Republican projection
Donald Trump always accuses others of what he himself is guilty of. That’s called projection. And it defines so much of Trump’s political rhetoric that even his defenders engage in it.
A case in point is Congressional Republicans accusing the Biden family of all kinds of financial crimes and schemes. You’d be forgiven for thinking they mistook the Biden family for the Trump family.
Yet the projection afoot has MAGA Republicans trying to impeach President Biden just so Trump can say Biden got impeached, too. And, if Trump gets elected again, you can bet your life savings that he’ll get federal prosecutors to indict Biden too.
Republicans targeting Biden’s son Hunter is wholly consistent with this art of projection. They are deflecting from all Trump’s kids have done to make the Trumps the first crime family to become the first family of the United States.
Biden family’s Inspector Javert
Trump screams “witch hunt“ whenever any investigator has him in their sights. But, true to form, he always sends MAGA minions on witch hunts to incriminate his accusers and denigrate the investigators.
Mueller’s investigation led to the impeachment of Trump. Trump hoped Weiss’s would disqualify Biden from even running for president.
It did not. Weiss investigated every allegation and innuendo Trump and Republicans hurled at the Biden family. But Biden proved his innocence by refusing to fire Weiss when he became president in 2021. By contrast, you can bet your life savings that Trump would have fired him if he were in Biden’s position.
Yet all Weiss had to show, after five years of investigating, were misdemeanor charges (for unpaid taxes and illegal gun possession) against Biden’s son, Hunter. That, of course, is petty compared with the tens of millions in patents Ivanka got from the Chinese, and the billions in investments Jared got from the Saudis.
And don’t get me started on all the influence peddling his sons John Jr. and Eric (America’s Uday and Qusay Hussein) got into during his presidency. New York Attorney General Letitia James has them all in her sights. But her charges are all civil, not criminal.
The point is that, despite his best efforts, Weiss found nothing on Biden. That’s why he struck that infamous plea deal with Hunter. Sure enough, Republicans reacted by projecting the patently absurd claim that this Trump-appointed attorney was covering up for the Bidens.
In their zealousness to do Trump’s bidding, Republican cravenness is invariably surpassed by shamelessness. That alone explains them brow-beating Weiss into asking AG Garland this week to let him continue going after the Bidens.
That is straight from the dirty-tricks playbook that had Trump famously beg Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce a criminal investigation of Biden. Trump made clear that he and his Republican capos would do the rest. They intended to accuse the Bidens of criminal behavior even without any factual basis.
Frankly, Garland should have kicked Weiss out of his office. There’s no pleasing Republicans who only want to see Hunter in jail, and Biden impeached. After all, it’s self-evident that Weiss found nothing after five years because there’s nothing to find.
But Garland complied because he’s mirroring Biden’s intent to remain above any political stench.
One oddity about Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s decision to give special counsel status to David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware who has been leading the investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter, is that both Mr. Garland and Mr. Weiss have already said the prosecutor was empowered to act independently.
(The New York Times, August 11, 2023)
Still, Garland appointing Weiss as special counsel to continue investigating the Bidens is the political equivalent of insanity. He’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Biden should cry uncle
Weiss is clearly hell-bent on doing whatever it takes to give Republicans cover to claim that the Bidens, not the Trumps, are the real crime family. Facts be damned. That’s why Republicans are executing a media campaign of character assassination against them “like nobody has ever seen.”
Biden seems equally hell-bent on defying them by ignoring them. That might be good for his character, but it’s not good for the country. The best thing Biden can do is what I urged him to do months ago: retire.
Democrats hope Biden is too stressed to run
No Democrat wants Biden to run. It’s instructive that he declined to run in 2016. Instead, he led his family in grieving the death of his son, Beau. He should decline to run in 2024. Instead, he should lead his family in defending his remaining son, Hunter.
Everyone knows Republicans are effectively doing what the Russians did to help Trump get elected in 2016. But Biden announcing his “difficult decision” not to run would throw a monkey wrench in their open conspiracy.
He can cite doctors’ orders. After all, the natural stress of dealing with Hunter’s legal jeopardy could trigger a sudden heart attack.
Anyone can see that. That’s why everyone will sympathize. More to the point, though, making this announcement would unleash Democrats like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, and, of course, Kamala Harris to take on Trump.
Alas, Biden is the Rodney Dangerfield of US presidents. Because never in the history of American politics has a president received so little recognition for doing so much.
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