Sure, Hunter Biden sold himself to foreign companies in exchange for access to his father, the vice president of the United States.
Yes, he made millions from a Ukrainian gas company while his dad’s government portfolio included Ukraine, a flagrantly unethical arrangement that is still under investigation.
As an unregistered foreign agent, he shook down the Chinese for cash while threatening that “I’m sitting here with my father.”
Despite having no expertise, despite “My dog is smarter than Hunter,” as one executive said, oligarchs were happy to pay him for the opportunity to get Joe on the phone, or to stop by at dinner.
But don’t blame him. It was all the drugs!
So claims Hunter in a column that appeared Thursday in USA Today, titled “I fought to get sober. Political weaponization of my addiction hurts more than me.”
We’re searching for a word to describe this drivel. “Sanctimonious” undersells it. “Disingenuous” is true, but a little soft.
How about: “A load of bull!”
Hunter knew exactly what he was doing with his “consulting” business. He knew his only “qualification” was that his father was the second-most powerful man in America.
He spent much of the millions he made on drugs, yes, but that’s not the crux of the scandal.
The scandal is influence-peddling.
In the column, Hunter whines, “What troubles me is the demonization of addiction, of human frailty, using me as its avatar and the devastating consequences it has for the millions struggling with addiction, desperate for a way out and being bombarded by the denigrating and near-constant coverage of me and my addiction on Fox News (more airtime than GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis) and in The New York Post (an average of two stories a day over the past year).”
You know what the vast majority of those stories don’t mention? Hunter’s drug use. Because we’re not “weaponizing” addiction, we’re reporting on the intersection of Hunter’s business dealings and Joe Biden’s political career.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) is wondering why money “earned” by Hunter ends up in the accounts of other Biden family members, or why James Biden is paying brother Joe back “loans” days after getting a check from China.
Desperate to portray himself as the wounded party, Hunter would have us believe that this all has to do with addiction.
Because who hasn’t smoked crack, then found themselves on Air Force Two, arranging multimillion-dollar investment funds with members of the Communist Chinese government while their dad is on a diplomatic mission?
Bless everyone who has put in the hard work to tackle drug addiction. We would never demonize anyone who has struggled with it.
But the first tenet of recovery is admitting you have a problem. Hunter Biden has never acknowledged what he did was wrong. In fact, he shamefully hides behind substance abuse as an excuse for his actions.
You’re not the victim, Hunter.