Hunter Biden's elite and storied life of privilege
It's easy to dismiss the latest revelations about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, what with the wife, the ex-wife, the love child, the paternity suit, as exclusively Page Six material, not relevant to Biden's presidential campaign. After all, hasn't President Trump had a rather tumultous private life, too? Hasn't Trump said some embarrassing things off the record? And how can anyone blame a parent for the misdeeds of a kid? Lots of good people have bad kids....
Here's the latest revelations, from none other than Page Six itself, which later on in the piece expertly strings together all the other Hunter Biden scandals:
President wannabe Joe Biden’s son — who recently married a South African beauty just 10 days after they first met — has been hit with a paternity suit by a woman in Arkansas.
Lunden Alexis Roberts, 28, filed a petition for child support against Hunter Biden, claiming that she gave birth to “Baby Doe” last August, according to court papers filed last month.
The two-page suit was filed in Independence County, Ark., on May 28, nearly two weeks after Hunter’s surprise marriage to South African native Melissa Cohen.
“The parties were in a relationship and a child, Baby Doe … was born as a result of that relationship,” said the filing, which lists Hunter’s legal name, Robert Hunter
Biden.The mom is asking that the court “establish paternity of the child, finding that the defendant is the child’s biological father.”
Here's a nice microcosm timeline from a writer at the Washington Free Beacon:
Hunter Biden timeline:
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) June 20, 2019
'15: Wife kicks him out, he says a Ashley Madison account isn't his
'17: Dating dead brother's wife, ex-wife says he spent all their $ on drugs/prostitutes
'18: Impregnates Arkansas woman?
'19: Breaks up with brother's wife, marries woman he just met
And Nick Gillespie at Reason magazine sums up why this Hunter Biden picture matters to Biden politically as well:
It seems as if every day brings a new crisis or controversy, such as Biden's warm statements toward segregationists in the 1970s, his eulogy of racist Sen. Strom Thurmond in 2003, and the emerging narrative that his son Hunter, whose personal life is a total shitshow, appears to be an international grifter who allegedly used dad's connections to make shady deals with Chinese and Ukrainian interests. Whether such charges are true in a serious way is a lot less important than the fact that Biden will be facing such attacks from now through at least the end of the primary process. Even if he manages to win the nomination, he will emerge bloodied as hell.
We have Hunter apparently two-timing his girlfriend/ex-sister-in-law and if so, running out on his tab for child support. Pretty irresponsible if found to be true.
To follow the Page Six catalogue from the Life of Hunter, then we have the divorce from the wife over spending money on hookers and drugs. Irresponsible? No doubt about it.
Then we have the earlier story of Hunter Biden getting dismissed from the U.S. Naval Academy for cocaine use. Question one: Why wasn't he busted? Question two: Who the heck let him in there anyway, it sure as heck couldn't have been merit. Suddenly, irresponsibility is starting to look like coddling and privilege.
But wait, there's more: Now we get to Hunter Biden's post-Navy career, which to say the least, has been lucrative. According to Page Six:
In addition to Hunter’s love life, his overseas business dealings have come under scrutiny as his father continues his high-profile run for the White House.
While Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter conducted business in two countries where his father was conducting diplomacy.
The two business deals, in Ukraine and China, have raised ethics concerns about conflicts of interest.
Joe Biden, seen as a Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 presidential race, led a US delegation to Kiev in 2014. Weeks after the visit, Hunter was appointed to the board of Ukraine’s largest energy producer.
Hunter was also doing business in China when he traveled with his father there in December 2013.
There's probably a lot more out there. But it's possible from these incidents to see a pattern emerging - that of a rich kid whose life never has any consequences, no matter what he does. It's not exactly because he's started out rich, although he's certainly rich now. It's that he's leveraged old pop's connections as a lifestyle choice and eventually came to the conclusion that he could do anything he wanted and nothing would ever happen to him.
Sound like Hillary Clinton? Sound like a privileged elite? This is exactly why Americans chose to elect Trump - that irresponsibility, that unaccountability, that lifestyle so unlike what ordinary Americans who pay bills and support kids, normally do. Biden's connections and absence of any consequences in his life are undoubtedly what made him think he could skip child support or play marital shenanigans. For him, it's just the way he lives.
For the rest of us, not so much, normal Americans could land in jail for quite a few of the same transgressions Hunter Biden has gotten away with. Maybe that's a problem for voters as Old Joe comes calling to seek their vote.