Hunter Biden has been a terrible distraction for President Biden and the Democrats. He has been in the news for a long time, going back to former President Trump’s first impeachment.
There’s very little the public does not know about Hunter – and nearly everything is that of someone who is an abject failure. His discharge from the Navy, his relationship with his late brother’s wife, the involvement with prostitutes, lying on the gun form, drug use, and fathering of a child to whom he refused to pay child support – all speak of a quite flawed character.
His business dealings, in which he allegedly took advantage of the Biden family name and received millions in compensation for access to Washington, while terrible, are nothing new. (The Beltway crowd is made up of tens of thousands of people who have connections because of family – in the three branches of government and the media.)
In effect, Hunter Biden is a classic story of political power and corruption, but if the GOP wants to beat President Biden in the coming elections using this theme, the rest of the country will yawn. For decades, those inside the Beltway have lived by a core set of values different from the rest of Middle America, especially in the battleground states where the 2024 elections will be decided.
Recent attacks by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, when she displayed salacious photos of Hunter Biden in the House chamber, went over the top. What was she trying to prove? That Hunter was a distorted and weak individual? No. Green showed the world that he may have violated an obscure law called the Mann Act of 1910, which made it a crime to transport women across state lines “for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” Is this the best the GOP will run on in 2024?
Although we are mostly willing to look the other way regarding Hunter Biden, two stories in the saga are noteworthy because they affect the very fabric of America – and both point to President Biden’s dishonesty and hypocrisy. We believe pursuing inquiries into both are fair game for the GOP.
The first is when the Democrats leveraged their new-found unity in early 2020 to apply all the powers of the Deep State to suppress the Hunter laptop story – including when over 50 intelligence officials certified that the laptop was a ‘Russian misinformation’ campaign. During the 2020 presidential debates – remember that only two were held, with one being canceled – Biden openly referred to the intelligence officials’ assessment.
In response to Trump’s taunts of “it’s the laptop from hell, the laptop from hell,” Biden pushed back, “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this — he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan — they have said that this has all the characteristics — four — five former heads of the CIA — both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him…and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
Biden’s assertions were a bold lie. Not only do we now know that the laptop story was 100% accurate, but we also know that those officials unethically colluded with the Biden campaign. The GOP-led House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees released a 64-page report in May that showed emails from the intelligence officials who released a signed statement before the debate: “We think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate, and we want to offer perspectives on this from Russia watchers and other seasoned experts, and we want to give the [Vice President] a talking point to use in response.” This collusion story resonates across the country as election interference of the highest order as the Deep State pressed its thumb on the scale to swing the result to one candidate.
The second issue is if “The Big Guy” received kickbacks from Hunter Biden’s dealings and those somehow influenced American policy, such as towards Ukraine, including expending over $120 billion in arms support and forever dividing the world.
The average American will be repulsed if these stories are true. It does not matter if Justice again slow-walks investigations and even buries them, not indicting President Biden. As we said this week, the Court of Public Opinion is a powerful platform, and Biden can never survive the adverse reaction of the people if the kickback story further takes shape. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy knows that this story has legs, which is why he indicated again on Tuesday, after doing so over the weekend, that he could launch an impeachment inquiry.
All other Hunter Biden stories are noise – and the more the GOP defines Hunter as a deeply-disturbed individual, the more the average voter will see that the GOP is desperate. An emergency brief filed in Federal District Court in Wilmington by Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the House Ways, and Means Committee chairman, requesting the judge to scuttle the plea deal is an example of sheer desperation. Hunter is not running for office – so if the court accepts his plea deal, the GOP should let Hunter go and not take off the eye from the bigger picture.
There’s so much more the GOP can prosecute President Biden for in taking America backward by decades – inflation, economy, war, standing in the world, executive outreach, crime, the borders, foreign policy, woke agenda, and dangerously rising debt – that Hunter’s sorry story pales in comparison.
At this point, President Biden and his top staff want his reelection campaign to focus on two broad themes. The first, discussed earlier this week, is to turn the election into a referendum on Donald Trump and tie every other GOP candidate on the ballot to “mega-MAGA Republicans.” The second, which seems like a riskier bet, is to tout the success of “Bidenomics” and the president’s economic record.
The first problem is that most Americans don’t feel good about the economy and don’t feel good about how Biden is handling economic issues. As a CNBC headline put it, “The White House plan to sell Bidenomics: Hit the road, ignore the polls.”
Back in February, Gallup found that just 35 percent of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50 percent say they are worse off than a year ago. The organization noted that, “since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off.” In fact, “the only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.”
Things haven’t changed much in the past few months. Yesterday, CNBC unveiled a new poll that found just 37 percent of Americans approve of how Biden is handling the economy, while 58 percent disapprove:
The survey showed small gains in Americans’ views on the economy, though to levels that remain depressed. The percentage of Americans saying the economy is excellent or good rose 6 points to a still-low 20 percent. The percentage saying the economy is just fair or poor declined 6 points to a still-high 79 percent. Just 24 percent of the public believes the economy will improve in the next year, a relatively low mark for the survey but up 6 points compared with April and the percentage expecting the economy to get worse fell 10 points to 43 percent.
On paper, the current U.S. inflation rate is 3 percent year-over-year, a significant decline from the 9 percent of June 2022 and much closer to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2 percent. But judging from the survey responses, Americans are still feeling the effects of the explosion in prices from early 2021 to this past spring. Remember, for most goods, prices haven’t gone down to the pre-inflation “normal,” they’ve just stopped increasing so dramatically. That CNBC survey found:
Inflation was named the number one issue by 30 percent of respondents. That’s more than double any of the other areas of concern, which include threats to democracy, immigration and border security, health care and crime.
And Americans believe Republicans have better policies than Democrats to handle the key economic issues, often by substantial margins. Republicans lead Democrats by double digits when asked which party would do a better job on the economy, inflation and improving the respondent’s personal financial situation. They lead by single digits when it comes to jobs and keeping energy costs down.
This is not what Democrats or fans of the Biden administration want to see. You don’t have to look far to find economists and economic columnists asking some version of the question, “The economy is doing really well, so why are Americans so glum?”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 