Hunter Biden's many gifts
In his book, “Beautiful Things,” Hunter Biden glosses over some unpleasant aspects of his family’s political history.
His father, President Joe Biden, was the driving force behind passage of draconian federal mandatory minimum sentences, which put low-level nonviolent drug offenders (many of them Black) for years, even decades. yet the former senators’ son was spared prison and jail despite his flagrant crimes and brushes with law enforcement.
Now with the book and his career as a painter, Hunter Biden is cashing in – as I wrote for this column, Hunter Biden’s Midas Touch.
Biden’s surviving son doesn’t sugar-coat his addiction, or his lies and law breaking that went along with it.
But he does gloss over the laptop that made news in the New York Post – suggesting but not stating that it was not his -- and he never explains how he paid for his five-star hotel binges and insane spending sprees. He’s very good at appearing to tell his story with painful honesty, yet leaving out pertinent details.
A few take-aways from the book.
—Hunter B. offers no regrets on the New Yorker profile that documented his descent into darkness due to his self-destructive and illegal behavior. He found the interviews therapeutic and believed that the stark admissions of his behavior would put the onus of his behavior on him, not his father. If you haven’t read it, you should.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/will-hunter-biden-jeopardize-his-fathers-campaign
—Hunter has this way of blaming his first wife for hitting a limit in her regard for him, as opposed to his father and late brother Beau, who always saw the best in him. He recalls how his new wife looked at him with the same “reflective look” and notes, “I remember I did not see it in Kathleen’s eyes – I carbon-date it, really, to after I was discharged from the Navy Reserve for failing that drug test in 2014.”
His apparent idea of a character flaw - not what he did, what she thought.
—He’s also a bit nasty about the sons of Trump and brothers of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He writes:
“I’m not Billy Carter or Roger Clinton, God bless them. I am not Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr.—I’ve worked for someone other than my father, rose and fell on my own. This book will establish that.”
Actually, the book establishes that Hunter Biden’s connections helped him. Sure, he graduated from Georgetown and Yale Law. And he makes a case that the knowledge he gleaned watching his politician father may have served him and his clients well. The bottom line: He’d enjoy a lot more respect if he didn’t so frequently dine of the family name.
Debra J. Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership. Contact her at dsaunders@discovery.org.