Biden Was Smart Not to Sacrifice His Son to MAGA Dregs

Modeling Decency Won’t Stop Trump’s Destructive Mendacity

Under normal circumstances, I’d staunchly oppose President Joe Biden pardoning his son, Hunter. However, we live in unusual times, where the old rule book is tossed out the window. Supporters of civilization must realize that we are in a political knife-fight, in a dirty Brooklyn alley, against ruthless reprobates. These thugs view political niceties and courtesies—institutions and traditions—as fatal weaknesses to be exploited for political power.

President-elect Donald Trump is a raving lunatic, a view indubitably confirmed by his bevy of bizarre and dangerous cabinet choices. The primary qualification for these apparatchiks is blind obedience to Trump, rather than the U.S. Constitution. They are expected to goose step on command and launch culture wars and settle personal scores. For Biden to consciously sacrifice his son to these vindictive miscreants, with no concept of compassion or honor, would be an unwise act of parental malpractice.

My views aren’t partisan. I’d vehemently condemn Biden if he saved his son with a Bush, Romney or McCain-style Republican entering the White House. But that isn’t what we have, is it?

No, what we are facing is an incoming administration with a gaping decency deficit and a malformed sense of justice. Let’s not forget that Donald Trump is a rapist, fraudster and convicted felon, with his ascension a real-life example of a “should-be” inmate running the asylum.

Some Democrats are condemning Biden based on two toxic tics: Modeling and the Set-up.

Modeling is the noble idea of leading by example. The principle is an offshoot of Michelle Obama’s speech, “when they go low, we go high.” Democrats can supposedly bolster democracy by staunchly adhering to righteous principles, even when it is detrimental to the Party. By displaying unwavering dignity, even when confronting GOP treachery, Democrats can teach Republicans decorum and fidelity to the Constitution.

Tragically, the Democrats have done more modeling than Fashion Week in Manhattan. Republicans, nonetheless, are unwilling to learn because their brand, to quote Trump ally Steve Bannon, is “deconstruction of the administrative state.” As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Virtually all GOP power in 2024 requires the imprimatur of the autocratic Trump, and no amount of modeling good behavior will help if the Orange King demands a fetid stew of autocracy, theocracy and kleptocracy.

The second obsolete Democratic strategy is the “set-up.” This is where Democrats deliberately compliment odious Republicans today, so they can write a press release down the line expressing how “disappointed” they are by these Republicans’ insidious behavior.

These “gotcha” tactics only work with people who have consciences. Unfortunately, MAGA is an ethics-free sewer, larded with shameless con artists, power hungry sycophants, and delirious ideologues who are drunk on pernicious fever-dreams disguised as moral principles. Democrats must realize there are no “gotcha” moments for Republican goons who already live in the gutter. The only thing these creeps understand is raw power and victory—thus to restore order, Democrats must first master Trump’s Machiavellian world of disorder.

Could you imagine being in Joe Biden’s shoes? On one hand, he surely wanted to refrain from offering a politically poisonous, ethically dubious pardon. On the other, he’s sitting in the Oval Office witnessing Trump nominate one abusive or incompetent abomination after another.

There was the since-withdrawn nomination of lowlife Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice. We have Fox News bloviator Pete Hegseth picked to run the Pentagon. Hegseth is an abusive womanizer, homophobic Neanderthal and out-of-control drunkard. Even his mum called him a bum, writing a scathing letter to her son that chastised him as “an abuser of women.”

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With Hegseth’s nomination in peril, Trump is floating the idea of replacing him with the one person in America who is an even bigger asshole, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. An irascible political robot with debilitating personality disorders, DeSantis is manifestly unsuited for a role that requires nuance to avoid unnecessary conflicts. The Florida czar is far more interested in fighting Culture Wars at home than winning wars abroad.

Biden also watched as the bizarre Robert F. Kennedy and con artist Dr. Mehmet Oz were chosen to presumably attack vaccines and introduce “quack cures” to our medical system.

Then, ultra-MAGA toady Kash Patel was chosen to lead the FBI. Patel has threatened our free media, saying on a 2023 Steve Bannon podcast, “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly — we’ll figure that out.”

Biden also observed Trump choosing Tulsi Gabbard, a cult member and Russian stooge, to lead our intelligence services. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told MSNBC “There’s no question I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset.”

Given this unredeemable cast of crackpots, Biden was under no obligation to place his son at their mercy and goodwill. Who’s to say they wouldn’t have placed Hunter on a chain gang to make the perverse propaganda point that “no one is above the law”, even as Trump cynically pardoned the January 6 domestic terrorists who tried to steal our democracy?

Had Hunter gone to prison, it would have done nothing to dissuade Trump from tearing down our institutions and demolishing the rule-of-law. Sadly, in our sick new world, Democrats will have to learn to occasionally compromise on decency to save democracy.

I can hear a chorus of opposition screaming, “we can’t lower ourselves or we are no different than Republicans.” Former GOP operative Steve Schmidt wrote in The Warning, “The growing calls demanding that the Democrats adopt a politics of malicious cruelty as the answer to Trump, or abandon all or any standards, are asinine. The Democratic Party cannot survive what is coming if it chooses to embrace MAGA morality as necessitous towards defeating it.”

He's correct that we can’t ever morph into Republican-level nastiness or nihilism. However, vociferously fighting back and throwing strong political punches is not the same as embracing MAGA morality.

Even as we fight, Democrats must focus on being a wellspring of solutions, a bulwark in favor of reason, work with Republicans when it’s in the national interest, avoid gratuitous cruelty, eschew conspiracy theories and reject corruption.

Still, we can’t be naïve patsies chronically getting rolled. Sacrificing Hunter Biden as a pawn to model integrity won’t persuade MAGA to act virtuously or magnanimously in the coming days.

No, it would have the opposite effect, fueling MAGA’s contrived narrative of the “Biden Crime Family”. They would chronically spotlight Hunter behind bars in an orange jumpsuit, while falsely painting The Trumps, a true family of delinquents, as above reproach—while they escape all criminal consequences and walk away unscathed.