This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy. Why do Democrats insist on doing this? Why can’t they simply figure out that the press is not their friend? They believe in the notion of a “liberal media” more than most Republicans do. From Axios:
When Biden declared for president in 2019, his family was plagued by addiction, grief and soap opera levels of drama, the legal cases involving his son Hunter and daughter Ashley have shown.
It’s affected the president: Aides know to tiptoe around him when there’s bad family news, and he’s often angry or distracted about the legal and political attacks on them, according to five people familiar with the dynamic. His family’s struggles—along with the still raw personal grief over his son Beau’s death in 2015—can manifest with tears and an “impenetrable sadness,” as one person close to Biden called it. It’s all led Biden to rely more heavily on those he’s known the longest—creating a protective inner circle around him.
“What if?” questions hung over Hunter’s trial in Delaware, even with some Biden aides. Among them: What if Joe Biden hadn’t run for president when his family was in turmoil? Ashley’s rehab diary likely wouldn’t have been stolen and published online. Hunter and the family’s emails, texts, and pictures probably wouldn’t have been spread across the internet and the tabloids. A special counsel almost certainly wouldn’t be prosecuting Hunter, threatening him with decades in jail. And members of the notoriously private family wouldn’t have been called to testify about the traumatic events of recent years before jurors and dozens of reporters.
Who are these “aides” and “people familiar with the dynamic”—which is a pretty damn lame attribution, now that I think about it—and if they are family intimates or White House aides, why are they not being barbecued right now on the South Lawn? I’ve seen too much self-destructive oversharing from anonymous Democrats over the years to believe that all of this comes from the political opposition. Right when the questions seem to be getting intense about the former president*’s mental state, and as he is burdened with a criminal conviction, a story suddenly appears casting the Bidens as the Tyrones in a summer-stock performance of Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
“We are such things as rubbish is made of, so let’s drink up and forget it.”
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
