The Media Research Center largely lost interest in Hunter Biden after President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. After all, the sole reason the MRC and its fellow right-wingers persecuted and waged lawfare on Hunter was to break the spirit of his father; if Hunter could be driven to suicide in the process, all the better. There were a couple of examples:
- An Aug. 14 post by Curtis Houck hyped “a New York Times bombshell (via documents conveniently turned over once Joe ended his campaign) that Hunter Biden ought help from the U.S. Embassy in Italy to set up meetings with Italian officials to promote the infamous Ukrainian energy company, Burisma” and whined once again that non-right-wing channels didn’t go all Fox News on it.
- Tim Graham cheered “Hunter Biden’s shocking guilty plea in a California courtroom” in a Sept. 6 post, adding that “the Big Three aired more than eight minutes of coverage.” That wasn’t enough, of course; he went on to grumble there was “No mention of the suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop exposing the guilty activities from in the last weeks of the 2020 campaign.” and “No Republican soundbites or statements,” and that “Most ignored or soft-soaped Hunter’s binging on crack cocaine and hookers with his untaxed millions.”
MRC writers also raged at talk of pardoning Hunter. Mark Finkelstein asserted on Sept. 6 that “CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny uttered a very cynical ‘why not?’ on the question of whether Joe Biden should pardon Hunter.” He went on to huff: “Question: What are the odds Hunter would have pleaded guilty if the fix weren’t already in with the Big Guy[?]” Nicholas Fondadcaro whined about it in his Nov. 27 hate-watch of “The View”:
After spending nearly a decade calling President-elect Trump a threat to democracy/institutions/norms and proclaiming ‘no one is above the law’ as they demanded he be put in prison, the Cackling Coven of ABC’s The View put their ideologically driven hypocrisy on full display on Wednesday as the urged President Biden to pardon his criminal son Hunter. Not only him, but his vicious dog who attacked and injured multiple people.
The idea of a pardon for Hunter was the first Hot Topic of the show. Moderator Whoopi Goldberg seemed to get the answer they were looking for from the audience since they cheered for the idea and a few people shouted “yes”:
[…]Hunter Biden lied about his drug use on a federal background check form, which is a felony. The ATF’s website notes: “Applicants who knowingly make false statements may also face criminal prosecution for a felony and up to 10 years in federal prison.”
Despite the facts, and without evidence, Hostin declared “that the only reason he was indicted is because his last name is Biden” and “it is the right thing to do to correct course and correct that wrong and pardon his son.”
Fondacaro didn’t mention that even Republican Lindsey Graham has said that most Americans would never face the gun charge against Hunter.
When Biden did pardon Hunter, the MRC lost its collective ever-lovin’ mind. Jorge Bonilla huffed in a Dec. 1 post:
The political world has been roiled by the (not at all surprising) news of President Joe Biden’s grant of a pardon to his controversial son, Hunter. Holiday weekend notwithstanding, the Regime Media are hard at work furiously spinning the pardon.
Bonilla, meanwhile, had his own furious spin to peddle:
One quickly congealing narrative is the “what about” narrative: that Biden’s pardon of Hunter should not be viewed as scandalous because of some of the pardons issued by President Elect Donald Trump during his first term. But the record reflects that Biden allegedly ran in order to rebuild the norms once shattered by Trump. Pardoning the crack-addled failson, after pointedly saying you wouldn’t, flies in the face of all that.
The other key narrative is Biden therefore HAD to pardon Hunter because of the coming political landscape. Expect Biden to be recast NOT as a corrupt liar who twisted government to his family’s benefit, but as a loving father who saw Kash Patel coming down the pike. He had no choice, you see.
Exit question: if the Hunter pardon is dropping now, what’s coming down the pike?
After Mark Finkelstein ranted that “Morming Joe” refused to make a sufficiently big deal of it, Curtis Houck raged:
With less than 30 minutes of air time Sunday night before bailing out for taped programming (while Fox News and MSNBC continued on for hours), CNN was ebullient Sunday night over President Joe Biden’s pardoning of son Hunter and called it a “poignant” and “monumental moment” to serve as the “culmination” of his entire presidency to save his “only surviving son” amid a life of “cruel” “hardships.”
Senior national correspondent Jeff Zeleny was in pole position to sound off and, boy, did he ever.
[…]Senior political reporter and all-around hack Edward-Isaac Dovere joined the sympathy parade, calling the debate over whether to pardon “has been a great pain to Joe Biden for many years and was weighing on him as he decided whether to run for reelection” and that Hunter’s struggles were exacerbated by who his father is.
Zeleny returned for more chicanery, this time revealing the question over pardoning Hunter had only “been very much a family discussion” centering around fears of what a Trump Justice Department would investigate and not “as a policy matter inside the West Wing.”
Senior legal analyst Elie Honig was next and suggested pardoning family members isn’t without precedent given Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger in 2001 and President Trump pardoning his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father in 2021. Nonetheless, he worried the pardon “will really be a” political “Rorschach test.”
Houck concluded by “Far-left presidential historian Douglas Brinkley brought up the rear and closed out this tail-kissing of the Bidens with nonsense about Hunter Biden’s conduct now relegated to “political…folklore,” but offered no evidence whatsoever that Brinkley is “far-left.”
Fondacaro unsurprsingly brought it up in his Dec. 2 hate-watch of “The View”:
Christmas came early over the weekend for the Cackling Coven of ABC’s The View. They got their wish that President Biden pardon his son for his tax and gun crimes. On Monday’s show, fake Republican Ana Navarro boasted about lobbying Biden for this outcome and called it the greatest gift of all “the gift of freedom,” meanwhile moderator Whoopi Goldberg was lashing out and raging at those who called Biden out for being a liar.
Of course, since they were an ABC News property, they didn’t tell the whole truth that the pardon also covered financial crimes dating back to Biden’s time as vice president, which hadn’t been charged yet. “Yesterday Biden had a change of heart granting his son a full pardon on tax evasion and federal gun charges,” Goldberg said.
After decrying some of President-elect Trump’s pardons from his first term, Goldberg engaged in some major whataboutism to write off the Hunter pardon as just par for the course and dismiss the “pearl-clutching”:
Foncacaro didn’t mention that he and his co-workers were the chief (hypocritical) pearl-clutchers.
Houck returned to whine: “Unsurprisingly, ABC’s Good Morning America stood out among the broadcast networks on Monday as the most pro-Biden family in covering President Joe Biden’s blanket pardon of son Hunter, arguing the act to save ‘his only living son’ was done to save him from a politicized Trump Justice Department and put to rest claims of Biden family ‘corruption’ that were hurled ‘without evidence.’” Houck then cheered CNN’s right-wingers for their well-orchestrated rage:
On Monday, Scott Jennings, Shermichael Singleton, and Brad Todd — three of the four actual, bona fide conservative commentators on CNN’s payroll — took to the airwaves to react to President Joe Biden’s blanket pardon of son Hunter for any and all crimes committed in the last 10 years and, in addition to standing their ground, went postal on this “trash” “facade” created by a bunch of “liars.”
The morning edition of CNN News Central fortunately had Scott Jennings on and, needless to say, he came locked and loaded, first noting this pardon was “a complete and utter failure by” the President and that he “never again” wants to hear liberals melting down about Donald Trump as having abused his office:
[…]After hearing liberal commentator Karen Finney defend the pardon as a natural response to Republicans having spent years “trying to attack the President himself and go after his family,” Jennings uncorked a grab bag of leftist slogans about needing to defend democratic norms and other lies over the last four years[.] […]
As Finney whined about Jennings “hurl[ing] names,” Jennings fired back she should “stand up for yourself” and “you don’t have to defend” the pardon.
“You don’t have to die on this hill. You can say this is wrong because everybody knows that it is. Are you fine with the lying? Are you fine with him sitting before the election all year and lying to the American people? Are you fine with the lying about it,” he added.
Bonilla returned to complain that non-right-wing channels weren’t conforming to his right-wing spin:
President Joe Biden’s sudden and unexpected (by some) issuance of a broad pardon to his son Hunter continues to ripple throughout the political world. The Regime Media that so faithfully served Biden are now dutifully carrying his water in an attempt to dilute the legacy fallout that Biden will invariably suffer as a result.
Bonilla grumbled that “The Regime Media suppressed these whistleblowers when their testimony would’ve been the most impactful,” but he suppressed the fact that an FBI informant was found to be lying about alleged crimes by Hunter (which caused the MRC to stealth-correct dozens of posts).
Bonilla got in one last huff: “This story is not going away any time soon. The Regime Media’s proclivity to make inconvenient stories ‘go away’ may well be what got us here in the first place.” Like how the MRC made the lying informant story “go away”?