With a laptop from hell, a drug habit, a recently reached sweetheart plea deal on federal charges, an unacknowledged daughter in Arkansas, more than a few escapades with prostitutes and strippers, and an ethically questionable art career, conservatives know Hunter Biden is not father of the year or role model material.
Yet, over at The New York Times, its writers are still waxing poetic about "a tale of two families" after a settlement was reached in the child support dispute between Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts, the mother of his now four-year-old daughter. The Times has also arrived at the conclusion that Hunter Biden "could damage" his father's "re-election prospects by bringing more attention to a son whom some Democrats see as a liability."
Say, they might be on to something.
President Biden, of course, has continued to publicly say that he's "proud" of Hunter and calls his son the "smartest" guy he knows. But after taking a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal for what would, presumably for any other American, be felonies, settling a child support case concerning his estranged daughter, and still dealing with fallout from the extremely well documented illicit activities contained on his forgotten laptop, it's not some sort of exclusive scoop that Hunter is a liability for the president's 2024 bid for re-election.
Of course, this revelation coming from the Times, it's not actually President Biden's problem, or even Hunter's problem. Instead, the "political toxicity surrounding" Hunter's successful legal efforts to pay less to support his daughter and prohibit her from taking the Biden name in exchange for some of his bizarre paintings is the fault of "conservative media," apparently:
Though a trial planned for mid-July has been averted, people on both sides fear that the political toxicity surrounding the case will remain. Already, it has been extensively covered in conservative media, from Breitbart to Fox News, and conservative commentators assailed the Biden family after news of the settlement.
How dare we cover the activities of the first family? Shame on "conservative media" for making things overly politicized. We're sure there were never any stories from mainstream outlets about Trump's children...
Beyond Hunter Biden being a liability for his father's stated commitment to restrictive firearm laws and demand that Americans pay their "fair share" in taxes, the Times notes that the first son has also poked a significant hole in Biden's "family man" image:
His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.
And now, the Times reports that "Biden allies" are worried less that the Biden family is ignoring and basically denying the existence of Hunter's daughter and more about her mother's Instagram account to which she posts photos of herself and the daughter she had with Hunter:
Seen through one prism, the photos are a powerful public testament of love from a mother to her daughter. Seen through another, they are exploitative, certainly from the perspective of Biden allies, who fear the images — and the child — are being weaponized against the Biden family.
For her part, Ms. Roberts said she did not bring her daughter to Washington to punish the Bidens. She said she brought her to Washington because not many little girls get to say that their grandfather is the president.
“She’s very proud of who her grandfather is and who her dad is,” Ms. Roberts said. “That is something that I would never allow her to think otherwise.”
Apparently, it simply can't be Hunter's fault that his life is so messy and he's left a trail of evidence strewn around the country. It's that Hunter's mistakes are now being "weaponized" against him, the man who made the mistakes, and almost literally handed gigabytes worth of opposition research on the Biden family to the president's opponents.
The only one Democrats fretting about 2024 have to blame is Hunter Biden. If he's a liability and too closely associated with President Biden, then blame Joe too — including for being a deadbeat granddad. He doesn't have to bring Hunter around the world with him on Air Force One and doesn't need to invite him to official White House functions attended by, say, the Attorney General whose Justice Department just gave Hunter his get-out-of-jail card. He also doesn't have to deny that he has a granddaughter in Arkansas. Be he does all of these things, and Americans are right to judge him for it.
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