Hunter Biden is STILL Not Running for President

Former VP Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Only one of these guys is actually running for president.

The NY Post ran a story Wednesday that claimed they had ‘secret’ Hunter Biden emails. Within minutes, the story was crumbling to pieces. Sketchy, untraceable documents, an even sketchier chain-of-custody, the involvement of known bad actors (Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani!), a bottom-feeding newspaper, with the byline of a Hannity producer (their first, evidently).

Sounds totally legit, right?

Trump and his associates have been going around and around on this Hunter Biden/Ukraine nonsense for the past couple years, or more. Where did they dig it all up? Russia, where else. It started off as Russian propaganda (someone to blame for the actual Russian interference and hacking in the 2016 election), and Trump latched onto it as a way to excuse his Russian pals and put the blame on Hillary and the Ukrainians. Somehow (stay with me) Hillary conspired with Ukraine to take down the Trump campaign because, that’s something an American presidential candidate would do, right? They also claimed Ukraine ended up with the server that had been hacked at the DNC (they didn’t, it’s still at the DNC).

It’s pretty crazy, right?

Once they bought that, then the Russians started with the whole idiotic ‘Hunter Biden’ nonsense. That story goes Hunter got a job on the board at a Ukrainian energy/gas company, Burisma (that’s true). They claim the county’s prosecutor, Viktor Mykolayovych Shokin was investigating Burisma, and Hunter used his father, Vice President Joe Biden, to pressure the president of the Ukraine to fire Shokin and end the investigation. The problem with this is, well, reality.

Viktor Shokin was corrupt, and the international community was calling for his ouster. He wasn’t investigating Burisma, which was part of the problem. With Shoklin dropping investigations and opening political ones, the western democracies took note and wanted Skokin out, as did the Obama administration. In fact, it was the policy of the Obama administration to get rid of Shokin. President Obama dispatched VP Biden to get the job done. Biden, again with the support of the international community, demanded the Skokin be fired. He was.

And of story.

Except that Skokin, angry at his dismissal, cooperated with the Russians in helping spread disinformation about his career, about the Ukraine, about the Bidens. The far right lapped it up, with ‘reporter’ John Solomon, through his position at the right-leaning The Hill newspaper, helping disseminate the story here in America. From there, it went to Trump who called in Rudy Giuliani (his personal lawyer) and dispatched him to the Ukraine. Once there, Rudy met for help and introductions with a couple shady ‘business men’ (now in federal custody) who illegally contributed millions to the GOP and Trump (hence the federal custody). It’s an ugly mess, made worse by deliberate disinformation and politics.

Trump, he seems to sincerely believe all this nonsense.

Culmination of this stupidly? Trump threatens to withhold needed financial aid (voted on and passed by congress) to Ukraine unless the new president announces a sham investigation into… Joe and Hunter Biden. Withholding aid for a personal foreign contribution to his re-election campaign. Word gets out gets out, complaint is filed, knowledge of the complaint is leaked, transcript is released (take that!) and Trump is impeached. The GOP-controlled senate let him go, of course. And then, the same GOP senate, to help out Trump, held a weeks-long ‘investigation’ that found… nothing. But spent a lot of tax payer money doing it. They released a report in which they shoved every extraneous, embarrassing detail they could find about Hunter Biden, smearing a guy who is not even running.

Not a great moment for a Republican senate that was already an embarrassment to the country.

So, here we are again. More Russian disinformation about Hunter Biden, dripping with sketchiness and pushed to try and affect an election in the last couple weeks. And it’s about emails as well! It’s like Trump figured ‘it worked once, it’ll work again!”

This is not 2016, and no one, beyond the heavy breathers on the far right, cares about Hunter Biden’s fake emails.

Go. Vote.

The Lawless Law and Order President

Angry little man rages at the press.

Donald Trump loves him some Twitter. He’s on there incessantly, obsessively, tweeting Fox & Friends talking points, retweeting racist crap that he ‘didn’t know’ was racist, attacking people and name calling, you know, all the things a president with any decency or integrity would not be doing. Anything besides working.

Lately the thing he’s been spewing out is ‘Law & Order!’ Oh, excuse me, that should be ‘LAW & ORDER!!!’ Because all caps makes it that much more serious. But, here’s the thing; how are we supposed to take that message seriously when it comes from the most lawless president to ever occupy the office?

Trump has turned the Department of Justice into the Department of Trump Justice, with Attorney General William Barr his personal lawyer, the ‘Roy Cohn’ he’s always wanted in that position. He has been manipulating the Border Patrol and federal prison guards into his very own secret police and using them against American citizens. He’s breaking laws without repercussion or redress, because he’s captured any organization that would stand against him; The Republican Party is now the Trump Party, and not the least bit interested in bringing him to account. The DoJ? Forget about it. The courts? There are enough good judges left, but Trump has been shoving as many far-right and unqualified people into every open slot he can find, so we might not have much justice there for long.  

And that’s the way he wants it.

He’s been using these captured agencies to go after his perceived enemies, he sends his fellow Trumpublicans after anyone that doesn’t toe the Trump line, fires anyone that dares to contradict him, and has been ‘investigating’ those who had investigated his own shady and illegal actions, threatening political opponents with jail.

Today, we find that one of those political investigations has lost a head prosecutor. Nora R. Dannehy, member of the one of the Durham investigation, named after U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham was appointed to investigate the people who investigated the Russia probe. While once thought of as a respected career lawyer, Durham is seen more and more as someone doing the will of Trump and Barr. Dannehy quit, citing political interference in the investigation, as Barr presses them to release their conclusions before the election so Trump can use them against his ‘enemies’. Lord knows he needs something else to talk about.

This is the sort of thing Nixon dreamed about; using the powers of his office to attack and possibly jail anyone who might dare rise up and tell him ‘no’. This is the Trump goal, the dream, anyone who has a cross word, anyone with an unwelcome thought will be destroyed. Not fired, not mocked on Twitter, but eviscerated, ruined, burned to the ground and the earth salted after. He is a scorched-earth authoritarian, burning his imagined foes to the ground even if it takes the country with them. As long as he personally doesn’t get burned, why should he care?

The country can burn, as long as he gets his way.

Donald Trump is a con man, a tax cheat, a pathological liar, a fraud, and that was before he got into office. Now that the spotlight he has been so desperate for has been burning him for nearly four years, and it hasn’t been good for his already sady reputation. These nearly four years have exposed Trump, reduced and defined him down to his essence. Pure rage and grievance. He and his supporters are burning the country to the ground with it.

And salting the earth after.

“LAW & ORDER” indeed.