If he didn't want to be political fodder for his father's opponents, he probably shouldn't have traded on his father's political connections in the first place. I have no sympathy for someone claiming selective prosecution when the only reason they weren't *already* in jail is their family name.
He wasn't "already" in jail because there was nothing to jail him on except republican rage and opportunitism.
The Red Team has taken this policy of "loudly scream lies until people think the lies are true" to a ridiculous extreme.
Alas, Hunters demons provided a reason. Both sides have their share of Nepo "strivers: but the GOPs extreme venality in pursuit of Hunter showed once again (sigh) they will stop at nothing to distract from their one true policy: make rich people richer and their total lack of class, honor and just plain dickishness.
The next 4 years will be interesting but entirely predicible: the Red Team will pillage the economy to a pile of kindling and the Blue Team will clean up the mess (sigh).
It happened in 1993, in 2009, in 2021 and it will happen in 2029.
Oh, and just wait and see who Trump pardons in 2029! It will be even more bizarre and sleazy and just plain wtf than
His *undisputed* conduct includes heavy drug use (including getting his dead brother's widow hooked on blow!), prostitution, and influence peddling--all of which are very much illegal. But you do you.
I mean. Hunter Biden is obviously a saint who has never done anything wrong and nepotism is totally okay now! Thanks for playing. What’s a victim hunter is! Poor hunter. He was always such a hard worker and earned everything he got!
Hurt only himself? He sold influence, possibly at the behest of "the big guy." That's why this blanket pardon goes back to 2014, right before the Burisma deal, which would have implicated Joe Biden as well. He's covering his own ass here too.
And the type of father who does anything in his power, ethical or not, to prevent his son from suffering the logical consequences of his actions is the type of father who raises a drug-addled, cheating, useless son like Hunter.
It's human, but it's certainly not worthy of respect.
I read the article, I don't think he makes any argument whatsoever. He just says a comparable person who is not the president's son would not have been prosecuted like that. That is not an argument. How about some data? What is the typical treatment for a crackhead who buys a handgun? What is the typical treatment for someone who doesn't pay taxes on a huge sum of money? Josh Barro may be right, but I would like some data, not just opinions.
> What is the typical treatment for someone who doesn't pay taxes on a huge sum of money?
Prison. Prison is the usual outcome for someone who blatantly fails to pay a massive amount of taxes. He isn't some sophisticated business person who used some gray area avoidance scheme that maybe failed on a technicality, he just straight up refused to pay the money he owed and filed false returns for years. That will get most people arrested, famous or otherwise.
It sounds like you may agree with the piece as to what it says about "the loving father" defense, but your issue is you think it's unsupported that a regular person wouldn't get charged? I'm not sure I follow your point or what relevance it has to the merits of the purported defense.
Had Biden made good on his almost explicit promise to serve as a “bridge to the future” and made clear early that he had no intention of serving a second term, I doubt Hunter would have been on anyone’s prosecution radar. In this sense Biden screwed over both the country and his wastrel son with his selfishness.
Hunter Biden is a piece of shit that got a lot of freebies for being a politicians son. If he was black and lied in a fun form he’d be in prison. This argument is bad.
As far as I see only one family has a son on trial for multiple crimes that used his barely coherent president of a father to pardon himself. And probably also to allow use of long range US missile to his Ukranians backers.
Which does not mean the Trump family is honest in any way but I prefer Kushner bumbling along in the middle east than a coked up criminal peddling US influence to foreign power and now able to wield the presidential power to his benefit.
Exactly. If I were in the same situation, you bet your ass I would have done the same thing, and I wouldn't have hesitated. And I think a lot of the people clutching their pearls would have done the same thing too. Biden's 82, and he's a good man. Let him live out his remaining years with his only surviving son by his side.
He’s not a good man. And literally never has been.
Bussing
Lied about his first wife’s death.
Used his lawyers to go after a stripper that his son had a love child with in order to keep the story quiet (yes this really did happen exactly like that) and keep her out of his inheritance.
Helped craft the ‘94 crime bill. Which was just the best for minorities and led to a lot of police abuse.
Helped craft the patriot act.
Refused to step down even though he was obviously too old.
Do you need more? What a wonderful human being. Truly warm and not a selfish rich white asshole at all!
OR — just thinking outside the box here — maybe one bad decision destroys your legacy, but the next bad decision restores it again? I mean, any theory of legacy has to explain Trump somehow. Perhaps he’s been careful to always do bad things in pairs?
I think running on ethics is the right way, BUT, and it’s a big but, you have to actually follow them, and not be know and the “illiberal left”.
I am reasonably sure if Dems revert to classical liberal values, and not want to be the party of only the “highly educated”, a win will be in the bag. But Dems are so far gone from the classic liberal values I don’t see how this will happen easily.
Yeah…. I live in Evanston, IL, bottom dead center of active woke DEI self destructive policies. It is exactly the demographic described by all as the problem of the Democratic Party. I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
1. Not being for Dems doesn’t mean being pro Trump.
2. This argument highlights how Dems want to do a whole bunch of crazy shit and respond; “Well Trump is Hitler and will introduce concentration camps and gas chambers, so just ignore what we did and remain silent”.
1. Don’t do dumb shit like advocating for BLM rioters not to be prosecuted and getting free healthcare for their injuries (Harris).
2. Don’t stand on your high hill demonizing everyone that doesn’t agree with you.
3. Doing a #2 (wink wink) while running on a position of ethics, rule if law, etc, when you are also have your hands in the muck, and your defence is the other guys hands are a bit dirtier, but since he is Hitler reborn it’s actually a whole lot worse.
#3 is my whole point though - running on ethics is a waste of time. We did that for 8 years, and the sonofabitch still won. If anything, taking the high ground made him more popular, as he became a transgressive, "cool," counter culture figure. Nothing matters anymore. The GOP trashed the rule book. You're making the assumption that I feel "rules" matter, when in fact, I'm rolling my eyes at the double standard (Democrats can't step out of line, but Republicans can) and saying, screw the standards.
A better strategy, one that worked in '18 and '20, was to simply ignore his nonsense (or, as the case with the pardon, indulge with it ourselves) and instead focus on his ineptitude as a leader. Make him boring again (no pun intended).
"[R]unning on ethics is a waste of time. We did that for 8 years, and the sonofabitch still won."
Maybe--and I'm just spitballing here--that has at least as much to do with the Dems' inability to *credibly* run on ethics with candidates like Clinton and Harris as their standard bearers as it has to do with anything else.
You're quite right. Between hiding Biden's infirmity, installing Kamala without a primary, and now Biden's pardoning of his criminal son, I don't think it's worth wasting time expecting an ethically guided Democrat campaign.
Dude, you guys tried to bankrupt your biggest political rival over an appraisal dispute and you bootstrapped a misdemeanor charge past the statute of limitations into a felony conviction.
People in Malaysia and Venezuela are side-eyeing you guys and thinking "that is some banana republic shit right there."
Imagine you’re in a situation where a disaster has occurred and people begin looting the grocery stores. You know it’s wrong and won’t resort to that kind of behavior, because you believe in conducting yourself as a moral individual and you need to set an example for your children. Besides, you can’t imagine this will go on for very long . Yet, it does go on.The order you believed would be restored by the police or national guard doesn’t happen, and the grocery store shelves will be soon be empty. Does morality still mean taking what you see as the high ground, or does it mean stealing to feed your family?
In my opinion, Biden assessed the state of morality we are living in right now, (where some are found guilty, and others might be found guilty, if they hadn’t managed to evade trial by becoming president) and astutely decided the most moral thing to do was to put family first and pardon his son. I say, way to go, Joe!
Aside from the fact you didn't answer, no, I don't think he did. Do you genuinely think that it was only in the intervening period of a month or so that Biden came to the sudden realization of the "state of morality" that justifies, in your view, the change in view?
It's not like there's some suddenly shocking intervening event like Pearl Harbor or something that would explain away a rather huge pivot.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The big event that happened was Trump was re-elected. We know Trump. No one expects him to be honest or to be accountable to anyone’s rules but his own. The GOP is still talking about going after Hunter Biden re: his business interests in Ukraine, yet although Trump’s kids have many international business ventures, we oddly don’t hear anything about them being investigated for illegalities. It’s one thing to tell your son he needs to accept his punishment that you’d like to assume will be fair and just, but it’s another thing to tell him to accept his punishment from people who have an axe to grind.
I agree that pardoning your son will not damage your legacy, but not for the reasons you give. It won’t damage your legacy because it’s a giant fucking nothingburger. With your successor having pardoned such distinguished felons as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, promising to pardon the January 6 participants, and teeing up AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, your pardoning is a no-brainer.
I also agree that your decision to run for re-election is “the political equivalent of saving a child from drowning and then backing over that same child with your car.” But give yourself some credit, man. Without your candidacy in 2020, to borrow a phrase from Bernie Sanders’s dimmer followers, Trump woulda won (and kudos to Jim Clyburn for that endorsement). As for choosing Kamala Harris as your running mate, she turned out to be a very good campaigner and a very good debater (with a timely assist from that fly). With 2020 hindsight (please laugh), you probably should have packed it in after the 2022 midterms. But no joke, that decision would have taken a capacity to give up power that would have had George Washington saying “man, that Biden makes me look like a regular Napoleon Bonaparte.” Your party held the Senate, barely lost the House, and later that November badass prosecutor Jack Smith was named Special Counsel in Charge of Nailing Trump’s Fat Ass to the Floorboards. So yeah, you decided to roll the dice and see if you could beat the ravages of Father Time. You lost, but let’s not forget you spent 45 years in the Senate, where 90-year olds run rampant, so your sense of what’s old must be a little skewed toward the Methuselan.
One more thing. That decision tree that leads from you picking Kamala Harris as running mate to you naming her your successor leaves out an important choice, which you didn’t get to make, in 2016. It goes something like this:
Obama—> Do I clear the field for Hillary Clinton, a candidate who should have stayed in the Senate after I beat her in 2008, a candidate who has more baggage than the lost and found at Kennedy Airport, and candidate who is hated by the political press and is a mediocre campaigner on her best day? YES! (NO! would have led to an open primary or a field-clearing for 73-year-old still-vigorous you, who delivered a stemwinder of a speech at the 2016 DNC and who would have ended Trump once and for all).
So yes, Mr. President, in the end you may have screwed the pooch, but you didn’t screw it all on your own, and the 77 million voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump can, as you yourself would say, go fuck themselves.
Oh. Also Kamala Harris was a garbage debater. She was just in the ring with an idiot. It’s like calling Jake Paul an amazing boxer because he punched on old Mike Tyson. No. You don’t get that. Any single member of almost any single debate team from any high school and any college in this country given a weeks time would fucking demolish Kamala Harris in a debate.
Arby’s the restaurant. If you took it. And you used a magical device that made Arby’s into a person. That person that was just born. That had no idea about humanity or how anything worked.
You give me two weeks and I could teach it out-debate weed hating Kamala Harris.
It’s not a nothing burger. It’s just showing that Biden and Trump were always cut from the same fucking cloth. One of them was just better about hiding it. Full stop.
If you want people to vote for democrats act better.
Truth is Joe Biden was always a piece of shit. Has been since the 70s with bussing. He was a piece of shit in the 80s with the drug war. He was a piece of shit in the 90s with the drug war. He was a piece of shit after 9/11 with the patriot act (which was ripped from his proposals after the first twin towers bombing). He was a piece of shit for years when he lent his son his lawyers and power to go after the love child he had with a stripper and keep her silenced. He was a piece of shit when he continuously lied about the circumstances of his first wife’s death.
Joe Biden is and always has been a piece of shit that had the fortune of not being Donald Trump one time.
The sooner we stop pretending he’s this doddering old random the sooner we can move on.
Sir, while you are correct that you can really only destroy your legacy once, you should still adhere to Political Communications 101: bury the bad stuff, if possible. You had control over timing here! You could have done this on the Friday after Christmas, Dec. 27. Or better yet, combine it with a bunch of unassailable pardons and a purposefully controversial one, like the Unabomber. You could have added Hunter to Kash Patel's list and pardoned many or all of those people, except yourself of course. This is how you do politics, sir.
And sir, I recommend when asked about this, just play the age card and kid around with it. "Act" old and befffudled and say, "A lot of Republicans claim I am demented. Or that I died. Really. You can look it up, folks. So how could I have done something wrong? Think about it." Wink and walk away.
No, don't crap on Biden for Harris -- if Dobbs making medical treatment for miscarriages illegal wasn't enough to convince women to vote for a Democrat, we have bigger problems that no one could have fought against [1].
We've been using white and man as derogatory terms since 2016, while telling everyone else that they're doomed to be a victim because they live in the US, a division of White Supremacy Inc. And finally people got tired of being told they're either evil or doomed because of their sex or skin color and just quit us.
So, that's where we are now. I doubt it'll get better any time soon.
[1] Though I'd still like to have seen Al Franken try.
Trump turned pardons into tools of corruption, shielding cronies, his family, and himself. Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is a stand against the GOP's weaponization of justice and their disgusting proxy way against his presidency.
Exactly. The GOP and Trump have perfected the art of double-think, demanding strict adherence to "rules" they’ve gleefully torched. They insist on accountability for their enemies while excusing or outright celebrating their own rule-breaking. From undermining the justice system to defying constitutional norms, they weaponize laws as tools of convenience—enforcing them selectively to punish dissent while claiming victimhood when held to account. It’s not rule-following they champion; it’s the illusion of it, wielded to mask their own relentless pursuit of unchecked power.
Either you don’t, or you’re the biggest troll on the web, since that article is such a perfect example of doublethink I am starting to think you might have written it in irony, which you then posted on a article being sarcastic about the same topic….
In addition to being unethical, don't forget that this is also just stupid! What are the chances that Hunter doesn't commit multiple felonies within the next 6-12 months?
If you do put this on your podcast, maybe you can get the guy who does the Biden impersonations on Andrew Heaton's yearly 'Snuffy's Christmas Special'.
The man did it for his son who was hounded politically for a long time
because who his father was.
Sure, he did some stuff but he only hurt himself mostly (and had a Damm good time doing it-bonus points!)
Tell me honestly Jeff, as you gaze lovingly at your son, don't you think to yourself "I would do anything for this child. ANYTHING."
I myself would kill for my son, eff what anyone thinks.
I gained a lot of respect for Joe Biden after this.
"Never go against the Family.,,..".
If he didn't want to be political fodder for his father's opponents, he probably shouldn't have traded on his father's political connections in the first place. I have no sympathy for someone claiming selective prosecution when the only reason they weren't *already* in jail is their family name.
He wasn't "already" in jail because there was nothing to jail him on except republican rage and opportunitism.
The Red Team has taken this policy of "loudly scream lies until people think the lies are true" to a ridiculous extreme.
Alas, Hunters demons provided a reason. Both sides have their share of Nepo "strivers: but the GOPs extreme venality in pursuit of Hunter showed once again (sigh) they will stop at nothing to distract from their one true policy: make rich people richer and their total lack of class, honor and just plain dickishness.
The next 4 years will be interesting but entirely predicible: the Red Team will pillage the economy to a pile of kindling and the Blue Team will clean up the mess (sigh).
It happened in 1993, in 2009, in 2021 and it will happen in 2029.
Oh, and just wait and see who Trump pardons in 2029! It will be even more bizarre and sleazy and just plain wtf than
2021.
I think you really are Bill O'Reilly
LOL.....
His *undisputed* conduct includes heavy drug use (including getting his dead brother's widow hooked on blow!), prostitution, and influence peddling--all of which are very much illegal. But you do you.
I mean. Hunter Biden is obviously a saint who has never done anything wrong and nepotism is totally okay now! Thanks for playing. What’s a victim hunter is! Poor hunter. He was always such a hard worker and earned everything he got!
Hurt only himself? He sold influence, possibly at the behest of "the big guy." That's why this blanket pardon goes back to 2014, right before the Burisma deal, which would have implicated Joe Biden as well. He's covering his own ass here too.
And the type of father who does anything in his power, ethical or not, to prevent his son from suffering the logical consequences of his actions is the type of father who raises a drug-addled, cheating, useless son like Hunter.
It's human, but it's certainly not worthy of respect.
Not sure if it's paywalled, but Josh Barro has a good piece on why that argument is bullshit.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joshbarro/p/joe-biden-knew-it-was-wrong-to-pardon?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=u7e30
I read the article, I don't think he makes any argument whatsoever. He just says a comparable person who is not the president's son would not have been prosecuted like that. That is not an argument. How about some data? What is the typical treatment for a crackhead who buys a handgun? What is the typical treatment for someone who doesn't pay taxes on a huge sum of money? Josh Barro may be right, but I would like some data, not just opinions.
> What is the typical treatment for someone who doesn't pay taxes on a huge sum of money?
Prison. Prison is the usual outcome for someone who blatantly fails to pay a massive amount of taxes. He isn't some sophisticated business person who used some gray area avoidance scheme that maybe failed on a technicality, he just straight up refused to pay the money he owed and filed false returns for years. That will get most people arrested, famous or otherwise.
It sounds like you may agree with the piece as to what it says about "the loving father" defense, but your issue is you think it's unsupported that a regular person wouldn't get charged? I'm not sure I follow your point or what relevance it has to the merits of the purported defense.
Be honest. If this were a republican president doing this for his similarly disgraceful son, would you have the same reaction?
Maybe you would. But a lot of other people currently making the argument you just made definitely would not.
Had Biden made good on his almost explicit promise to serve as a “bridge to the future” and made clear early that he had no intention of serving a second term, I doubt Hunter would have been on anyone’s prosecution radar. In this sense Biden screwed over both the country and his wastrel son with his selfishness.
Hunter Biden is a piece of shit that got a lot of freebies for being a politicians son. If he was black and lied in a fun form he’d be in prison. This argument is bad.
With the Bidens family takes a very différent meaning, the Soprano kind…
Citations needed.
Trump is more Soprano like.....
As far as I see only one family has a son on trial for multiple crimes that used his barely coherent president of a father to pardon himself. And probably also to allow use of long range US missile to his Ukranians backers.
Which does not mean the Trump family is honest in any way but I prefer Kushner bumbling along in the middle east than a coked up criminal peddling US influence to foreign power and now able to wield the presidential power to his benefit.
“Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
Exactly. If I were in the same situation, you bet your ass I would have done the same thing, and I wouldn't have hesitated. And I think a lot of the people clutching their pearls would have done the same thing too. Biden's 82, and he's a good man. Let him live out his remaining years with his only surviving son by his side.
He’s not a good man. And literally never has been.
Bussing
Lied about his first wife’s death.
Used his lawyers to go after a stripper that his son had a love child with in order to keep the story quiet (yes this really did happen exactly like that) and keep her out of his inheritance.
Helped craft the ‘94 crime bill. Which was just the best for minorities and led to a lot of police abuse.
Helped craft the patriot act.
Refused to step down even though he was obviously too old.
Do you need more? What a wonderful human being. Truly warm and not a selfish rich white asshole at all!
He lied.
OR — just thinking outside the box here — maybe one bad decision destroys your legacy, but the next bad decision restores it again? I mean, any theory of legacy has to explain Trump somehow. Perhaps he’s been careful to always do bad things in pairs?
Trump does illegal and immoral things in multiples of 32
Hah! Trump realized that American politics is like an old videogame where if you score too many points it goes back to zero.
Analogy win
This helps for when I try to explain to my Dem friends why I can't get behind their brand.
I think running on ethics is the right way, BUT, and it’s a big but, you have to actually follow them, and not be know and the “illiberal left”.
I am reasonably sure if Dems revert to classical liberal values, and not want to be the party of only the “highly educated”, a win will be in the bag. But Dems are so far gone from the classic liberal values I don’t see how this will happen easily.
Yeah…. I live in Evanston, IL, bottom dead center of active woke DEI self destructive policies. It is exactly the demographic described by all as the problem of the Democratic Party. I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
Right, because this is waaaaaay worse than anything Trump does.
But hey, enjoy saving ten cents on eggs.
1. Not being for Dems doesn’t mean being pro Trump.
2. This argument highlights how Dems want to do a whole bunch of crazy shit and respond; “Well Trump is Hitler and will introduce concentration camps and gas chambers, so just ignore what we did and remain silent”.
So proportionality doesn't matter? Keep playing by the rules and see how that works for us, electorally.
I would say a good start for Democrats would be:
1. Don’t do dumb shit like advocating for BLM rioters not to be prosecuted and getting free healthcare for their injuries (Harris).
2. Don’t stand on your high hill demonizing everyone that doesn’t agree with you.
3. Doing a #2 (wink wink) while running on a position of ethics, rule if law, etc, when you are also have your hands in the muck, and your defence is the other guys hands are a bit dirtier, but since he is Hitler reborn it’s actually a whole lot worse.
What if everyone who disagrees with you is in fact a demon?
#3 is my whole point though - running on ethics is a waste of time. We did that for 8 years, and the sonofabitch still won. If anything, taking the high ground made him more popular, as he became a transgressive, "cool," counter culture figure. Nothing matters anymore. The GOP trashed the rule book. You're making the assumption that I feel "rules" matter, when in fact, I'm rolling my eyes at the double standard (Democrats can't step out of line, but Republicans can) and saying, screw the standards.
A better strategy, one that worked in '18 and '20, was to simply ignore his nonsense (or, as the case with the pardon, indulge with it ourselves) and instead focus on his ineptitude as a leader. Make him boring again (no pun intended).
Which part of ethics is “hiding the presidents condition from the public and lying about it?” You never ran on ethics.
Not any ethics I’ve heard of.
"[R]unning on ethics is a waste of time. We did that for 8 years, and the sonofabitch still won."
Maybe--and I'm just spitballing here--that has at least as much to do with the Dems' inability to *credibly* run on ethics with candidates like Clinton and Harris as their standard bearers as it has to do with anything else.
You're quite right. Between hiding Biden's infirmity, installing Kamala without a primary, and now Biden's pardoning of his criminal son, I don't think it's worth wasting time expecting an ethically guided Democrat campaign.
"Democracy is on the ballot" lol.
Dude, you guys tried to bankrupt your biggest political rival over an appraisal dispute and you bootstrapped a misdemeanor charge past the statute of limitations into a felony conviction.
People in Malaysia and Venezuela are side-eyeing you guys and thinking "that is some banana republic shit right there."
Democrats running on ethics, my ass.
You have no ethics.
Imagine you’re in a situation where a disaster has occurred and people begin looting the grocery stores. You know it’s wrong and won’t resort to that kind of behavior, because you believe in conducting yourself as a moral individual and you need to set an example for your children. Besides, you can’t imagine this will go on for very long . Yet, it does go on.The order you believed would be restored by the police or national guard doesn’t happen, and the grocery store shelves will be soon be empty. Does morality still mean taking what you see as the high ground, or does it mean stealing to feed your family?
In my opinion, Biden assessed the state of morality we are living in right now, (where some are found guilty, and others might be found guilty, if they hadn’t managed to evade trial by becoming president) and astutely decided the most moral thing to do was to put family first and pardon his son. I say, way to go, Joe!
Let's accept all that as true. Why did Biden insist that a pardon is off the table, in your opinion?
Do you think it’s possible he really did feel that way in the past?
Aside from the fact you didn't answer, no, I don't think he did. Do you genuinely think that it was only in the intervening period of a month or so that Biden came to the sudden realization of the "state of morality" that justifies, in your view, the change in view?
It's not like there's some suddenly shocking intervening event like Pearl Harbor or something that would explain away a rather huge pivot.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The big event that happened was Trump was re-elected. We know Trump. No one expects him to be honest or to be accountable to anyone’s rules but his own. The GOP is still talking about going after Hunter Biden re: his business interests in Ukraine, yet although Trump’s kids have many international business ventures, we oddly don’t hear anything about them being investigated for illegalities. It’s one thing to tell your son he needs to accept his punishment that you’d like to assume will be fair and just, but it’s another thing to tell him to accept his punishment from people who have an axe to grind.
Right, 'cause a politician never lies, ever.
That's not responsive to the above exchange.
If I remember right, he was still running for reelection when he said a pardon was off the table.
So it’s not a lie if he said it while running for the most powerful position on the world, on a platform of integrity?
Of course it’s still a lie and still bad. I am trying to explain why he did it, not defend him for doing it.
Oh. That makes it okay then! See. When my boyfriend hits me but says he did it “because he loves me” that’s okay! Good to know.
Dear Mr. President:
I agree that pardoning your son will not damage your legacy, but not for the reasons you give. It won’t damage your legacy because it’s a giant fucking nothingburger. With your successor having pardoned such distinguished felons as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, promising to pardon the January 6 participants, and teeing up AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, your pardoning is a no-brainer.
I also agree that your decision to run for re-election is “the political equivalent of saving a child from drowning and then backing over that same child with your car.” But give yourself some credit, man. Without your candidacy in 2020, to borrow a phrase from Bernie Sanders’s dimmer followers, Trump woulda won (and kudos to Jim Clyburn for that endorsement). As for choosing Kamala Harris as your running mate, she turned out to be a very good campaigner and a very good debater (with a timely assist from that fly). With 2020 hindsight (please laugh), you probably should have packed it in after the 2022 midterms. But no joke, that decision would have taken a capacity to give up power that would have had George Washington saying “man, that Biden makes me look like a regular Napoleon Bonaparte.” Your party held the Senate, barely lost the House, and later that November badass prosecutor Jack Smith was named Special Counsel in Charge of Nailing Trump’s Fat Ass to the Floorboards. So yeah, you decided to roll the dice and see if you could beat the ravages of Father Time. You lost, but let’s not forget you spent 45 years in the Senate, where 90-year olds run rampant, so your sense of what’s old must be a little skewed toward the Methuselan.
One more thing. That decision tree that leads from you picking Kamala Harris as running mate to you naming her your successor leaves out an important choice, which you didn’t get to make, in 2016. It goes something like this:
Obama—> Do I clear the field for Hillary Clinton, a candidate who should have stayed in the Senate after I beat her in 2008, a candidate who has more baggage than the lost and found at Kennedy Airport, and candidate who is hated by the political press and is a mediocre campaigner on her best day? YES! (NO! would have led to an open primary or a field-clearing for 73-year-old still-vigorous you, who delivered a stemwinder of a speech at the 2016 DNC and who would have ended Trump once and for all).
So yes, Mr. President, in the end you may have screwed the pooch, but you didn’t screw it all on your own, and the 77 million voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump can, as you yourself would say, go fuck themselves.
Oh. Also Kamala Harris was a garbage debater. She was just in the ring with an idiot. It’s like calling Jake Paul an amazing boxer because he punched on old Mike Tyson. No. You don’t get that. Any single member of almost any single debate team from any high school and any college in this country given a weeks time would fucking demolish Kamala Harris in a debate.
Sir, this is an Arby’s
Arby’s the restaurant. If you took it. And you used a magical device that made Arby’s into a person. That person that was just born. That had no idea about humanity or how anything worked.
You give me two weeks and I could teach it out-debate weed hating Kamala Harris.
It’s not a nothing burger. It’s just showing that Biden and Trump were always cut from the same fucking cloth. One of them was just better about hiding it. Full stop.
If you want people to vote for democrats act better.
Truth is Joe Biden was always a piece of shit. Has been since the 70s with bussing. He was a piece of shit in the 80s with the drug war. He was a piece of shit in the 90s with the drug war. He was a piece of shit after 9/11 with the patriot act (which was ripped from his proposals after the first twin towers bombing). He was a piece of shit for years when he lent his son his lawyers and power to go after the love child he had with a stripper and keep her silenced. He was a piece of shit when he continuously lied about the circumstances of his first wife’s death.
Joe Biden is and always has been a piece of shit that had the fortune of not being Donald Trump one time.
The sooner we stop pretending he’s this doddering old random the sooner we can move on.
Random=grandpa. Fix the app Substack.
Sir, while you are correct that you can really only destroy your legacy once, you should still adhere to Political Communications 101: bury the bad stuff, if possible. You had control over timing here! You could have done this on the Friday after Christmas, Dec. 27. Or better yet, combine it with a bunch of unassailable pardons and a purposefully controversial one, like the Unabomber. You could have added Hunter to Kash Patel's list and pardoned many or all of those people, except yourself of course. This is how you do politics, sir.
And sir, I recommend when asked about this, just play the age card and kid around with it. "Act" old and befffudled and say, "A lot of Republicans claim I am demented. Or that I died. Really. You can look it up, folks. So how could I have done something wrong? Think about it." Wink and walk away.
No, don't crap on Biden for Harris -- if Dobbs making medical treatment for miscarriages illegal wasn't enough to convince women to vote for a Democrat, we have bigger problems that no one could have fought against [1].
We've been using white and man as derogatory terms since 2016, while telling everyone else that they're doomed to be a victim because they live in the US, a division of White Supremacy Inc. And finally people got tired of being told they're either evil or doomed because of their sex or skin color and just quit us.
So, that's where we are now. I doubt it'll get better any time soon.
[1] Though I'd still like to have seen Al Franken try.
AN OPEN LETTER TO JOE BIDEN
Trump turned pardons into tools of corruption, shielding cronies, his family, and himself. Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is a stand against the GOP's weaponization of justice and their disgusting proxy way against his presidency.
https://open.substack.com/pub/patricemersault/p/an-open-letter-to-president-biden?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Smartest take of anyone on Substack so far.
Thanks for your comment, Andrei! I’d be thrill if you chose to subscribe: https://substack.com/@patricemersault
Doublethink is well and alive…
Exactly. The GOP and Trump have perfected the art of double-think, demanding strict adherence to "rules" they’ve gleefully torched. They insist on accountability for their enemies while excusing or outright celebrating their own rule-breaking. From undermining the justice system to defying constitutional norms, they weaponize laws as tools of convenience—enforcing them selectively to punish dissent while claiming victimhood when held to account. It’s not rule-following they champion; it’s the illusion of it, wielded to mask their own relentless pursuit of unchecked power.
Thanks for your support!
I assume the Party is not teaching irony anymore…
I caught the irony, sport. Just inviting you to reflect on your own stance.
Either you don’t, or you’re the biggest troll on the web, since that article is such a perfect example of doublethink I am starting to think you might have written it in irony, which you then posted on a article being sarcastic about the same topic….
Well, that was rough. True, accurate, but rough. But, yeah.
And now Dems can heal!!!!!
He should bring a bunch of classified documents home and keep them in his bathroom. I hear that’s great fun!
He did, except they were next to his bitchin' Corvette instead of the bathroom
In addition to being unethical, don't forget that this is also just stupid! What are the chances that Hunter doesn't commit multiple felonies within the next 6-12 months?
Maybe you should start going by Will or William O'Reilly. You could avoid a lot of confusion and the need for a clarification in your username.
That'sTheJoke.gif
I figured, I just wanted to see your reaction
100 percent
If you do put this on your podcast, maybe you can get the guy who does the Biden impersonations on Andrew Heaton's yearly 'Snuffy's Christmas Special'.
Loved this! Still laughing. Thank you. 😅