Summary
President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden, prompting strong backlash from Republicans.
GOP lawmakers criticized the move as an abuse of power and an attempt to avoid accountability, with figures like Rep. James Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley calling it hypocritical and corrupt.
Biden defended the pardon, citing “selective prosecution” and claiming Hunter was unfairly targeted due to their family connection.
Hunter faced convictions for federal gun and tax charges.
Words have proven futile. If Dems don’t play the same game Republicans play we WILL lose this democracy.
Democracy has already been lost if every party has to play that game
This isn’t even “the game”. It’s not getting Democrats anything, but it’s also incredibly irrelevant and no one can credibly clutch pearls about abusing pardon powers when it’s basically been a get out of jail free card for big donors for years. It’s already broken and corrupt, and Hunter doesn’t even rank anywhere close to the previous ghouls that have been pardoned, including by the guy who’s succeeding Biden. Never mind Republicans who have been 100x worse, this isn’t even remotely as bad as Clinton’s pardons.
Cool, so pardon someone besides your own son Joe. You can dress it up in flowery speech if you want but until this supposed willingness to play dirty leads to improvements in someone else’s life this is just more of the same bullshit. He’s not helping America with this action he’s helping himself. That’s not noble at all.
He already has one dead son, so I doubt he’s in the mood to offer another as a sacrifice to the MAGAs
Agree that this looks and feels bad, but Hunter was overly scrutinized and punished for his crimes. He already paid his due and was the victim of a real witch hunt. If Trump was pardoning Don Jr I’d be pissed (depending on the crimes I suppose, let DonnyJ do some drugs), but that would be different because Hunter was never involved in politics, held public office or government positions, etc.
I don’t care what his reasoning is. We elected him to protect democracy from Trump and this is perhaps the most obvious example that he’s always been more interested in protecting him and his friends than the rest of us. We all know what’s coming in 6 weeks and look at our supposed protector’s most significant action since the election, handing out a pardon to his own family just like Trump did. Thanks Joe, I’m sure we’ll all sleep better over the next 4 years knowing you dealt with Hunter’s problems instead of ours.
“Nothing will fundamentally change.”
Democracy has already been lost. Turning into mindless beasts won’t bring it back. Neoliberals have voted for the lesser evil so many times that they’re cheering for blatant political corruption, why would you expect them to want a return to democracy? They just want a dictatorship with “their guy” in charge.