Hunter Week
Wow, it’s Hunter Biden week!!! The President’s wayward adult son is all the headlines, starting with an entire House of Representative’s committee hearing on him. We now know: he didn’t pay taxes for a few years; he was addicted to drugs (cocaine) after his brother tragically died, and he doesn’t look half as good naked as he probably hoped.
Naked – thanks to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene we got to see Hunter in full action. That is, unless the famous Hunter Laptop (not to be confused with the Anthony Weiner Laptop – why don’t those guys use desktops, it would sound less suggestive, or maybe “towers”) was somehow hacked. Let’s see; the legal “chain of custody” goes from Hunter, to the blind computer repairman, to Rudy Giuliani, to the New York Post, and then, I guess, to the FBI. What could possibly go wrong? We can blame Hunter’s embarrassing photo “in-delicto” on Photoshop, or even Artificial Intelligence, as much on his bad taste in recording swordsmanship.
NI (No Intelligence)
Speaking of intelligence, how do two groups of highly trained and compensated lawyers, reach an agreement, walk into a courtroom, and then discover that they really don’t agree on anything? Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion, and one felony of filing false information on a gun permit application. His lawyers thought that was the end of the “Hunter Investigations”. The US Attorney of Delaware didn’t agree. He wanted to reserve the “right” to keep investigating all the other possible charges from that same time.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika stopped the hearing, and asked why Biden should agree to such a deal. Apparently, she was speaking for the defendant. It was a bad deal with no ultimate guarantees – and she “nixed” it. Not bad for a Trump Appointee!!
Trump Strategy
I’m sure that Donald Trump isn’t pleased. After all, he leaked the “Target Letter” from Jack Smith’s Special Prosecutor’s office. It notified the twice impeached, once defeated, multiply indicted former President that he was likely to face more indictments over the 2020 elections. Trump has a theory: any publicity is better than silence. His leaking the letter was a way of refocusing media attention back to HIM, and away from the other “little” Republican candidates for President, and the Biden economic renaissance.
And Trump did get a few days of 24 hour coverage on national media. And he will get that same coverage again when Jack Smith actually does indict him (it seems inevitable). But in the meantime, Hunter is cutting into Trump’s “bad” time on cable news. The Florida man can’t be happy with that.
Back in 2016, the news media was faced with a new and complicated issue. Trump had so much going on, was saying so many “alternate facts”, that they couldn’t correct him quickly enough. And, since Trump was getting so much press, they had to “balance” their coverage with Hillary Clinton’s emails, over and over and over and over again. While it seemed like it was emails ad-nauseum, at least it was one Presidential candidate versus another.
False Equivalency
But today, the media is falling into the same trap. This time though, it’s a false equivalency. Hunter Biden, as much of a mess as he is; is not the equivalent of Donald Trump. If Hunter Biden was Hunter Smith, we would never have heard about his sad story at all. Instead, he’s getting almost “equal” treatment; with reporters hanging out the doors of the Wilmington Federal Court House, all of the expert lawyers discussing every nuance, and messengers breathlessly running out of the room with the latest scoop.
Sure if Hunter was his Dad, this would be major “breaking news”. But he’s not. And while we all have some interest in what happens to the President’s family, it shouldn’t be the media equivalent of a candidate for President. Think about what this current media frenzy would have been like with Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s younger brother. His proclivity for beer (he even had “Billy Beer” brewed) and urinating on airport runways would have been headline news. But the media at that time let Billy “be”, a sideshow, not a focus.
Too bad Hunter doesn’t get the same treatment. In the meantime, the Dow Jones is up, unemployment AND inflation are down, and the world gets better:
Thanks Joe Biden!!!!
