I honestly just don't care. Biden's political career is dirt, and I don't buy the argument that this cost the Democrat's any political capital. The political capital of ethics and norms is also worth dirt at this point - MSNBC has been shrieking about it for eight years now, and look where that's landed. But more importantly, it's completely immaterial to the work that needs to be done to reform the party.
Elected dems and 2026 candidates should forcefully denounce this if they see fit, and railroad Biden to their maximum advantage. But they should already be doing that with or without the Hunter pardon. The democratic party needs a full overhaul, and frankly, Biden behaving immorally probably makes it easier to distance ourselves from his failed politics.
The only reason Democrats only lost the election by 1.6 points instead of like 10 points was because, compared to Trump and the GOP, a decent chunk of voters saw Democrats as the party that respected norms and ethics.
Biden has now convinced many that MAGAland was right about the "Biden crime family" and many liberals and Democrats continue to defend him.
I agree that Democrats needed a full overhaul even before this, but this absolutely will do damage to the Democrats' electoral chances in the future if there isn't sufficient change.
Yeah, I just don't buy that. A dem rebrand is going to include a full repudiation of Biden politics regardless. Now there's just one more data point to scold him for.
I don't know if there's been specific polling, but I'm making a very very rough estimate based on the fact there was a significant swing of college-educated urban and suburban Bush/McCain/Romney voters to Clinton back in 2016 that's mostly persisted during Trump's dominance of the GOP and it's hard to imagine any other reason they would be voting for Democrats that are to left of Obama.
Eh, bad take in my opinion. Maybe I would have agreed with you prior to Trump.
Trump already pardoned his son-in-law’s father (Charles Kushner), plus Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and others who did misdeeds in his name.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter if the Dems do it or not. Moral high ground doesn’t matter. Trump and MAGA will do what they want, and if they don’t have actual justification, they’ll just make up justification and their base will eat it up.
No one gives a fuck about what the base thinks because they're never going to vote Democrat.
It's about all the voters who were willing to vote Democrat primarily because they were supposedly the party of norm and ethics. Now Biden and all the liberals and Democrats defending him are making it abundantly clear they never gave a shit about those things.
I’m extremely skeptical about that argument. A majority of voters voted for possibly the most corrupt presidential candidate in history. It’s clear ethics don’t matter, as long as they believe that the person breaking norms/ethics will help them too.
In the eyes of many voters, the alternative is a party that lied about and covered up Biden's declining mental and physical health for months if not years, forced a replacement nominee that no one necessarily wanted at the last second, and is now seemingly perfectly okay with Biden's blatant corruption here.
People vote for a variety of things for a variety of reasons.
Was abortion an important issue for the Democrats that got them votes? Most people think so. Even conservatives and lots of pro-lifers agree with that statement. This isn't invalidated because Trump got more votes than Harris.
During WWII, Stalin's son Yakov was captured in battle and the Germans offered to trade him for Field Marshall Paulus. Stalin refused, apparently because he realized how bad it would be to favour his son over other POWs. Yakov eventually died in captivity.
When Stalin is a better statesman than you, that's a problem.
Like most matters of state, this reminds of the time in high school when my 9th grade Chemistry teacher ran behind schedule and decided to have everyone do a timed, closed book, take-home test to conserve class time. I did badly on the test and I had a correct sense that almost all the other kids would cheat. I asked my parents, in light of the ill-considered situation, whether I also ought to cheat. My mother had some me-serving answer to the effect of "well if you think it would help you learn the material to open the book and redo some of the problems, do it". My father just said, "don't cheat". I realized that both of parents loved me, but that my father was willing to balance that love against higher moral calculations, while to my mother I was the highest moral calculation.
I will admit that it's easy to see a link between Stalin's willingness to starve millions of peasants and Kazakhs on the road to Total Communism and his willingness to let his son die with other POWs on the road to victory over the Nazis. He was a bit too willing to let people die for high principals, and it didn't help that some of them were bad principals. But Biden is way too much like my mother in this story, and probably needed to be more like my dad/Stalin.
The "how bad is Trump" conversation keeps getting sidetracked into an annoying "is Trump Hitler" debate, so you wind up having to say "no, Trump isn't as bad as Hitler" and then people come back to you with "so you like Trump, do you?"
In that spirt I am perfectly willing to say that, while I agree with Josh's piece, Biden is nevertheless much better than Stalin.
I mostly agree with this, but I take issue with the word "lie". He definitely broke his promise, but "lie" implies that he intended to break the promise all along, whereas it's quite possible that he originally intended to keep the promise but then changed his mind.
I think I would change my mind too upon learning that the next FBI director is going to be a psychopathic assassin who has referred to Trump as "king" (and not in the "yasss king" way).
Indeed. Joe Biden has been a dishonest self-aggrandizing fabulist his entire career. In the before times, it got him drummed out of Democratic primaries. He benefited from the fact that Trump is the most dishonest self-aggrandizing fabulist that ever lived. But even that wasn’t enough this time after a term that a substantial majority of voters disapproved of plus apparent cognitive decline.
Wake up and smell the roses. The only excuse I might accept is that he is so senile that he doesn’t remember making the promise. Bit I believe that it was a bad faith promise and he knew all along that there there would be no tangible price to pay as long as he waited until after he election. This act certainly reinforces the belief of those of us who have believed for decades that Joe Biden is a second rate politician who took advantage of the system to create huge wealth for himself and his family.
If he thought he was going to win, it would be easy to keep the pardon in his back pocket. It would be easier for me to serve a jail sentence knowing that my father has the chance to break me out at any point in time. Past January 20, Joe won't have that power.
Josh - 👏👏👏👏👏👍👍👍👍Incredibly well stated indictment of this pardon , the final act in The Total and Completion Destruction of Joe Biden’s Legacy that his sycophants and Dem Party loyalists are tying themselves in knots to avoid admitting. Your commentary stands in stark contrast to most of the statements from the left in their attempt to rationalize this pardon.
This is an example why I subscribe to your Substack, it is also thoughtful and well worded even when I am in almost complete disagreement with you. Our political,discourse would be much more productive if a lot more people exited the echo chamber in which they exist and subjected themselves to a much wider range of opinions.
This is not a good take, and misses reality in a few obvious ways.
1) people do not exist on a unidimendional scale. Being a great leader and being a great parent are two different things. There are great parents who are not great leaders, and vice versa. Sometimes, these things come in conflict and some compromise needs to be made. But the idea that "leaders are supposed to be better than the average person" is pure poppycock. Being a leader is not a higher level of quality or expertise than being a parent; it is just a different thing. But this entire piece is based on that idea. Therefore, it is unconscionably simplistic.
2) To answer the question in the title: because the right thing is not always the popular thing. We teach children that, and leaders learn this all the time. Sometimes, it is better to do the right thing quietly. Sometimes it is better politically to wait until after some key event to announce the right thing, because its unpopularity has less opportunity to do damage. This is obvious, and Josh surely knows this. So, either the question is asked in bad faith or something is blinding him to things he already knows for the sake of this screed.
3) I hate this pardon. No, it is not unprecedented. Presidents have pardoned family members and the undeserving since before I was born. Yes, Hunter is being treated particularly unfairly simply because his father is a political leader. But he *did* do crimes, and he was perfectly willing to do more corrupt shit (if only his father would have gone along). He is not particularly deserving of a pardon. There are countless people newly prosecuted by law enforcement officials less justly every day. This is a particularly egregious case, only if you limit the comparisons to other white guys connected to the powerful.
I hate this pardon not because it sets a precedent. I hate this pardon not because it will change at all what Trump will do. I hate this pardon because I want the moral high ground. I want the smug satisfaction of self-respect. I want to be the kind of person who acknowledges my own hypocrisies and tries to limit them. I hate this pardon because I want to admire my allies and leaders as being able to find ways to square values in tension that I cannot. I hate this pardon because it makes clear that our leaders have feet of clay, and who likes that?
4) I hate this pardon, but I understand it. It is not hard to understand it. I have hate a *lot* of pardons over the decades, and this is just the latest. This one is far less meaningful and harmful than the pardons of Nixon and Kissinger. This one is pretty damn minor, but it's the latest one so it is the one most on my mind. And I've got to say, it is most understandable and relatable objectionable pardon that I can remember. It really isn't going to change anything substantive for this country. Trump has already pardoned a family member—and appointed him ambassador to France. This is not worse than that. Trump is gonna do what Trump was gonna do. Biden is gonna stand by his family. I wish the world were different and I wish that each of these men were different. But that doesn't mean that this pardon is not entirely understandable.
When Sarah Isgur pointed out several months ago "of COURSE Joe Biden is going to pardon his son" I realized it was obvious it was going to happen. Even if Biden won the Presidency in November and pardoning Hunter completely destroyed his ability to accomplish anything in his second term, he would do it given how he values family.
It's not what we want for all the reasons Josh gets into, but I wasn't surprised in any way, except that I thought it would happen in January.
One glaring point absent in this analysis is the genuine concern of lunatics Trump is appointing to lead the FBI and Justice Department. I think there is a good chance a guy like Kash Patel would harass Hunter and the Bidens, which could cause significant trouble for Hunter down the road. I understand the President’s concern and desire to nip that in the bud. It’s what makes me think that, despite the problems and tradeoffs it creates, if Hunter were my son and I were in President Biden’s shoes, I probably would have done the same.
In principle, however, and if the context was different in light of the aforementioned, I would not and presidents should not pardon their sons.
That Trump might win the election and that he might seek to use the DOJ to pursue his perceived enemies was already obvious at the time that Biden promised not to issue the pardon.
Fair point. I just listened to the Advisory Opinions podcast with David French and Sarah Isgur to get their take on it, and they both pointed out that Biden could have pardoned Hunter for possible crimes or abuses Hunter did *before* he was convicted and which Biden said he would stand by. He could have then framed it as “I am concerned about potential political prosecution and interference with my son going forward, so I will pardon him for a certain period but will let the two convictions stand.” That would have been much more defensible.
I think the reality is Biden couldn’t bear the thought of Hunter relapsing due to potential prison being on the horizon and then dealing with that tragic possibility as he nears the end of his life. I think after experiencing so much loss, he probably didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to take it.
Fine. Understandable. But then just say that in your statement or have the foresight long ago to explain to the American people that you are at least uncertain about what you’re going to do.
Whole situation could have been handled much better.
The pardon also doesn't actually prevent anyone in the Trump admin from harassing Hunter or the Biden family if they want to spend the time and resources doing that. The pardon only covers Hunter and only for 10 out of his 54 years on Earth and not even the entirety of Joe's vice presidency.
You may be correct that it was an abuse of power to pardon Hunter Biden for his misdeeds. But I assure you this abuse of power will pale in comparison to what lies ahead in the next four years with Trump as president. I predict four years from now, you will look back on what you wrote and think that this was such a minor blip in history after what we have witnessed under Trump that you will realize that Biden only did what any parent would do for his family.
Who are you arguing with? Very few here would disagree that Trump will probably do worse than things than this, but that's a really weak excuse for this kind of blatant corruption.
And if what Trump is going to be as bad as you say it will be and Democrats want to convince voters that they should be in power, then they can start by not doing blatantly corrupt stuff like this and making bullshit excuses for it.
Bravo! The verbal lashing that the Bidens richly deserve. Democrats need to decide if they are going to be the ethical party or not because their terrible policies is not why I’ve voted for them till now. If both parties are unethical, I would rather vote for the one that cuts my taxes.
I just don't buy that this was an abuse of power. An actual abuse would look like promising a pardon to enable someone to break the law with impunity. Unless Joe Biden told Hunter to do whatever he wants during his term as president because he'll get a pardon at the end, this was an act of mercy, not an abuse.
At worst, it was an unfair use of the pardon power, but perhaps Joe will also pardon a bunch of other non-violent tax evaders and gun offenders in the days ahead who no doubt also have families who'd prefer to see them free from judicial entanglements. Remains to be seen.
Biden’s reputation and legacy was already trash, because while he did help guide us out of the pandemic and into an economic soft landing, he was unsuccessful in curbing two major wars (not counting the violence in Sudan, CAR and DRC), leading on immigration, or safeguarding democracy. On some of these points he compounded the problem through egomania in believing that he was the Democrats’ best candidate in 2024. Had he declined to run he might have been remembered as one of the greatest Presidents. He fucked it up, and pardoning his son doesn’t even amount to an exclamation point on top of that sentence.
I don’t feel that strongly about this but there’s something grating about the phrase I give you my word as a Biden that Joe frequently used. Most of us rolled our eyes, but he clearly thought it had a lot of meaning. There were no actions that he could take that could give cause him to reassess how valuable that word is. Disappointing.
I honestly just don't care. Biden's political career is dirt, and I don't buy the argument that this cost the Democrat's any political capital. The political capital of ethics and norms is also worth dirt at this point - MSNBC has been shrieking about it for eight years now, and look where that's landed. But more importantly, it's completely immaterial to the work that needs to be done to reform the party.
Elected dems and 2026 candidates should forcefully denounce this if they see fit, and railroad Biden to their maximum advantage. But they should already be doing that with or without the Hunter pardon. The democratic party needs a full overhaul, and frankly, Biden behaving immorally probably makes it easier to distance ourselves from his failed politics.
The only reason Democrats only lost the election by 1.6 points instead of like 10 points was because, compared to Trump and the GOP, a decent chunk of voters saw Democrats as the party that respected norms and ethics.
Biden has now convinced many that MAGAland was right about the "Biden crime family" and many liberals and Democrats continue to defend him.
I agree that Democrats needed a full overhaul even before this, but this absolutely will do damage to the Democrats' electoral chances in the future if there isn't sufficient change.
Yeah, I just don't buy that. A dem rebrand is going to include a full repudiation of Biden politics regardless. Now there's just one more data point to scold him for.
There is no guarantee that full repudiation of Biden is going to happen, especially seeing how quick many Democrats are to defend this.
Then I think that will be the fatal mistake democrats make, in which case it won't matter whether or not Hunter was pardoned.
This kind of stuff contributes to people's overall perceptions of the Democratic Party even long after they've forgotten the specific event.
This sounds very believable, but do we have polling on it?
For example, people didn't vote for Harris for three big reasons: inflation, border, cultural issues https://x.com/milansingh03/status/1854941926207651857 What's the poll on not voting for Trump?
I don't know if there's been specific polling, but I'm making a very very rough estimate based on the fact there was a significant swing of college-educated urban and suburban Bush/McCain/Romney voters to Clinton back in 2016 that's mostly persisted during Trump's dominance of the GOP and it's hard to imagine any other reason they would be voting for Democrats that are to left of Obama.
I could not have possibly imagined saying this 4 years ago, but:
Good fucking riddance to the Biden family and I hope they just go away and never come back.
Eh, bad take in my opinion. Maybe I would have agreed with you prior to Trump.
Trump already pardoned his son-in-law’s father (Charles Kushner), plus Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and others who did misdeeds in his name.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter if the Dems do it or not. Moral high ground doesn’t matter. Trump and MAGA will do what they want, and if they don’t have actual justification, they’ll just make up justification and their base will eat it up.
No one gives a fuck about what the base thinks because they're never going to vote Democrat.
It's about all the voters who were willing to vote Democrat primarily because they were supposedly the party of norm and ethics. Now Biden and all the liberals and Democrats defending him are making it abundantly clear they never gave a shit about those things.
I’m extremely skeptical about that argument. A majority of voters voted for possibly the most corrupt presidential candidate in history. It’s clear ethics don’t matter, as long as they believe that the person breaking norms/ethics will help them too.
In the eyes of many voters, the alternative is a party that lied about and covered up Biden's declining mental and physical health for months if not years, forced a replacement nominee that no one necessarily wanted at the last second, and is now seemingly perfectly okay with Biden's blatant corruption here.
People vote for a variety of things for a variety of reasons.
Was abortion an important issue for the Democrats that got them votes? Most people think so. Even conservatives and lots of pro-lifers agree with that statement. This isn't invalidated because Trump got more votes than Harris.
During WWII, Stalin's son Yakov was captured in battle and the Germans offered to trade him for Field Marshall Paulus. Stalin refused, apparently because he realized how bad it would be to favour his son over other POWs. Yakov eventually died in captivity.
When Stalin is a better statesman than you, that's a problem.
Stalin may have been a less-than-ideal father.
Like most matters of state, this reminds of the time in high school when my 9th grade Chemistry teacher ran behind schedule and decided to have everyone do a timed, closed book, take-home test to conserve class time. I did badly on the test and I had a correct sense that almost all the other kids would cheat. I asked my parents, in light of the ill-considered situation, whether I also ought to cheat. My mother had some me-serving answer to the effect of "well if you think it would help you learn the material to open the book and redo some of the problems, do it". My father just said, "don't cheat". I realized that both of parents loved me, but that my father was willing to balance that love against higher moral calculations, while to my mother I was the highest moral calculation.
I will admit that it's easy to see a link between Stalin's willingness to starve millions of peasants and Kazakhs on the road to Total Communism and his willingness to let his son die with other POWs on the road to victory over the Nazis. He was a bit too willing to let people die for high principals, and it didn't help that some of them were bad principals. But Biden is way too much like my mother in this story, and probably needed to be more like my dad/Stalin.
The "how bad is Trump" conversation keeps getting sidetracked into an annoying "is Trump Hitler" debate, so you wind up having to say "no, Trump isn't as bad as Hitler" and then people come back to you with "so you like Trump, do you?"
In that spirt I am perfectly willing to say that, while I agree with Josh's piece, Biden is nevertheless much better than Stalin.
I mostly agree with this, but I take issue with the word "lie". He definitely broke his promise, but "lie" implies that he intended to break the promise all along, whereas it's quite possible that he originally intended to keep the promise but then changed his mind.
I think I would change my mind too upon learning that the next FBI director is going to be a psychopathic assassin who has referred to Trump as "king" (and not in the "yasss king" way).
I see no reason to believe he ever intended to keep his promise. It's not like he's ever been particular honest especially when politics are involved.
Indeed. Joe Biden has been a dishonest self-aggrandizing fabulist his entire career. In the before times, it got him drummed out of Democratic primaries. He benefited from the fact that Trump is the most dishonest self-aggrandizing fabulist that ever lived. But even that wasn’t enough this time after a term that a substantial majority of voters disapproved of plus apparent cognitive decline.
Wake up and smell the roses. The only excuse I might accept is that he is so senile that he doesn’t remember making the promise. Bit I believe that it was a bad faith promise and he knew all along that there there would be no tangible price to pay as long as he waited until after he election. This act certainly reinforces the belief of those of us who have believed for decades that Joe Biden is a second rate politician who took advantage of the system to create huge wealth for himself and his family.
If he thought he was going to win, it would be easy to keep the pardon in his back pocket. It would be easier for me to serve a jail sentence knowing that my father has the chance to break me out at any point in time. Past January 20, Joe won't have that power.
Josh - 👏👏👏👏👏👍👍👍👍Incredibly well stated indictment of this pardon , the final act in The Total and Completion Destruction of Joe Biden’s Legacy that his sycophants and Dem Party loyalists are tying themselves in knots to avoid admitting. Your commentary stands in stark contrast to most of the statements from the left in their attempt to rationalize this pardon.
This is an example why I subscribe to your Substack, it is also thoughtful and well worded even when I am in almost complete disagreement with you. Our political,discourse would be much more productive if a lot more people exited the echo chamber in which they exist and subjected themselves to a much wider range of opinions.
I have to agree. This is by far the best of the Hunter pardon indictments that I’ve read.
The fact that Hunter is tied to Ukraine in the eyes of Trump and his sycophants was also costly to that population.
This is not a good take, and misses reality in a few obvious ways.
1) people do not exist on a unidimendional scale. Being a great leader and being a great parent are two different things. There are great parents who are not great leaders, and vice versa. Sometimes, these things come in conflict and some compromise needs to be made. But the idea that "leaders are supposed to be better than the average person" is pure poppycock. Being a leader is not a higher level of quality or expertise than being a parent; it is just a different thing. But this entire piece is based on that idea. Therefore, it is unconscionably simplistic.
2) To answer the question in the title: because the right thing is not always the popular thing. We teach children that, and leaders learn this all the time. Sometimes, it is better to do the right thing quietly. Sometimes it is better politically to wait until after some key event to announce the right thing, because its unpopularity has less opportunity to do damage. This is obvious, and Josh surely knows this. So, either the question is asked in bad faith or something is blinding him to things he already knows for the sake of this screed.
3) I hate this pardon. No, it is not unprecedented. Presidents have pardoned family members and the undeserving since before I was born. Yes, Hunter is being treated particularly unfairly simply because his father is a political leader. But he *did* do crimes, and he was perfectly willing to do more corrupt shit (if only his father would have gone along). He is not particularly deserving of a pardon. There are countless people newly prosecuted by law enforcement officials less justly every day. This is a particularly egregious case, only if you limit the comparisons to other white guys connected to the powerful.
I hate this pardon not because it sets a precedent. I hate this pardon not because it will change at all what Trump will do. I hate this pardon because I want the moral high ground. I want the smug satisfaction of self-respect. I want to be the kind of person who acknowledges my own hypocrisies and tries to limit them. I hate this pardon because I want to admire my allies and leaders as being able to find ways to square values in tension that I cannot. I hate this pardon because it makes clear that our leaders have feet of clay, and who likes that?
4) I hate this pardon, but I understand it. It is not hard to understand it. I have hate a *lot* of pardons over the decades, and this is just the latest. This one is far less meaningful and harmful than the pardons of Nixon and Kissinger. This one is pretty damn minor, but it's the latest one so it is the one most on my mind. And I've got to say, it is most understandable and relatable objectionable pardon that I can remember. It really isn't going to change anything substantive for this country. Trump has already pardoned a family member—and appointed him ambassador to France. This is not worse than that. Trump is gonna do what Trump was gonna do. Biden is gonna stand by his family. I wish the world were different and I wish that each of these men were different. But that doesn't mean that this pardon is not entirely understandable.
When Sarah Isgur pointed out several months ago "of COURSE Joe Biden is going to pardon his son" I realized it was obvious it was going to happen. Even if Biden won the Presidency in November and pardoning Hunter completely destroyed his ability to accomplish anything in his second term, he would do it given how he values family.
It's not what we want for all the reasons Josh gets into, but I wasn't surprised in any way, except that I thought it would happen in January.
One glaring point absent in this analysis is the genuine concern of lunatics Trump is appointing to lead the FBI and Justice Department. I think there is a good chance a guy like Kash Patel would harass Hunter and the Bidens, which could cause significant trouble for Hunter down the road. I understand the President’s concern and desire to nip that in the bud. It’s what makes me think that, despite the problems and tradeoffs it creates, if Hunter were my son and I were in President Biden’s shoes, I probably would have done the same.
In principle, however, and if the context was different in light of the aforementioned, I would not and presidents should not pardon their sons.
That Trump might win the election and that he might seek to use the DOJ to pursue his perceived enemies was already obvious at the time that Biden promised not to issue the pardon.
Fair point. I just listened to the Advisory Opinions podcast with David French and Sarah Isgur to get their take on it, and they both pointed out that Biden could have pardoned Hunter for possible crimes or abuses Hunter did *before* he was convicted and which Biden said he would stand by. He could have then framed it as “I am concerned about potential political prosecution and interference with my son going forward, so I will pardon him for a certain period but will let the two convictions stand.” That would have been much more defensible.
I think the reality is Biden couldn’t bear the thought of Hunter relapsing due to potential prison being on the horizon and then dealing with that tragic possibility as he nears the end of his life. I think after experiencing so much loss, he probably didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to take it.
Fine. Understandable. But then just say that in your statement or have the foresight long ago to explain to the American people that you are at least uncertain about what you’re going to do.
Whole situation could have been handled much better.
The pardon also doesn't actually prevent anyone in the Trump admin from harassing Hunter or the Biden family if they want to spend the time and resources doing that. The pardon only covers Hunter and only for 10 out of his 54 years on Earth and not even the entirety of Joe's vice presidency.
I hate it, but *this* is exactly what people voted for in November.
I want them to get it, good and hard, in every possible way. Sucks to suck.
MAGAland is loving every second of this because it validates all their talk about the "Biden crime family"
You may be correct that it was an abuse of power to pardon Hunter Biden for his misdeeds. But I assure you this abuse of power will pale in comparison to what lies ahead in the next four years with Trump as president. I predict four years from now, you will look back on what you wrote and think that this was such a minor blip in history after what we have witnessed under Trump that you will realize that Biden only did what any parent would do for his family.
Who are you arguing with? Very few here would disagree that Trump will probably do worse than things than this, but that's a really weak excuse for this kind of blatant corruption.
And if what Trump is going to be as bad as you say it will be and Democrats want to convince voters that they should be in power, then they can start by not doing blatantly corrupt stuff like this and making bullshit excuses for it.
Bravo! The verbal lashing that the Bidens richly deserve. Democrats need to decide if they are going to be the ethical party or not because their terrible policies is not why I’ve voted for them till now. If both parties are unethical, I would rather vote for the one that cuts my taxes.
I just don't buy that this was an abuse of power. An actual abuse would look like promising a pardon to enable someone to break the law with impunity. Unless Joe Biden told Hunter to do whatever he wants during his term as president because he'll get a pardon at the end, this was an act of mercy, not an abuse.
At worst, it was an unfair use of the pardon power, but perhaps Joe will also pardon a bunch of other non-violent tax evaders and gun offenders in the days ahead who no doubt also have families who'd prefer to see them free from judicial entanglements. Remains to be seen.
Biden’s reputation and legacy was already trash, because while he did help guide us out of the pandemic and into an economic soft landing, he was unsuccessful in curbing two major wars (not counting the violence in Sudan, CAR and DRC), leading on immigration, or safeguarding democracy. On some of these points he compounded the problem through egomania in believing that he was the Democrats’ best candidate in 2024. Had he declined to run he might have been remembered as one of the greatest Presidents. He fucked it up, and pardoning his son doesn’t even amount to an exclamation point on top of that sentence.
I don’t feel that strongly about this but there’s something grating about the phrase I give you my word as a Biden that Joe frequently used. Most of us rolled our eyes, but he clearly thought it had a lot of meaning. There were no actions that he could take that could give cause him to reassess how valuable that word is. Disappointing.