The Hunter Biden pardon is still on my mind. My colleagues JamieO and Our Fearless Leader have laid out the important elements of the story, and I have a few points to add.

First, I’m very glad that Joe Biden pardoned Hunter. And I’m sick of the hot takes from the Old Guard media about how it was a bad idea and the endless handwringing about “lying”. OMG people! Joe said he wouldn’t pardon Hunter when Kash Patel wasn’t a candidate for FBI director. But then the circumstances changed, so Biden’s decision changed.

Biden’s decision is rational human behavior. People change their decisions when the circumstances change. The right has been investigating Hunter Biden for 10 years and has come up with nothing–because there is nothing. Pardons are meant to apply in cases where the justice system has failed. This became one of those cases once TFG nominated Patel.

Patel is kind of unhinged. He starts talking about midway through this episode, and while he thinks he makes sense, it’s actually just full on conspiracy-land nonsense:

The scary thing about the GOP’s obsession with Hunter Biden is how is it meant to personally and directly hurt Joe Biden. The GOP can’t do much to ruin Joe’s historical legacy, after all. Even destroying all of his programs won’t erase their early success or the sweeping nature of the Biden administration’s legislation. So they’re left with personally hurting Joe. But why?

Well, one of the strange things about the American right is how fucking weird they are about their families—they have warped family values. Think about it.

TFG hates his kids. He is never seen playing with or enjoying being with his grandchildren. His wives all hate him. Speaker Mike Johnson said he adopted a Black teenager from his neighborhood, but no paperwork was ever done, and his fake son has made it clear he wants nothing to do with his fake father.

Matt Gaetz, the failed TFG nominee for Attorney General, has a fake adopted son, too.  Remember Nestor? Like Johnson’s son, he only turned up when his fake father needed him in the narrative. I wrote about a GOP candidate who used someone else’s family in his ads, and another candidate who advocated slapping her kids.

Remember when the Republicans melted down during the Democratic convention because Tim Walz’s obviously loved him? Or what about when JD Vance kept referring to his kids as belonging only to his wife? And then there’s Bobby Jr., whose family hates him.

Of course they want to ruin Joe’s happiness, which is centered in his family. These are utterly miserable people who are infuriated by happy people. So it seems natural to them to try to drive Hunter back into drug use because they know how it would devastate Joe and the rest of the family.

It’s sickening and cowardly, and it’s completely typical of the current GOP.

Here’s the earworm I gave you at the beginning.