DEAR REPUBLICANS: DUMP TRUMP AND MAYBE THE PUBLIC WILL CARE ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN

The Washington Examiner has published a lengthy review of the new right-wing attack film My Son Hunter. The piece, which is 2500 words long and seems longer, is by Dominic Green, a Very Serious conservative pundit -- he's written for The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, among other publications. Green dislikes the movie but largely accepts the right-wing Hunter Biden narrative it's based on; he laments that the narrative will never be widely accepted in America, blaming a conspiracy of silence:

Hunter Biden’s business activities are a powder trail, yet most American media are unwilling to strike a match. Perhaps it might shed an unflattering light on their partisan efforts to suppress the story before the 2020 elections. Perhaps an unexpected detonation might damage a Democratic president who is floundering in the polls. Perhaps it would help former President Donald Trump, who threatens to run in 2024, or the Republicans, who promise to step up their inquiries if they recover Congress in the November midterm elections.

Hunter Biden is untouchable. Where once Dr. Faustus, busy with his pipes and decoctions in his home lab, cut a deal with Mephistopheles, Hunter, the Faust of Generation X, has done one better. He may have mortgaged his soul, but he enjoys near-unique privileges where it really matters, down here on the ground. This crackhead and whoremonger amassed millions as an influence-peddler. Hunter peddled as hard as he partied, and he peddled to pro-Putin oligarchs in Ukraine and party-adjacent squidillionaires in China. He was under the influence of a shopping list of illegal substances and a raging sex addiction, too, but his connection to his father was strong enough for his clients to believe that when they put Hunter on the board and the payroll, they were buying access and influence to Joe Biden.

Outside the right-wing bubble, no one cares. Perhaps the rest of America will care if Republicans take the House and/or Senate, because they'll start the first committee hearing on the president's son about ten minutes after they're sworn in next January, and hearings will still be taking place when the polls open in November 2024. But I think even this saturation coverage of the story won't matter.

That's for many reasons, but one of them is obvious: the existence of the Trump family. Many politically engaged Democratic voters can, in great detail, expound on the many corrupt acts the Trumps have engaged in. But even voters who haven't paid much attention can see the obvious: Donald Trump lives surrounded by the spoils of wealth. He owns gaudy estates. He sits on gold-plated toilets. Joe Biden's life in Delaware seems ... simple. Here he is taking a bike ride! Here he is hanging out with a German shepherd! Biden's day-to-day habits seems the opposite of corrupt, while Trump and his family seem to be telling us: We may or may not be amoral serial felons surrounded by ill-gotten gains, but we sure want it to look as if we are.

The life of Hunter Biden has been decadent, but all his escapades seem to head in the same direction: straight toward the gutter. Maybe he had ill-gotten gains, but they weren't gotten for very long. As soon as Hunter acquired them, they appear to have departed, either up his nose or in a prostitute's cleavage. By contrast, even when Donald Trump was nearly a billion dollars in debt thirty years ago, his message was: I've still got it all, and nobody can take it away from me!

I despise Ron DeSantis with every fiber of my being, but there are no pictures of him like this:

Republicans should dump Trump if they want to have any chance of persuading Americans outside their base that Hunter Biden got away with something.