Be honest — if you were president, and your son ran afoul of the law, you’d likely try to pull some strings to help him, if not pull the ultimate string and pardon him.
Most parents would, no matter what their kid did. President Biden is no different, and as such he should pardon his son Hunter. More than that, President-elect Donald Trump should publicly give him permission and encouragement, so as to take away any political stigma the act might otherwise carry.
Hunter Biden is a degenerate — or at least he was. A lot of people believe the cocaine found at the White House was his, just because it sounds like something the former junkie would have done. Without evidence and conviction, Hunter’s innocence in that case has to be assumed — he deserves the same presumptions all Americans are due. But again, he was a degenerate you wouldn’t want anywhere near your life. Only he knows if he’s still that person.
Unless you are the child his family ignores or someone he has cheated on or ripped off, Hunter Biden has done nothing to you personally. I get that maybe you don’t like his father, and I don’t either, but so what?
If Hunter has turned his life around, good for him. And I hope he has. That doesn’t make him any less of a tax cheat, which he has been convicted of. It doesn’t make him less a violator of federal gun laws, which he was also convicted of.
But that said, his father is president and should pardon him. Not because Hunter deserves it — though maybe he does if he’s reformed — but because that’s what a parent should do.
What kind of father would fail to pardon his kid? Joe Biden promised he wouldn’t, and maybe he won’t, but he should reconsider. And Trump should publicly bless the idea or even say he’ll do it himself.
I remember when the first Trump term started and Trump announced that he did not support pursuing Hillary Clinton for storing classified material on her illegal, unsecured private server. It was like George W. Bush announcing in 2001 that he wanted to look forward, not back, thereby sweeping the crimes of the Bill Clinton administration — the campaign contributions from China, the money raised from a Buddhist monastery where residents had taken a vow of poverty and renting out the Lincoln Bedroom, etc. — under the rug.
This is not that. Hunter was never president. He’s the son of a president. A prison term for Hunter doesn’t help anyone or solve anything. And while it might seem funny or amusing, it would just look mean.
Hunter has been convicted. Even though a pardon wipes that away legally, it cannot wipe away the knowledge of every person in this country that those crimes happened. OJ Simpson was legally “not guilty” of murder, but everyone knew he did it.
By Trump telling Biden to pardon or grant clemency to his son, Trump will appear magnanimous, not at all the heartless, selfish monster Democrats and the media accuse him of being.
You know Joe wants to do it. If he does it without Trump’s blessing, it will just be another distraction the incoming administration does not need. Trump is a lame duck already since he can’t run for reelection, he needs as much good will as possible to get done what he can in the first 100 days of his administration, because the campaign for the midterms will start sooner than you think. This can put a little more fuel in the tank to help that along.
Trump can just say, “I know he’s guilty and he did horrible things, but I understand a father’s love for his kids. He appears to have turned his life around, and I hope he has. For that reason I support President Biden granting clemency to his son.”
It makes Trump the bigger person and gives him at least partial credit for what is likely to happen anyway.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
