Joe Biden to America: Never Mind

Thoughts on the most dangerous temptation.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

I’d hoped to be writing today about leaving Xitter and Dinesh D’Souza’s admission that he is, in fact, a lying fraud artist.

I’d much rather be covering the latest revelations about the drunken dickishness of Pete Hegseth; explaining why I think we should use the word “recrudescence” more often; and sharing the fact that Kash Patel actually wrote down — and published — his Enemies List.

Of course, we’ll get back to all that. But, alas, we have to talk about my (and I suspect your) least favorite story of the week, because Joe Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, was even worse than you thought.

So happy freaking Tuesday.

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The most dangerous temptation

Let me start with several stipulations: I respect Joe Biden’s feelings as a father and his desire to spare his son. We also have to be clear-eyed about the very real threat of retribution he and family face. Indeed, the president’s pardon of Hunter pales in magnitude to what Donald J. Trump is about to wreak upon the nation.

So, the GOP’s effusions of pyretic outrage are dripping with more than the usual ooze of hypocrisy.

Let’s also recognize that the pardon will not “embolden” MAGA because Trump’s malfeasance is already hard-wired. The pardon of Hunter changes nothing.

But we also need to take a longer view.

This fight will be long, and the stakes are high, which is why protecting fundamental principles — and avoiding hypocrisy and its handmaiden “whataboutism” — is so important. The dark mirror image of “obeying in advance” is destroying in advance — smashing the icons before the iconoclasts can get to them; pre-emptively abandoning the very principles that you claim to be protecting.

An even more dangerous temptation is to become what you are fighting against; and to regard “principles” as disposable — or merely as “virtue-signaling” — when they become inconvenient.

So, while I’m sympathetic with many of the defenses of Biden’s decision to pardon his only living son, none of them are persuasive, especially because winter is coming.

**

We need to recognize that there was nothing either normal or routine about Biden’s decision. In the past, presidents have doled out pardons to their cronies, allies, and donors. But, until this week, no president had pardoned his own son.

And the pardon itself was breathtaking in its scope. Biden could have commuted Hunter’s sentence; or confined the pardon to the gun charges for which he’d been convicted or the tax crime for which he pleaded guilty. Instead, Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024. Via Aaron Blake:

That’s a nearly 11-year period during which any federal crime Hunter Biden might have committed — and there are none we are aware of beyond what has already been adjudicated — can’t be prosecuted. It notably covers when he was appointed to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014 all the way through Sunday, well after the crimes for which he was prosecuted….

Experts say there is little to no precedent for a pardon covering such a wide range of activity over such a long period, with the closest being Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard M. Nixon after Nixon resigned post-Watergate.

Biden’s explanation made it worse. And the timing was ghastly.

At the very moment when the rule of law faces its grimmest challenge in decades, Biden undermined the credibility and integrity of the Justice Department, along with the judgements of prosecutors, judges, and juries. He echoed Trump’s claims of selective political prosecution. and seemed to validate the MAGA mantra that everyone does it. Everyone is dirty. Everyone abuses their power.

As Eric Lutz reminds us, the charges against Hunter were brought by Biden’s own Justice Department. Hunter Biden entered a guilty plea, and, after his plea bargain collapsed, he was convicted by a jury of his peers.

In now attacking the legal system, and shielding his son from its consequences, the president hasn’t just gone back on his “word as a Biden”—he’s betrayed the very principles he ran on. Biden entered office talking about respecting norms, institutions, and the public trust; he’s on his way out echoing Trump’s complaints about a weaponized legal system and issuing a “full and unconditional pardon” to his son for any crimes he may have committed in the last decade.

Even worse: the pardon came after Biden repeatedly promised the American people that he would not use his power to override the criminal justice system.¹

So, wrote Politico’s Alex Burns, Biden’s flip-flop felt like a “kind of sabotage.” It was “a rich gift to those who want to blow up the justice system as we know it, and who claim the government is a self-dealing club for hypocritical elites.”

It is a promise-breaking act that subjects Biden’s allies to yet another humiliation in a year packed with Biden-inflicted injuries.

The decision comes at a moment when the capital is girding for an assault on federal law enforcement institutions led by President-elect Donald Trump and his appointees.

For months, we were told that Biden was defending democracy and committed to the rule of law. But he is now exiting the presidency, having delivered “an ostentatious vote of no confidence in the institutions that his successor most obviously intends to attack.”

This is what makes the pardon so demoralizing and consequential. As my former colleague Sonny Bunch writes, Biden’s decision “validates much of the cynicism with our politics when the guy who held himself up as the restorer of honor and decency functionally says ‘I’ll do what I want, Jack: My debauched heir doesn’t have to play by the rules.’”

**

Some of Biden’s more ardent defenders are pointing out that there have been other sleazy pardons in the past. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother-in-law, and Trump infamously pardoned his daughter’s sleazy father-in-law, whom he has now appointed ambassador to France.

But this is the problem with bad precedents. They can linger and fester for years, even generations.

And they do not bend the arc of history toward justice.

Bad precedents — like this one — warp norms and culture, by normalizing abuses of power. Today, some of the loudest voices on the online left are applauding the abuse, the hypocrisy, and dismissing the multiple lies that surrounded Biden’s pardon of his son.

To put it as mildly as I can: This seems a problematic way of protecting and defending democratic and constitutional norms, much less the rule of law.

**

Biden also seems to have confused the responsibilities of being a father and what is required of a president. Steve Schmidt reminds us: “It is not too much to demand of a president something more than we could ever ask of ourselves.” Presidents can order other people’s sons to war; and may have to “issue the orders that would kill tens of millions with a nuclear strike if the situation required the president to use those weapons.”

I don’t think I could do that, any more than I could sacrifice my own sons. But then I don’t think I should be president, and I never asked for that job. Joe Biden knew what he was getting into. Or should have.

For the last few years, Democrats (and other Trump critics) have argued that “no one is above the law.” But, writes Jonathan Chait, Biden seemed to apply a double standard to his son.

President Biden’s complaint about the higher standard applied to his son reflects the perspective of myopic privilege. Crimes by family members of powerful public officials are far more damaging to public confidence than similar crimes by anonymous people. Holding them to account through strict enforcement of the law is good and correct.

**

Then there is the political fallout.

Tom Nichols writes in the Atlantic that the pardon was a huge strategic blunder, that “will haunt Democrats as they head into the first years of another Trump administration.” Trump has repeatedly suggested that he will issue broad pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists. As Nichols notes, “Nothing will stop Trump from doing such things, nor will he pay any political price for such future pardons: All he ever cared about was winning the White House to stay out of jail, and he’s accomplished that mission.”

But if Biden had not pardoned his son, Republicans at every level of politics would have had to answer for Trump’s abuse.

They would have had to say, on the record, whether they agreed with Trump letting people who stormed the Capitol and assaulted law-enforcement officers out of jail. Although Trump would have remained beyond the reach of the voters, the vulnerable Republicans running for reelection might have pleaded with him to avoid some of the more potentially disgusting pardons.

Forget all that. Joe Biden has now provided every Republican—and especially those running for Congress in 2026—with a ready-made heat shield against any criticism about Trump’s pardons, past or present. Biden has effectively neutralized pardons as a political issue, and even worse, he has inadvertently given power to Trump’s narrative about the unreliability of American institutions.

Democrats who had staked their careers on the “rule of law,” were cut loose.

Those who believed Biden’s explicit promises looked like fools. Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona told NBC News that he was “pretty angry because it’s going to be incredibly important that political leaders of both parties stand up for the independence of the Department of Justice, stand up to these attacks suggesting that the Department of Justice has become politicized and needs to be dismantled or the FBI needs to be dismantled.”

The good news? A growing number of Democrats are breaking with Biden — and speaking out.²

We will need more of that. Much more if we are to get through the winter that is coming our way.

Thank God, I have pictures.

Auggie and Eli are waiting for me to finish this newsletter.

**

Despite their fierce appearance, the dogs have a non-aggression pact with the squirrels. Which explains why this little guy was having a feast just outside the dog door.

1. Via Jim Geraghty:

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, July 27, 2023:

Q: Thank you. If I can go back to the first question of the briefing. I know you said not a lot has changed since yesterday and that it’s a personal matter, but from presidential perspective, is there any possibility that the President would end up pardoning his son?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: No.

Q: Well, is there (inaudible)?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I just said no. I just answered. [Emphasis added.]

Karine Jean-Pierre, September 15, 2023:

Q: And just a brief second one. Would the President pardon or commute his son if he’s convicted?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, I’ve answered this question before. It was asked of me not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago. And I was very clear, and I said no. [Emphasis added.]

Karine Jean-Pierre, December 8, 2023:

Q: One more on this. Only because you’ve said it before, I just want to re-up in — in light of these new charges. You’ve said before that the President would not pardon his son. Is that still the case?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Nothing has changed. That is still the case. [Emphasis added.]

President Biden, in an interview with ABC News’s David Muir, June 6, 2024:

Muir: As we sit here in Normandy, your son Hunter is on trial. And I know that you cannot speak about an ongoing federal prosecution, but let me ask you, will you accept the jury’s outcome, their verdict, no matter what it is?

Biden: Yes.

David: And have you ruled out a pardon for your son?

Biden: Yes. [Emphasis added.]

A written statement from the president, June 11, 2024:

As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. [Emphasis added.]

Karine Jean-Pierre, June 12, 2024:

Q: So, you’re not ruling out that he would commute the sentence?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Look, what I’m saying is that the President — the Pre- — I have not spoken to the President about this. And what I’m saying is he was asked about a pardon. He was asked about — he was asked about the trial specifically. And he answered it very clearly, very forthright. As we know, the sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet. I don’t have anything beyond what the President said. He’s been very clear about this. [Emphasis added.]

President Biden, during a press conference in Fasano, Italy, June 13, 2024:

With regard to the question regarding the family, I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is — he’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know. And I am satisfied that — I’m not going to do anything. I sa- — I said I’d abide by the jury decision, and I will do that. And I will not pardon him. [Emphasis added.]

Karine Jean-Pierre, August 14, 2024:

Q: You’ve said from the podium that President Biden would not pardon his son. If Vice President Harris is elected, would he tell her also to not pardon his son?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: I — I mean, that’s a hypothetical that I — look, the president — I can speak for the president, and he said he would not pardon his son. And I’m just going to leave it there. [Emphasis added.]

Karine Jean-Pierre, September 5:

Q: Good. How are you? On Hunter Biden changing his plea, does the White House have a comment at all? And does that change the president’s calculus on pardoning his son?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, on your first question, I — I’m not able to com- — to comment at this time. On your second question — which was, I guess, part of one question — it’s no. It’s still no. [Emphasis added.]

Karine Jean-Pierre, November 7:

Q: Secondly, his son, Hunter, is also up for being sentenced next month. Does the president have any intention of pardoning him?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no. [Emphasis added.]

2. Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis was tone perfect: