Whether you are one of my older readers…
…or one of my younger readers…
Either way, you know your relationship with Wide World of News is nothing short of a love story.
Please support my 7-days-a-week work on this newsletter by becoming a paying subscriber today.
Say, “yes.”
You can also make a contribution in a lower amount than the formal subscription rates.
Reply to this email and ask how you can support my work on Wide World of News.
All amounts welcome!
****
My next virtual town hall will be on Tuesday, December 15, 2020, from 7:00pm-8:00pm Eastern Time.
Our topic will be “The Presumption of Grace: First Steps.”
Please sign up for free here to join us to become part of our plan to take concrete steps to elevate grace over hate throughout our culture and in our media and politics.
You can listen to my previous remarks about “The Presumption of Grace” here.
****
Stop the presses.
Or, really, start the presses.
****
1. The minor kids of politicians should be left alone by the media, as should their adult children who keep their professional lives wholly or largely separate from their parents.
2. Adult children who enmesh themselves in their parents’ public life are a different matter. I am not talking here about offspring who attend the occasional rally or election night event. I’m talking about, say, ones who keep their own campaign schedules, headline rallies, do cable news hits, work in the White House, aspire to potential political careers of their own, send out fundraising solicitations, write books, and/or run the family business operations that benefit the politician him or herself.
3. Like, for instance, the adult Trump children besides Tiffany. As much scrutiny as Donald, Jr., Eric, and Ivanka have gotten in the last five years, it has not been nearly enough. And the near-silence of Republican elected officials, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and anti-swamp MAGAers over the behavior of this family while their father is in the White House is of a piece with the turn-away-and-shut-your-mouths posture of all of these people who should know better (and in many cases do know better). There should have been even more investigative reporting on their activities, and more pressing by the media to expose the complicity of Republicans via their silence and inaction.
4. Joe Biden’s brother James and son Hunter have made millions apparently trading off of the family name and connections while Joe Biden has been in public life.
5. It is long past the time where I should be one of the few journalists with a platform to be willing to say that the Trump family in its business dealings has clearly been hypocritical, not giving a darn about the appearance of propriety, and abusing the public trust, and maybe worse AND willing to say that the media has engaged in professional malpractice by giving Joe Biden’s family members an egregious pass on their own business dealings.
6. The Bluelands would like to focus only on the outrageous Trump wrongdoing; the Redlands would like to point out only the kid gloves the Dominant Media has used to cover Joe Biden.
7. Both complaints are completely true. One of the fundamental flaws in our current politico-media culture is almost no one makes both points. Another flaw: making either (obviously true) point in isolation brings scorn down on the head of the point maker.
8. So I’m asking for trouble from both sides today.
9. Before 2019, the media went easy on Biden, Inc. because (1) they liked Joe Biden; (2) they didn’t care enough about Joe Biden to launch investigative pieces about him; (3) Joe wasn’t obviously wealthy; and (4) the press didn’t see any in-plain-sight connection between the Biden family buckraking and Joe’s public positions.
10. During the 2020 presidential campaign, even as the press turned ever-so-slightly against Joe; even as they were forced to care about Joe because he was, first, the frontrunner and, then, the nominee; even as Joe seemed a lot richer beyond perhaps what could be accounted for by his book and speaking deals; and even as it became clear through some limited Dominant Media and Red media reporting that there was at least some connection between the Biden family buckraking and Joe’s public positions – even then the Dominant Media largely steered clear of these matters.
11. Anyone who tells you the Dominant Media’s posture towards covering (and, mostly, not covering) the Hunter Biden story was based on a consistent application of standards and principles (as opposed to the desire not to hurt Biden’s chances or, not quite the same thing but also true, being accused of/blamed for hurting Biden’s chances of beating Trump) is ignorant, lying, or a deluded member of the Dominant Media.
12. It is astonishing to me that, to this day, denizens of the Bluelands (including the press) don’t seem to know or care that for nearly fifty years, about half the country believes strongly that not only is the Dominant Media completely biased against their candidates, issue positions, and culture, but that this bias plays a significant role in tilting against them the playing field on which elections are held and public policy debates take place. It is astonishing to me both because it is so obvious and because I’ve never understood why the Dominant Media would want to alienate half of its potential audience. As Michael Jordan used to say, in a slightly different context, when asked why he didn’t endorse Democratic candidates: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”
13. What happened with the Dominant Media and Joe/Hunter Biden before the election (and what’s happening now with that story and the Eric Swalwell story) has the Redlands (and their commander-in-chief) steaming mad. The Blues’ cries of “What about Ivanka’s China deals and the Trump Hotel and everything else??!!!” miss the point. Or, at least, one of the points. Seriously, dear readers: the Dominant Media actively dropped normal reportorial standards to protect Joe Biden because they wanted Trump to lose. It is the fully factual view of 75 million partisan Americans and at least one objective reporter who cares only about the public interest.
14. Beau Biden and I were not friends, but we had a good professional relationship, via electronic messages and in person. His family’s glorification of him in life and after death is part typical familial pride but a large part is also based on what a wonderful and impressive person Beau was. By everything I ever experienced or heard, Beau was the real deal, what George W. Bush calls “a good man.”
15. I got up several hours before dawn in a hotel room in Wilmington, Delaware, on the day of Beau’s funeral to wait in line in the darkness and then light for over four hours to try to get one of the few seats set aside for the general public. Like so many people Beau met in his too-short life, I was drawn to him and, on that day, the determination to pay my respects felt both natural and essential.
16. I have no idea how open Joe, James, and Hunter were with Team Biden’s communications and legal teams about all that has happened in the past. In Campaigns 101, those three should have come fully clean with what transpired in order for the campaign staff to be ready for investigative stories, opposition research dumps, and accidental revelations. Knowing the Biden family culture, my informed guess is that people such as Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield knew way more about all this than they let on and way less than they should have to be ready to fully effectively play defense if this storyline had become a politically existential threat to Biden’s candidacy.
So Dunn, Bedingfield and Co. evaluated the landscape and took several steps to limit exposure:
* Had Hunter do two seemingly hard but actually safe interviews to allow the candidate and campaign to use the standard “asked and answered” mantra afterwards and going forward. Then they basically hid Hunter away.
* Had the candidate and the campaign refer to Hunter as Joe’s “only surviving son,” in an apparent attempt to hide behind the angelic specter of Beau and the family’s grief. Perhaps I’m being too cynical about the motivation for the use of that phrase, but I have no doubt that it gave the Dominant Press another excuse not to press the issue of Hunter’s business deals.
* Minimize the number of interviews Joe did and avoid as much as possible having him interact with reporters who might actually ask a question about any of this.
* Turned any press questions about Hunter into on-message critiques of the behavior of President Trump connected to the actions that got him impeached, knowing that such rhetorical shifting would find welcoming Dominant Media ears.
17. Throughout the campaign, the Dominant Media willfully did its best to avoid having to give any coverage to the Hunter Biden story.
18. Yes, the Trump children have done outrageous things regarding mixing government and private business. But, in addition to and separate from that truth, Hunter Biden flew around the globe on Air Force Two with his father the vice president at taxpayer expense doing lucrative business deals for which he was seemingly not qualified for the work he was allegedly supposed to do and certainly handsomely paid.
Not once, as best as I can tell, was Joe Biden asked how Hunter came to be on those international trips. Joe has claimed repeatedly he knew nothing about Hunter’s business. So they got back on the plane after having at least somewhat separate schedules on the ground and Joe never asked Hunter, “So, honey, what did you do today?”???
As a great man has said 1,000,000 times, “C’mon, man.”
Again, some reporter should have said to Joe Biden in an interview, “Tell us the story of how Hunter came to be on Air Force Two on those international trips and what happened on those trips.”
I’ve only been a reporter since 1988 and I’m still learning how to do this, but that seems like a pretty reasonable thing to ask.
19. The Dominant Media’s overwhelming desire to protect Joe reached its hilarious pre-election climax when the New York Post began reporting on what it said was the contents of Hunter’s laptop. The DMs’ reaction?
* It probably isn’t real.
* Rudy is a joke.
* Without knowing the exact chain of custody of this alleged laptop, how can we be expected to do anything?
* Some reporters at the Post were skeptical of the story.
* Russia did it.
* The Wall Street Journal says there is no paper trail saying Joe made money off of Hunter’s deals.
* Facebook and Twitter think this is a fake news and isn’t that great of them to abridge the First Amendment and isn’t their brave stand an interesting media story to cover?
* etc.
When Joe said at the debate, “I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life,” the DM’s reaction was, “That settles that – strong denial!”
I don’t think anyone believed that the Chinese Communist Party wrote out a check “Payable to Joseph R. Biden.”
The question was/should have been: “Did you ever profit indirectly from Hunter’s earnings”?
Again, as far as I know, never asked.
Not that he would necessarily have answered it honestly. Or that there is any there there. But….
20. Even when this was reported
…crickets.
21. It’s also possible to simultaneously denounce Trump’s claims of election fraud and that the election was stolen from him AND understand why some on the right believe that, once again, the media playing field was tilted against Republicans in 2020.
22. Addiction is a horrible thing for any family; it is relentless, scary, cruel, unforgiving.
23. The loving family members of addicts, including parents, siblings, and spouses, typically pray for the day when they might get better, sometimes making excuses for their backsliding, and dealing with a mixture of guilt, amazement, compassion, disappointment, and encouragement.
24. The Wednesday statement from the Biden-Harris transition seems to perfectly capture Joe Biden’s heart about his son:
“President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.”
25. Families – even families in public life, even families in or aspiring to be in the White House – should be accorded some measure of privacy, grace, and deference to the decisions they make and the rationales for those decisions.
26. But how many of you would run for president with sustained, traumatic grief over the death of a beloved child; with a son with a history of intense and varied addictions, including to lethal and illegal substances; with a complicated family situation in which the living, addicted son left his wife to start a romantic relationship with the widow of the deceased son; and with a bunch of young grandchildren?
27. I don’t believe Joe Biden should be judged for his decision to run (surely there are facts known only within his family that perhaps would alter the perspective as seen from the outside), but, again, how many of you would court the scrutiny and strain a run for president and time in the White House would bring under those circumstances?
28. Although the Justice Department investigation into Hunter reportedly began before his father announced his presidential bid, does anyone doubt that its course since then has been influenced by the fact that his father was running for the White House?
We all know the answer to that.
29. During the Democratic convention, the campaign showed a video of the Biden granddaughters in which they said that they had pressed Joe to run for president. I have no reason to doubt that account. But the Biden family now lives with the reality that it made a joint decision that has put a long-time addict under the continuing scrutiny of the most powerful law enforcement entity in the nation.
****
Here is the most interesting reporting about the investigation(s), carefully culled from leading news outlets, on the alleged origins and scope of the probe(s):
* Politico:
In addition to Delaware, the securities fraud unit in the Southern District of New York also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s finances, according to the person with direct knowledge of the investigation. The person said that, as of early last year, investigators in Delaware and Washington were also probing potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties….
In addition to the probe into Hunter Biden, federal authorities in the Western District of Pennsylvania are conducting a criminal investigation of a hospital business in which Joe Biden’s brother James was involved. Federal officials have asked questions about James Biden's role in the business, according to a second person with direct knowledge of that investigation, who said it remains ongoing….
The investigation of Hunter Biden has dealt primarily with his financial ties to foreign figures and businesses, according to the person familiar with it. In a standard practice for tax investigations, the Tax Division at Main Justice in Washington has also been involved in the probe, the person said…..
Another business partner of Hunter Biden’s, Devon Archer, was convicted in 2018 in the Southern District of New York on unrelated fraud charges. Bank records showing foreign payments to Hunter Biden surfaced as a part of that case.
After a judge overturned Archer’s conviction in late 2018 (an appeals court reinstated the conviction last month), prosecutors in the SDNY securities fraud unit revisited Archer’s case and began last year to scrutinize those foreign payments to Hunter Biden, looking for signs of money laundering, according to the person with firsthand knowledge of the investigation. But after conferring with prosecutors in Delaware, whose investigation was already well underway and acknowledged Wednesday by Hunter Biden, prosecutors in the SDNY securities fraud unit ceased their probing without opening a separate, formal investigation, the person said….
FBI agents, meanwhile, have been asking about James Biden’s dealings with the hospital company Americore Health, an operator of rural hospitals, as part of an investigation based out of the Western District of Pennsylvania, according to the person with direct knowledge of that investigation.
In late January, FBI agents raided an Americore hospital in Ellwood City, Pa., and carted off boxes. The raid, which has been previously reported, followed crippling dysfunction at the hospital.
Americore, which is in bankruptcy, has faced allegations of mismanagement unrelated to James Biden, and it is not clear whether his activities are a focus of the investigation.
It isn’t clear which entities or business dealings might be tied up in the probe, though the person with knowledge of the matter said at least some of focus was on his past work in China. Federal investigators served a round of subpoenas on Tuesday, including one for Hunter Biden, according to another person familiar with the investigation.
Federal prosecutors have been investigating Hunter Biden, President-elect Joe Biden’s son, to determine if he failed to report income from China-related business deals….
FBI agents had been seeking to talk to Hunter Biden as part of the case on Tuesday — though an interview has not yet been scheduled or taken place — as well as serve subpoenas on Hunter Biden and his associates….
A person familiar with the Hunter Biden investigation said it “is not connected to the attacks the Trump campaign and their allies made against Hunter during the campaign.”
The investigation is being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware. It was opened in late 2018 and has included inquiries into potential criminal violations of tax and money laundering laws, according to people familiar with the inquiry. The money laundering aspect of the case failed to gain traction after F.B.I. agents were unable to gather enough evidence for a prosecution, the people said….
The inquiry was focused on Hunter Biden and some of his associates, not the president-elect or other family members, two people familiar with it said. On Tuesday, prosecutors in Delaware served subpoenas, including at least one that sought information related to Hunter Biden’s taxes, two people familiar with the matter said….
The tax issues came to the attention of F.B.I. agents after they opened the money laundering investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial affairs in late 2018, under the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, according to several people familiar with the inquiry….
As part of the F.B.I.’s closely held money-laundering investigation into Mr. Biden, agents working with federal prosecutors in Delaware authorized a federal grand jury subpoena and obtained the laptop and an external hard drive. People familiar with the examination said that the F.B.I. examined the laptop but that its contents did not advance the money-laundering investigation.
The criminal investigation that included tax issues began in 2018, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is limited to Hunter Biden and his business dealings and doesn’t implicate other members of his family or the president-elect, two other people said. The investigation was sparked in part by reports of suspicious activity filed by a bank that handled foreign transactions related to Hunter Biden, one person said.
****
Check out this essential reading Washington Post opus on Biden’s reported final four choices for attorney general (Doug Jones, Sally Yates, Merrick Garland, and Deval Patrick).
If you are someone who finds it implausible, all things considered, that Biden would name a white man to the AG slot, read this:
In what has become another vital component during Biden’s selection of nominees, Jones has a long-standing relationship with the president-elect, dating back to 1978 when Biden went to Alabama to speak at Cumberland School of Law at Samford University and was introduced by a young Jones.
Jones later worked with Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee and was the Alabama co-chair of Biden’s short-lived 1988 presidential campaign.
****
Whether you are Carl Hulse or a regular American eating at a Carl’s Jr., you gotta wonder why there is all this apparently wasted motion happening on Capitol Hill when it seems that the only way that a pandemic relief compromise could be struck is if Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell actually sat face to face in a room and worked it out (perhaps joined by Chuck Schumer and Kevin McCarthy).
Instead, you have all manner of 14-ring-circus discussions that seem to be moving nowhere at best, backwards at least.
Politico says this:
[I]t’s mostly been finger pointing between the two leaders — Pelosi calling McConnell’s proposal Tuesday “appalling” and the Kentucky Republican returning fire, saying Wednesday that her and Schumer’s reaction to Tuesday’s White House offer of $916 billion in aid was “schizophrenic….”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reiterated his support for the bipartisan talks Wednesday, but also acknowledged that time is running short to get an agreement. “We need to get this done,” Hoyer told reporters. “And whatever it takes, whether it’s Speaker Pelosi and Leader McConnell, in a room, coming to grips with an agreement.”
And also this, reminiscent of one of the best and most resonant Barack Obama jokes of all time:
"One way or another we'll get it done," Pelosi told reporters Wednesday. Then Pelosi quickly dismissed a question from reporters about GOP senators saying she needs to meet with McConnell and hammer out a deal.
"Is that what they think? Good for them," Pelosi said. "Tell them to go meet with McConnell…."
“No deal” seems impossible (given the needs of America and the overall will of the Congress), but right now a deal seems more impossible.
****
From the Star Tribune:
The Minneapolis City Council passed a budget early Thursday that moves about $8 million from the Police Department to other services — but preserves its plan to hire more officers in future years.
The late change to the department's staffing projections, passed along a narrow 7-6 vote, does not change the number of officers who will work in 2021. The move, instead, avoided a political showdown with Mayor Jacob Frey.
The city expects a monthly average of 770 police officers will work in 2021, if council agrees to release funding for some recruit classes.
****
In Tuesday’s edition, I should have written “innumerable “ instead of “enumerable.” I regret the error and I am an idiot.