As Biden Pardons Hunter, Lefty Outlet Tweets Something Either Hilariously Tone-Deaf or Brilliantly Ironic

December 2, 2024 Mark Wolf US 0

I’m torn between laughing at Politico for actually repeating one of the most hoary tropes in journalism or for laughing at them for, to use the words of Sen. John Fetterman, “god-tier level trolling.”

So, in case you didn’t hear — and this was the intention, given that this happened on the Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend four weeks after the federal elections with nothing else in the news but holiday traffic, the weather, and how woke the balloons were in the Macy’s parade — President Joe Biden used the holiday to gift his son Hunter with a pardon even more far-reaching than the one Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon.

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases,” Biden wrote in a statement.

“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

Never mind that it wasn’t Congress who scuttled the “fair, reasonable resolution” of Hunter’s cases via plea deal but a judge who who called the potentially “unconstitutional” plea deal “not standard, not what I normally see” and possibly “not worth the paper it is printed on.”

Never mind, too, the fact that he talked about how he “followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth” six months after he told the American people he wouldn’t be pardoning Hunter and that the justice system was doing its job. Now, a pardon just days before he gets sentenced for cases in which he already pleaded guilty, CNN pointed out.

Did Politico mean to troll the right with this?

There’s plenty of time for that. No, it’s the fact that either the people at Politico are clueless or have a good sense of humor about the situation.

As you might expect, Politico — a publication that lists so heavily to port it would capsize in any seas outside of blue-city ports — ran a piece about GOP reaction to the fact that Joe pardoned Hunter less than six months after he avouched to America he’d never consider such a thing. “Republicans say Biden is a ‘liar’ after he pardons Hunter, his son,” the piece was headlined.

However, the piece on X was captioned with — well, I can’t say whether this was intentional or not, but either way it was a chef’s kiss on top of this Thanksgiving pardon feast:

Related:

CNN Let a Conservative Join Its Network: He’s Tearing Them to Pieces

Yes, there you go: “REPUBLICANS POUNCE!!”

Now, in case you’ve never encountered the “REPUBLICANS POUNCE!!” trope, former National Review writer Kevin D. Williamson summed it up best in a 2018 piece about how the mainstream media deploys certain language whenever a politician commits a not-quite-minor solecism:

When a Republican does something stupid or wrong and gets criticized for it, the story is that a Republican has done something stupid or wrong. When a Democrat does something stupid or wrong, the story is “Republicans pounce!” on the episode, cynically looking to wring some petty advantage out of the mess. For those who lean Democrat, that is a much more pleasant story to report.

Now, the piece itself featured far less “pouncing” than you would expect, noting off the top that Joe promised in June he would “abide by the jury’s decision” in his son’s trial.

Here’s some of the “pouncing” they encountered:

This was pretty standard “one-party-in-two-party-systems-reacts-to-other-party-doing-bad-thing” fare. However, the point is: Come on, “Republicans pounce?”

As X users pointed out, this was either intentional humor or a sign that Politico was an impenetrable bubble:

But did they? This is Politico, so you have to take everything they say with a grain of copium, and you can picture them employing staff writers who think the “right-wing media” is the Los Angeles Times. (You get into “far-right” territory once you get to National Review and Fox News.) Plus, isn’t a sense of humor non-intersectional?

Either way, tone-deaf or brilliantly ironic, it’s a good laugh — until you realize they’re potentially trolling or dead serious over the fact the president just gave his own son blanket immunity for anything he did from the time he joined the board of Ukrainian firm Burisma until Dec. 1, 2024. Har har. So much for the “rule of law” and “norms,” hmm?

Merry early Christmas, Hunter. Sorry for pouncing.



C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).

Birthplace

Morristown, New Jersey

Education

Catholic University of America

Languages Spoken

English, Spanish

Topics of Expertise

American Politics, World Politics, Culture

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