Thunderdome: Hunter Biden's Indictment, That Ignatius Column, and Impeachment Time

A wild week in D.C.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week it finally happened: no, not that Hunter Biden indictment (more on that in a minute) — David Ignatius gave Washington elites permission to talk about moving on from Joe Biden.

Few columnists represent the voice of the D.C. establishment more than Ignatius, who was counted among the favorite writers of the president at least until publishing this piece, titled "President Biden should not run in 2024." We'll see if he's going to get invited back for the next cranky conversation in the Oval, where Joe will show him he's still pretty spry — no joke!

While outlining his obvious defects as a candidate, Ignatius also tries to build a golden bridge out of office, praising Biden and his administration as meaningful, important, and accomplished, as if trying to reassure his reader that bowing out is not giving up. As Mediaite writer Colby Hall put it: "Perhaps most damning is the nuanced and nearly loving tone Ignatius takes, almost as if he’s a loving son giving tough news to a cherished parent that they are no longer able to drive a car."

All this means that Biden's liabilities are impossible to deny any more, particularly on the world stage. Coming in the wake of the president's "I'm going to go to bed" remarks at the G20, it sure looks like the overlapping Venn diagram of the Washington foreign policy blob, the deep state insiders, and the exasperated MSNBC hosts are trying to push their private feelings out into the open prior to the eleventh hour. And to be clear: none of them actually want Biden out for the good of the country, they're just increasingly worried he'll lose.

This certainly feels like a vibe shift! But given how long Biden fought to get here, will he really let the brass ring slip so easily from his grasp? Or perhaps, given the weight of a campaign and the low likelihood he'll finish out a second term, he might choose to step aside next year to make way for the first woman president... a legacy unto itself with the progressive left. But then how will they feel if she loses next November?

For this week's podcast, we go into these questions and more -- and talk about the risks and potential rewards of Republicans' impeachment inquiry. Listen and subscribe today!

About that Hunter Biden indictment

So this is an obvious smokescreen, right?

This afternoon, a Delaware federal court indicted Biden on three counts following an investigation by Special Counsel David Weiss. Two of the counts are in regard to the president’s son lying on a form when purchasing a Colt Cobra revolver five years ago, where, according to the indictment, he falsely claimed that he was not using illegal narcotics at the time of sale. The third count alleges that he was using the drugs while in possession of the firearm.

Consider the following:

• The gun indictment is very simple and straightforward and could’ve been brought a long time ago… so why this week?

• This count has nothing to do with what Republicans are doing with their impeachment inquiry, but the two stories will be combined by Democrats and the media — already James Comer is having to separate the two strands.

• The gun charges are the most sympathetic of Hunter’s misdeeds, given the drug addiction involved, and therefore allow the White House to spin it as targeting the Biden family in an aggressive way.

• The death of the sweetheart plea deal can now be swept under the rug by saying “Look, we’re the party of law and order now, no one’s above the law! This indictment proves it — let the courts work, just like with former President Trump” — already Jamie Raskin is sounding this line.

• Democrat trolls additionally can call Republicans hypocrites, because Hunter’s lawyers will challenge gun provisions deploying NRA-style arguments, particularly last summer’s Bruen ruling. Do only the Bidens not have gun rights?

• Everyone knows Joe Biden will never let Hunter see the inside of a prison cell. He will either win re-election and pardon him, or lose and pardon him, or pardon him then resign/not run so Kamala Harris takes over.

The actual big violations of FARA, tax fraud, and more are all the “next shoe” to drop, though, and we’ll see if there’s enough pressure that they do. At that point the question becomes whether a pressure campaign puts Joe Biden in a position of making his son a fall guy for all of this.

One last question: if Hunter Biden hadn’t gone to that state dinner just days after his deal was announced, does this all play out the same way?

Age comes for us all

The Ignatius column arrives as more and more people seem open to engaging in The Age Question, motivated somewhat by Biden's evident decline, but also by the wavering senile moments of Dianne Feinstein, Mitch McConnell's freezes, and the continued presence of Nancy Pelosi (who just announced at age 83 that she'll be running for re-election).

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney isn't going along with this. He announced that he won't be running for re-election to the Utah Senate seat he's held since 2018, in part because of his age. "I spent my last 25 years in public service of one kind or another. At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid 80s. Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders," Romney announced in a video released by his office.

That supposedly "ageist" message, it turns out according to a Quinnipiac University poll, is increasingly on the minds of voters: 61 percent of Americans now support an age cap for presidential candidates, including roughly equivalent portions of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. A higher number support similar limits on Senate and House members, including 66 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Independents. Most of those polled want the limits set at age 75 or less… which would obviously outlaw any of the above mentioned politicians from holding office.

Joe Scarborough admitted this week that privately, Democrats all feel that Joe Biden is too old to run:

“Mika and I, everybody, we talk to, every political discussion, it talks a lot about Trump, but when it comes to Joe Biden, people say, ‘Man, he’s too old to run.’ He’s, and I mean, he’s not going to, he’s not really going to run.”

“So, you know, we often will complain about Republicans who will say one thing about Donald Trump off the air and another on air,” he added. “Well, let me just say, Democrats, off the air, will say ‘Joe Biden’s too old. Why is he running.’ On the air? They won’t say that.”

And it's not just on the left. Ron DeSantis echoed this message in his interview this week with CBS's Norah O'Donnell:

"The presidency is not a job for someone that's 80 years old. And there's nothing, you know, wrong with being 80. Obviously I'm the governor of Florida. I know a lot of people who are elderly. They're great people. But you're talking about a job where you need to give it 100%. We need an energetic president."

The problem for everyone who wants to move on from this aged, increasingly decrepit leadership is that it will take a long time to work through a generational shift. The Senate's median age is older than 65, and many of its oldest incumbents are once again running for re-election... which means that a lot more of the Ignatius-style "dad can't drive the car any more" conversations will need to happen to deliver on the appetite for generational change.

The case for impeaching Joe Biden

Thoughts from Bill McGurn in the WSJ:

[T]he ultimate question surrounding Hunter’s overseas millions from places such as China and Ukraine—and whether his father was the quo for the quid his son received—is political. More important than seeing anyone packed off to prison is learning whether Joe Biden, as vice president, willfully enabled his son’s schemes and twisted U.S. policy in the process.

It may turn out that Joe Biden committed no crime. But even if he never received a nickel from his son’s businesses, his cooperation in Hunter’s selling of the Biden brand was corrupt. Ditto for President Biden’s Justice Department, which repeatedly sabotaged the federal investigation into Hunter.

The party line is that there’s no evidence that Joe Biden profited from his son’s dealings. But the administration has stonewalled any effort to get at the truth, and the White House is now building a war room of lawyers and communications staffers to fight the investigations. It’s disingenuous to argue there’s no evidence while you are working overtime to thwart any attempt to find evidence.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says impeachments should be rare, because normalizing impeachment isn’t good for the country. He’s right. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling for an impeachment inquiry, which he says is a “natural step forward” based on evidence that has been uncovered by the House committees investigating—Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means.

This includes learning that Joe Biden lied during the 2020 debates when he categorically denied Hunter was paid millions from China and said the laptop was Russian disinformation. And that the then-vice president had dinners with his son’s business partners, and spoke to them on speakerphone when Hunter called. And that, as two Internal Revenue Service agents have testified, the Justice Department sandbagged an IRS investigation. And that a Biden staffer emailed Hunter business associate Eric Schwerin confirming that the vice president had signed off on talking points Mr. Schwerin had supplied about Burisma.

All this from a man who claims he knew nothing about his son’s business?

But what about the risks? The Spectator UK editorializes:

Impeachment has become, then, a purely symbolic act. Moreover, the US public has already shown itself to be unimpressed by the employment of “lawfare” in political matters. Trump was never widely popular, yet every move by his Democratic opponents to try to get him in the dock — something they have now achieved — has only served to galvanize support among his base and draw sympathy from independents who abhor the misuse of the justice system. An obsessive campaign to impeach Biden over his son’s business dealings will doubtless do the same for the president.

For more on the facts that compel an impeachment inquiry, read Jonathan Turley.

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Items of Interest

In interview with Megyn Kelly, Trump defends himself over Fauci.

Tim Scott is pushing the RNC to reconsider debate rules in fight for position on stage.

Latest South Carolina Monmouth poll has Trump ahead but now sub-50 percent.

In New Hampshire, Nikki Haley talked up as a potential veep.

Nancy Pelosi repeatedly refuses to say if Kamala Harris should be Vice President.

One more thing

Vivek Ramaswamy has been catching flak for going back on his prior critiques of TikTok after a meeting with Jake Paul:

“Had dinner with @JakePaul on Sunday. He changed my mind and convinced me to join TikTok. Yes, kids under age 16 shouldn’t be using it, but the fact is that many young voters are & we’re not going to change this country without winning. We can’t just talk about the importance of the GOP ‘reaching young voters’ while hiding in our own echo chambers. It’s bad when the CCP collects data from U.S. users via TikTok, but the truth is it’s no better when ‘American’ companies like Airbnb do the same thing by handing over U.S. user data to China, and we’re not going to get China to play by the same set of rules until we win this thing. I’ll be on there starting later today.”

One of the things that was a hallmark of the Trump presidency was that whoever spoke to him before he walked out of the room, getting in the last point, would be what Trump ran with once he got on stage. Apparently the Trumpian similarities on issue sets isn't the only thing Vivek shares with Trump. If he's just one Jake Paul conversation away from going back on everything he's said about China and TikTok, imagine what would happen if President Vivek sat down with someone really good at convincing people of things, not just a Disney Channel actor turned boxer?