How the Hunter Biden probe can backside fire on the GOP

In this clip from Fox and Friend's Joe Concha in an Aug. 2021 show asks what if this story involved Donald Trump, Jr. without noting that the junior Trump was very active in the Trump campaign and an official of The Trump Organization.

While the they say they won't show images of a nude Hunter Biden they do include them online:

The Republicans are downright drooling over their plan to investigate Hunter Biden and try to tie him to then vice president Joe Biden and make the case that the vice president somehow colluded with his son in what amounted to treason against the United States.

The fly in this ointment is that all this all comes down to is that like with Benghazi there's no there there.

The more one looks at Hunter Biden's past behavior the more an objective observer with a modicum of empathy who is not blinded by a zealous quest to hurt President Biden the more they will feel sorry for the president.

The saying I am not my brothers keeper, shades of Billy Carter, can be reworded to say I am not my son's keeper.

Joe Biden lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 when he was only 45. Most people don't know that Biden had a daughter with his first wife Neila. Their daughter Naomi passed away in 1972 after being involved in a car crash with their sons Beau and Hunter critically injured. 

To say Hunter had a troubled past fraught with bad decisions and a cavalier disregard for how they might hurt his father personally and politically is an understatement.

Currently there are no plans to call President Biden to testify but I think Hunter will be called. If I had a say in the matter I would make sure he testified without an attorney and answered all the questions candidly. The committee has no power to indict him if he admits to breaking the law, only the Department of Justice can do that. As the New York Times notes, "the Justice Department inquiry into the business dealings of the president’s son has remained active, with a grand jury seeking information about payments from around the world."

Hopefully he will come across as a sympathetic figure, especially compared to his GOP interrogators some of whom are likely to try to intimidate and badger him in their attempts to score points with their MAGA base.

I'd say to the rabid GOP MAGA representatives slavering to get to President Biden through his son "bring it on" because when it comes to a there being there all they have is a president unlucky enough to have a very troubled son. 

And then there this news:

It is a well timed shot across the bow of MAGA House zealots thinking they will have clear sailing as they go full-speed in trying to blow up President Biden though their investigations. This comes as the GOP is orgiastic over their being able to shot down the January 6th Committee.

House GOP's eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Hunter, Alejandro, or Joe?

 House GOP's eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Hunter,  Alejandro, or Joe?

By Hal Brown

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Comments on bottom of page

The speculation about what the Republican's will do now that they control the House of Representatives is rampant. See, for example "What will a Republican House look like? A lot of investigations and maybe impeachment" in USA Today.

There are lots of analogies to describe the job Kevin McCarthy now has from herding cats to being the chief of the Keystone Kops (sans female cops), a circular firing squad, clown car of revenge, and pit of ouroboros snakes . 

The loudest clamor for an investigation is into Hunter Biden. The problem from McCarthy's point of view is that while he will probably have to go along with this to satisfy his fringe members, the general public doesn't really care about this just they way they didn't care about Benghazi. 

According to USA Today "Republicans have questioned whether Hunter Biden has compromised the presidency and national security through his business dealings in China and Ukraine." Obviously this is an indirect way to get at the president both politically and personally.

There's also been talk about impeachments. Merrick Garland has been mentioned but there's been some serious consideration being reported to holding impeachment hearings for Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas because of how he handled the border crisis.

This would be a way to blame President Biden and score political points with their anti-immigrant base.

The problem with this in getting the public to pay attention is that most people never heard of him and couldn't identify him in a lineup. 

Trying to impeach Garland would open them to having Democrats present their defense of him and bring their own witnesses to highlight and make their case for the culpability of Donald Trump in both the J6 coup attempt and the documents theft case.

It is possible that McCarthy will decide for various reasons to succumb to Marjorie Taylor Greene's exhortations to impeach President Biden. She's repeatedly called for his impeachment and said making the case would be easy.

McCarthy could put Greene on the committee handing the impeachment and even make sure she's chairman. Even though the impeachment would never lead to a Senate conviction it would be a way to attack President Biden and his policies and of all the hearings be most likely to gain a television audience. 

I think McCarthy will do anything he possibly can to avoid an impeachment of President Biden because 

more than the other specious investigations and hearings, it could easily backfire and demonstrate to potential swing voters in the 2024 election that the Republican Party has been taken over by a bunch of revengeful clowns and unhinged conspiracy theorists.

If the House GOP does go after President Biden I can see the result being that he becomes more and more popular and this will be reflected in the polls. It will coincide with voters seeing the fruits of his policies. By then it will be too late for the Republicans. The House GOP will have committed itself to his being impeached.

The trial in the Senate not only would be a foregone conclusion, but the Republicans trying to make their case would have flimsy evidence to present that whatever he supposedly did was grounds for conviction.

All the Democrats would vote against conviction but the ultimate humiliation would come if a few daring Republicans with an ounce of integrity, or with nothing to lose, also voted against it. 

Banned for life from post on Daily Kos

 

New York Post shows how to get under an attention seeking narcissist's skin

New York Post shows how to get under an attention seeking narcissist's skin

By Hal Brown

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Here's the cover page of the late edition of The New York Post which is on the stands and online today:

Not only was Trump's announcement relegated to the bottom of the page but he was referred to as a "Florida man"and the stories were on page 26 of the print edition.

The crew on "Morning Joe" was laughing about this this morning as they showed the cover of the New York tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. 

The paper was shown on MSNBC all day. Below: All In With Chris Hayes.

Inside the paper:

As someone who in a former life lived in Manhattan and took the subway I can attest to the fact that numerous riders read either the New York Post or the other tabloid, The New York Daily News. If I recall the history of these papers, both were planned to be easy to read on subways and buses.

Vintage photo by Stanley Kubrick. https://www.mcny.org/story/riding-subway-stanley-kubrick

When one of them comes out with a compelling cover picture these are seen all over the city Trump always thought he was king of. The papers are also displayed prominently on the few remaining  newsstands (only 330 left) and newspaper boxes all over the city.

It's been reported that the TV addicted Trump sometimes watches the Morning Joe. In fact Joe Scarborough today said that people have told him Trump sometimes "hate watches" the show. (See 

Trump lashes out at media again with personal attacks on ‘Morning Joe’ anchors, from 2017.)

I hope he watched this one. I can see him deriving some pleasure from being depicted in any way on the NY Post cover, even if it mocks him as a cartoon egg about to fall off a wall, but here they don't even use his name. 

Sometimes a picture is worth 1000 words and sometimes an image is so compelling that only two words are needed. This was the case in the notorious New York Post Trumpty Dumpty cover which the media referred to or republished  countless times after it came out. For example a see Google image search below:

Today the NY Post's main website page features Ivanka with this article today on the top of their page.

You can read the articles depicted in my images below from The New York Post. I didn't want to waste time putting links to individual articles here since the titles convey the message that NY Post editors want to convey.

Online, the story, as befits any print edition page 26 stories, is way down the page where, below, you can see the stories editors wanted to declare were more important:

It is noteworthy that the story about Ivanka announcing she won't have anything to do with the campaign is the prominent one related to Trump's announcement.

A few minutes after I took the screen shot shown above this section was changed as below:

Final Update (I have other things I have to do today)

This is how the website orders its stories as of 6:45 AM Pacific Time. (Click image to enlarge)

Related:

Of course this is a "salon" article so there's little chance Trump will read it, but he is certainly aware of the coverage being given to Ivanka not only refusing to go to his speech but then announcing she would have nothing to do with his campaign for the tired reason that she wants to devote more time to her family. In truth she probably wants to be able to defend herself in court cases having to do with her involvement in Trump businesses and to continue her grift.

"Ivanka Trump also gave an exclusive interview to Fox News, which has had a notable turn against Trump after his candidates lost competitive races last week and cut away from his rambling speech on Tuesday."

This was also on "salon" today. Heather "Digby" Parton actually watched Fox News while Trump gave his speech and reports on how their still all-in-for-Trump commentators gushed over how great his speech was.

Then there the news that guests at Mar-a-Lago who tried to leave before the speech was over were stopped from doing so by security.  I do believe this is against the law.

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