a pardon for sharing what she knows about the Epstein case. She was convicted of sexual abuse against minors and sex trafficking for helping Epstein carry out crimes. Johnson touted the Oversight subpoena favorably Sunday, casting it as evidence that GOP leadership supported efforts aimed at transparency. The Trump administration turned speculation about Epstein's death and the so-called 'Client List' of his co-conspirators into a raging wildfire in early July. The Justice Department and FBI published a joint memo explaining that future releases from the files would not take place, and that the list of Epstein's accomplices was not found. Epstein was rumored to have cultivated personal relationships with many powerful men and institutions. Critics of the president have alleged that a cover-up is in the works regarding the Epstein files. Democrats have hammered the president for his reversal, and a pair of scoops from the Wall Street Journal have reported on the president's connections to Epstein, to Trump's fury. The newspaper reported the contents of a message allegedly penned by Trump to Epstein as part of a 50th birthday celebration in 2003, including allusions to a shared 'secret' between them. Trump firmly denied authoring the note, and sued the Journal and its reporters in response. A second article from the Journal days later reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump in May that he was mentioned in the Epstein investigation multiple times, but it was not clear in what context. The White House called that story 'fake' and has repeatedly insinuated that Democrats including Joe Biden tampered with evidence while Trump was out of office. Being mentioned in the files does not mean wrongdoing, and hundreds of names are reportedly included. The lead GOP co-sponsor behind a House resolution that would force the Justice Department to release the entirety of its collected evidence related to Epstein said Sunday that his push was to help the convicted pedophile's victims and would only grow stronger in the coming weeks. Earlier on the same network, Rep. Thomas Massie appeared alongside the resolution's lead Democratic co-sponsor, Rep. Ro Khanna, as the two promoted a resolution that would force Attorney General Pam Bondi to release 'all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials' related to the Epstein and Maxwell investigations. Massie told Welker that 'the release of the Epstein files is emblematic of what Trump ran for' and explained that the president's MAGA base expected results. 'There seems to be a class of people beyond the law, beyond the judicial all thought that when Trump was elected, he would be the bull in the china shop and break that all up,' said Massie. Massie went on to say that the Trump administration had lost his trust on the issue after publicly supporting transparency around the investigation, then doing an abrupt about-face. The administration is now calling on its supporters to move on from the issue and focus on hashing out issues with the 2016 'Russiagate' investigation instead of Epstein. Top administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, also spent months calling for the very releases the Justice Department says it won't authorize. 'People who were allegedly working on this weren't sincere in their efforts,' Massie said. 'Somebody should ask Speaker Mike Johnson, why did he recess Congress early so that he didn't have to deal with the Epstein issue?' 'Politics is the art of the doable. There's enough public pressure right now that we can get 218 votes and force this to a vote on the floor,' said Massie. He also firmly rejected a DOJ memo explaining the administration's position against further releases of information from the Epstein files, despite the very public promises of Bondi and others to do the opposite. In the memo, agency officials said that explicit imagery involving children was 'intertwined' throughout the files collected by the Justice Department. Some have said the files should not be released to protect sex-abuse victims of both Maxwell and Epstein. 'That's a straw man [argument],' Massie responded on Sunday, after Welker read part of the memo. 'Ro [Khanna] and I carefully crafted this legislation so that the victims' names would be redacted, and that no child pornography will be released.'
Wall Street Journal
10 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
We Won't Miss Government Media
I'm going to miss the sweet and soothing dulcet-toned voices, but not much else. As part of the Trump administration's rescission bill, $1.1 billion in federal funding has been cut for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, perhaps sending National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Service and member stations to that great test pattern in the sky. Those jumping to the defense of public-funded media cite both its need during emergencies and for rural areas. Nonsense. I'd bet more people use smartphones than radios these days. But the 'Mr. Snuffleupagus in the room' has always been bias. A year ago, NPR had 87 Democrats and zero Republicans on its editorial staff in Washington, according to a senior editor there. How did we let that happen?
