Thursday, June 22, 2023

Trump and GOP Need Hunter Biden: As Their Fav 24/7 Target for Sustained Hype

 

Nail Hunter Biden but Don’t Touch My Kids

If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
(Jr's email reply to the meeting)

Excellent (and very long article) here from SALON.com with the headline below that clearly shows the utter and sustained total hypocrisy of this “new” Trump owned and operated GOP as well as his lifelong con artist tactics and tricks. (Author of the excellent article is written by Brian Karem from SALON, and formatted for the blog):

“Hunter Biden and Donald Trump: Not remotely equivalent — but still a problem for Joe Biden”

Everything isn't equal. A traffic ticket isn't a robbery charge. A scratch isn't the same as a bleeding gut wound. The charges against Hunter Biden are not the same as those against Donald Trump.

Trump and his minions have struggled against the facts with a long-running deceitful narrative that benefits only themselves: They claim that Hunter Biden is a larger-than-life criminal, perhaps a Michael Corleone figure in a family criminal enterprise that threatens our way of life.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would have you believe that Hunter Biden's plea deal is evidence of a two-tiered justice system. 

Just a few days ago he was among those complaining that Trump had been indicted and the younger Biden had not, so that was definitive evidence of a two-tiered justice system. Now, McCarthy just doesn't like the deal Hunter got after pleading guilty.

Let's let Trump plead guilty and then we can argue about the deal he makes. This claim of a two-tiered system, coming from the GOP, is not only laughable but about as disingenuous as claiming that Kevin McCarthy is a capable public speaker.

To say there's a two-tiered justice system in America is a credible argument — but only for those who have actually experienced it. 

Republicans in Congress use the expression even though they are a group of privileged politicians who have almost nothing in common with those who are actually subjected to that system. They do this because it resonates with those who have suffered, and cons voters into backing them.

This works sometimes, because the poor and the under-educated in our society are smart enough to understand that there really is a two-tiered justice system, even if they make the unaccountable mistake of believing that Trump is on the lower tier. That is an insult to every person of any color or creed who has been killed, roughed up, beaten, jailed, or abused by our system for little or no reason.

Trump has never had a cop put a knee on his neck. 

Trump has never been randomly beaten, or subjected to “Stop and Frisk” based on no probable cause.

Trump has never even had a mugshot — although he's been indicted for felonies twice, in two different jurisdictions, just this spring.

Trump has casually flaunted his disrespect for the law ever since he crawled from the primordial ooze that spawned him. 

He's a rich, entitled aging white guy with a bad comb over, a private jet, and a knack for inciting violence. 

He's a grifter with no soul, a black spot on America's lungs that only metastasizes further each time he draws breath.

He has been arraigned for two felonies without ever being handcuffed. He hasn't spent a minute in jail. 

He hasn't had to worry about a bail bond, or getting a ride home from jail, or being denied the ability to travel. 

He hasn't lost his passport even though with his private plane he's a prime flight-risk candidate. 

He's been afforded every courtesy a man of money and power has come to expect, even as the Justice Department investigates him. 

Trump is even being investigated by people he appointed to office! Who among us has had that privilege? That's a special tier all by itself.

Trump continues to incriminate himself in public, and while he claims he did a great job in his recent Fox News interview with Bret Baier, very few people outside the prosecution team were cheering. 

Maybe special counsel Jack Smith congratulated him, but Trump’s own lawyers (Chris Christie noted), were headed for the nearest windows ready to jump.

Now Hunter Biden is Trump’s fall guy. Trump will continue to lie about the president's son and take advantage of a man who has obviously battled addiction and a range of other personal demons, for as long as he possibly can.

As for Joe Biden, he has no one but himself to blame for letting Trump get away with it. Biden is an excellent strategist. On the international stage he's unparalleled. He's had extensive success domestically, and he's a caring and loving father. 

When Biden actually does speak in public, it is usually pointed, effective and often poignant. His dismissal of Vladimir Putin during Biden's visit to Poland is one example. The off-the-cuff comment that Putin couldn't be allowed to remain in power was actually embraced by some Trumpers. 

Essentially the only thing Joe Biden has said about Hunter is “I'm proud of my son.” His son took responsibility for his actions. That's something Donald Trump will never do. 

But by Wednesday morning, stories were circling that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)was considering a run for the White House. 

Rep. Lauren Boebert  (R-CO) was tweeting out a threat to introduce a motion to impeach Biden, while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called Boebert a “little bi*ch” a copycat, saying that she thought of it first. 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and a slew of others took to the airwaves, streaming services and social media, shouting about the evils of Joe Biden via proxy in pulpits, grocery stores and on playgrounds across the country — even as McCarthy told Boebert that her motion to impeach was a dumb idea.

Who was pleading Joe Biden's case? Other than the president's restrained comment about his son, and a few news articles pointing out that Hunter Biden probably got a heavier hand from the DOJ than your average Joe would have — and precisely because he is the president's son — little has been said. 

SALON writer Dean Obeidallah pointed to reasons to investigate Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, considering their dubious business dealings while in Trump’s White House.

Obeidallah wrote: If the GOP is truly concerned with relatives to a president profiting off their proximity to power, then they should be launching an investigation into both Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner for reaping billions in profits while Trump sat in the Oval.”

But it isn't up to journalists and commentators to make Biden's point for him. He has the bully pulpit. The job is his. Harry Truman famously said: “The buck stops here.” Where is that level of responsibility in the Oval Office today?

Trump replaced it with: “I take no responsibility,” and for whatever reason, Biden appears to believe he is above the fray. 

The president of the United States has allowed Trump and his Congressional Chorus of Con Artists (the CCCA, for short) to take center stage. Their broken record plays nonstop. They grow exponentially bolder as they get little pushback to their warped narrative. They are the political equivalent of the droning sound of mating locusts in late summer. 

All those Trump Republicans like to talk about a failure of the system.

The only failure in the system we can see is that we labor under the misconception that sane, rational adults would participate either in running for public office or in voting for those who run for office.

Our forefathers crafted a government that gave power to the people, but they assumed the people would more or less understand what government was for — and also that we all shared a set of facts and were more or less in the same boat.

Today, there's none of that. We have seemingly endless civil strife because we cannot find the harmony we all share. Take away the politics for just a second. 

Answer a few simple questions: Do you want to be able to choose your own health care? 

Do you want to walk in public without the palpable fear of being gunned down? 

Do you want paved streets? 

Do you want functioning hospitals? 

Do you want your police department to treat everyone equally? 

Do you want your children, and everybody else's, to receive a decent education?

If your house catches fire, do you want the fire department to answer the call? 

If you kept government documents that weren't yours (even though you claimed that you didn't have them and also that you did have them because you're entitled to them) wouldn't you expect to face criminal charges? Wouldn't you expect to have a mugshot taken, to be fingerprinted, handcuffed, and put in jail until you made bail?

Joe Biden has had a great run and a historic first term. But if he doesn't have the energy “for the final battle,” as Trump calls it, he needs to tap out and give someone else a chance.

President Biden represents a clear majority of the people. This is where and when we need true leadership to battle against the unending tide of noxious excrement heaped on us daily by Trump and those in his party who only serve themselves.

If Biden and his administration really understand the battle we currently face, they'll get up off their flaccid backsides and start telling us why we should vote for them. Otherwise they cannot depend on a majority of  the American voting public — under a daily barrage of disinformation from Trump and his minions –— to come to a rational decision next November.

Not pushing back against Trump's reign of error is insane, and this country has had enough insanity.

Donald Trump has lost the ability to convince millions of people that he should be the next president — but he still has the ability to cast doubt on Joe Biden's viability for a second term. That will be enough to persuade some folks to vote for Trump.

In fact, Biden still has far more credibility than Trump. Things are not equal. But Biden and his people apparently do not understand the seriousness of the issue. It is not enough to be pointed and poignant. It's time to be loud and proud. 

Now the background article follows to prop up the fine article above. 

I have highlighted the keys below to show what I mean when as the Trump photo above caption implies to the effect: “Nail Biden’s son, but don’t you dare touch my son or daughter or son-in-law – not one bit.”

BACKGROUND ARTICLE ON TRUMP Jr.

“Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort met with Russian lawyer during 2016 campaign”

ABC NEWS (July 8, 2017) – Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin in a meeting at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had clinched the GOP nomination for the presidency. 

According to a report first published by The New York Times, citing confidential government records that were described to the newspaper, about the three who met with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney who later had her own legal problems.

The source said the campaign was not discussed; it is unclear at this time what was discussed at the 2016 meeting. The same source described the Times report as accurate.

This is the first confirmation of a meeting between Trump family members and Russians during his campaign for the presidency. Trump Jr. described the meeting as brief and said it mostly concerned Americans' ability to adopt Russian children.

CRITICAL INSERT: Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort attended the meeting. Trump Jr. initially suggested that the meeting was primarily about international adoption issues. In fact later emails reveal that Trump Jr. met with the Russian attorney in the hopes of receiving information that he thought would be helpful to his father's presidential campaign, i.e., dirt on Hillary Clinton (from NPR).

Trump’s team of aides in the meeting appeared to be baffled by her focus on this, instead of the promised dirt on Clinton, according to testimony released by the Senate Judiciary Committee about the meeting, and Trump Jr. said about that:It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russians. It was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up.”

The meeting was only disclosed by Kushner recently, when the senior White House aide re-submitted a form necessary for his security clearance as Kushner's attorney, Jamie Gorelick, said in a statement regarding the revelation, explaining that the form was originally submitted before it should have been.

Gorelick said in her statement:As we have previously stated, Mr. Kushner's SF-86 was prematurely submitted and, among other errors, did not list any contacts with foreign government officials. The next day, Mr. Kushner submitted supplemental information stating that he had had 'numerous contacts with foreign officials' about which he would be happy to provide additional information. He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, and Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”

Veselnitskaya is best known for her work against the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 bill that blocks certain Russian officials' entrance to the U.S. and their use of the U.S. banking system. The Magnitsky Act was largely a response to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.

Magnitsky was killed by Russian police after he uncovered a huge tax fraud scheme linked to the top levels of the Russian state. The act serves as a blacklist that targets Russian officials involved in the murder and its cover-up. The act passed and Russia stopped Americans from adopting Russian children.

My 2 Cents: I combined the current excellent SALON article above and also with the ABC News article above to emphasize just how awful both Trump and his carefully-controlled GOP is in their deception tactics of fooling the public the way they do.

That quote I head recently says it all about Trump and his skill as a con artist in keeping his base in tow at the same time those in the Republicans in the House (most of them) and in the GOP side of the Senate (a large portion them) fearful and scared of Trump about losing his base that they also need to stay in office and thus in power, too, and that quote is: “They blame everyone else for their crimes.”

How shameful is that to serve in government and not give a damn about serving honorably and faithfully for the people. The GOP’s is truly the hypocrite’s guiding light – and, in the worst possible way.

Oh, and BTW: Lest we Forget, Saudi Prince MBS’ $2 billion “gift” to Jared Kushner shortly after he left the Trump White House.

Thanks for stopping by.


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