Hunter Biden showed he has his father Joe Biden’s chutzpah Wednesday when he blew off a congressional subpoena to hold a woe-is-me press conference on Capitol Hill.
Hunter Biden showed he has his father’s chutzpah Wednesday when he blew off a congressional subpoena to hold a woe-is-me press conference on Capitol Hill.
“I’m here. I’m ready,” he said, and then swept away in his motorcade without answering a single question.
Like father, like son.
Of course, there’s nothing bold or brave about inviting a contempt charge from Congress when you have Daddy’s pardon power in your back pocket.
Hunter could have taken his entourage over to the House hearing room where Oversight Chairman James Comer was waiting for him to testify — and simply pleaded the Fifth, to avoid complicating his twin indictments on tax and gun charges.
Instead, he chose a cocky public-relations strategy to manipulate the public narrative by painting himself as an object of pity and playing on the kind hearts of the American people, a cynical artform his father has employed to great effect throughout his political career.
“MAGA Republicans ridiculed my struggle with addiction. They belittled my recovery and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father who has devoted his entire life to service,” Hunter said.Son’s outrageous denial
That’s the art. But from Daddy’s point of view, the most important line in Hunter’s five-minute oration was his double denial of the president’s role in his family’s shady influence-peddling scheme in corrupt and adversarial countries where, as VP, he was point man for the Obama administration.
“There’s no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business,” said Hunter. And: “My father was not financially involved in my business.”
Joe Biden was ”not financially involved” is a significant shifting of the goal posts. It is a carefully parsed, legalistic phrase, that looks as if it has been workshopped to death in a campaign war room before being dropped into Hunter’s soup of self-pity.
That is the message from the White House, delivered by a hostage who needs Daddy’s pardon to stay out of jail.
