President Biden pardoned his son Hunter because it’s ‘time to end all of this’

On Sunday, President Joe Biden pardoned his only living son, Hunter Biden. It was a full and unconditional pardon for any and all crimes Hunter may have committed in the past ten years. My first, second, third and fourth reactions were all variations of: good for Joe Biden, I’m glad he pardoned Hunter, and President Biden was probably very worried about what Donald Trump and his minions would do to Hunter if Joe didn’t pardon him. To me, the pardon says more about what Pres. Biden thinks about the incoming Trump administration. But to hear Democratic Party elected officials, podbros and seemingly all of the Beltway media, Joe pardoning Hunter was the biggest political catastrophe of all time. Give me a f–king break. The biggest political catastrophe of all time was normalizing Donald Trump’s violent white national fascism for nine years and holding Democrats to wildly different standards. That’s how we got here. Anyway, the NYT had a story about why President Biden made the decision:

Inside a borrowed vacation compound earlier in the week, with its views of the Nantucket Harbor, Mr. Biden had met with his wife, Jill Biden, and his son Hunter Biden to discuss a decision that had tormented him for months. The issue: a pardon that would clear Hunter of years of legal trouble, something the president had repeatedly insisted he would not do.

Support for pardoning Hunter Biden had been building for months within the family, but external forces had more recently weighed on Mr. Biden, who watched warily as President-elect Donald J. Trump picked loyalists for his administration who promised to bring political and legal retribution to Mr. Trump’s enemies.

Mr. Biden had even invited Mr. Trump to the White House, listening without responding as the president-elect aired familiar grievances about the Justice Department — then surprised his host by sympathizing with the Biden family’s own troubles with the department, according to three people briefed on the conversation.

But it was Hunter Biden’s looming sentencings on federal gun and tax charges, scheduled for later this month, that gave Mr. Biden the final push. A pardon was one thing he could do for a troubled son, a recovering addict who he felt had been subjected to years of public pain.

When the president returned to Washington late Saturday evening, he convened a call with several senior aides to tell them about his decision.

“Time to end all of this,” Mr. Biden said, according to a person briefed on the call.

[From The NY Times]

The Times went on to write: “Mr. Biden’s decision has tarnished a storied public legacy…” It didn’t tarnish jacksh-t. Biden is still the same principled man. He’s the same man who was squeezed out by his party, a man who watched as tens of millions of Americans voted for an insurrectionist lunatic. Americans didn’t want Joe Biden’s principles, so he’s taking them back to Delaware, along with his only living son. The Times’ sources also said that President Biden was “deeply concerned that the pressure of the trials would push his son into a relapse after years of sobriety.” I think that’s a reasonable fear, and President Biden wants to do everything to help Hunter’s fragile sobriety. Now, does anyone think that Joe Biden would have pardoned Hunter if Kamala Harris had won? I’m not sure.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.