The evolution of how the media handle piling evidence of Joe and Hunter Biden’s involvement in a foreign influence-peddling scheme is a master seminar in narrative shifting, playing out for us in real time.
First, they smeared anyone who asked questions about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine — specifically, Joe Biden’s public role in getting rid of a prosecutor who had been investigating a company Hunter worked for — as perpetuating a conspiracy theory. By 2020, right before the presidential election, this tactic had expanded to flatly refusing to cover evidence of shady international deals involving Hunter and the “Big Guy,” sourced from a laptop Hunter had evidently abandoned at a repair shop, by branding it “Russian disinformation.”
As more documents and testimony built the case of Biden family corruption, the narrative forayed into, “This is actually just about Joe Biden’s love for his son,” and, “Did we say Joe Biden wasn’t in contact with Hunter’s business partners? Actually, he was a lot but that was totally normal — and they just talked about the weather!”
As the Biden family business becomes indefensible, more media outlets and other Democrats are reallocating their resources to defending only one Biden — the Big Guy in the White House. If they can show their love for defending democracy by saying a few mildly reproachful things about Hunter, then use their shiny new credibility to self-righteously shut down questions about Joe, what’s the downside? Hunter knows the bagman always ends up thrown under the bus anyway, right?
The Washington Post editorial board, after initially praising the sweetheart plea deal brokered between Hunter Biden and his father’s Justice Department — which fell apart under scrutiny from the judge — has since changed its tune and admitted Saturday that the younger Biden “shouldn’t get special treatment,” which is an understatement for what the plea deal was.
“[C]ritics might have been justified” in calling out the kid gloves with which the president’s son has been treated, the editorial board admitted. In the next breath, they lauded the appointment of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as a special counsel to investigate Hunter. (Other “special treatment” the Biden family received, such as the alleged efforts by Weiss himself to slow-walk investigations into the family’s potential crimes, and free PR work from every legacy news outlet in America, went unmentioned by the Post.)
It’s a tactical move for Democrats to praise the appointment of the special counsel. They can leave the same guy running the show but now use his new status as an excuse to shoo away pesky congressional Republican investigators, all the while loudly proclaiming that “no one is above the law.”
Best of all, they get to keep Hunter and only Hunter in the hot seat. “One temptation in the Hunter Biden case might be to investigate the president himself, as many of his critics wish,” the editorial board continued, before dutifully lecturing readers to remember that Joe Biden’s behavior “so far” is “not criminal.”
Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin evidently prepped similar talking points for a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” “They haven’t been able to show any criminal corruption on [Joe Biden’s] part,” he insisted. “What they’ve got is Hunter Biden, and we all seem clear that this guy was addicted to drugs and did a lot of really unlawful and wrong things and we’ve said, let the justice system run its course.”
The problem with this new narrative is that it’s completely bogus. Does anyone think Joe Biden had 200-plus conversations with Hunter’s business partners about the weather? Does anyone believe foreign oligarchs were happily forking over cash to a washed-up druggie for empty promises? Are we to just ignore the evidence that millions of those foreign dollars went into not just Hunter Biden’s pockets but Joe’s?
There’s a scandal here, but it’s not chiefly about Hunter, any more than the “laptop” scandal was chiefly about the dirty footage of Hunter’s drug-fueled sexual escapades stored on the hard drive. The laptop story was about evidence of the Biden family’s influence-for-cash racket, and the scandal is about Joe’s role in it.
When Democrats promise you the justice system is “running its course” on Hunter, the demonstrable falsehood of such a statement isn’t even the worst part. By pretending to discipline the deadbeat who apparently did Dad’s dirty work, they’re shutting you up about letting the justice system run its course on Joe.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
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