WITH JUDSON BERGER

July 15 2023

WITH JUDSON BERGER

July 15 2023

There's No Controlling the Hunter Biden Damage

Dear Weekend Jolter,

We may never know who left that cocaine in the White House, but, in one of the great plot twists of the Biden era, even Kayleigh McEnany says Hunter Biden should be ruled out as a suspect given his Camp David whereabouts.

The alibi's not ironclad — he could have left it behind — but it represents perhaps the high-water mark of defenses against the perpetually self-replenishing supply of Hunter-scented scandals the White House has had and will have to deal with. It's the candle that keeps burning. In case there was any doubt about the staying power of Hunter Biden as a political liability for his dad in the wake of his plea deal, the sustained congressional scrutiny of the past few weeks should dispel it.

Baggie aside, one of the standout moments from Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing with Christopher Wray was when Matt Gaetz challenged the FBI director on whether he's "protecting the Bidens." ("Absolutely not" was the given, and only prudent, answer.) The hook for the question was a newly released 2017 message purportedly showing Hunter threatening a Chinese business associate while playing the "my father" card (his lawyer disputes the authenticity). The House Ways and Means Committee also is publicizing the testimony of IRS whistleblowers about interference in the Hunter investigation, and the House Oversight Committee just scheduled a hearing with them for next week.

There is an element of conscious risk-taking on the part of both Bidens in all this. Noah Rothman observes how the president is doing little to keep his son out of the spotlight, including at the recent state dinner. To the contrary, the elder Biden reportedly has told aides he doesn't want to even hear their advice on the matter, apparently concerned about what will happen to his troubled son should they drift apart. But his staff is struggling to strike the right tone, and Noah notes that "emotional blackmail won't make Hunter go away."

Rather, his presence is becoming a fixed, and expanding, target heading into 2024. And Hunter's controversies implicate more than just himself. With regard to the plea deal, congressional scrutiny centers on DOJ conduct, including allegations, which Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss now disputes, that leadership clipped his wings and blocked his being elevated to special counsel. But Andrew McCarthy argues that this debate misses the point, since Attorney General Merrick Garland should have taken steps to obviate the need for such a request:

It could not conceivably be more obvious that the attorney general was obligated to appoint a special counsel from outside the government the moment he learned about the Biden case and the gargantuan conflict of interest it entails. It was up to Garland to do that, not up to Weiss to ask him to do that. Lawyers do not get to delegate their ethics to subordinates.

Andy says Garland's refusal to take this step signals that he and his boss were indeed trying to throttle the probe. Whatever the backstory, perhaps the bigger question concerns the Biden family finances. Oversight Committee chairman James Comer vowed post–plea deal to keep investigating "until the full extent of President Biden's involvement in the family's schemes are revealed."

Meanwhile, the sordid details surrounding Hunter's child-support case — in which the first son has agreed to financially support the daughter he had with an Arkansas woman but will not agree to extend his last name to the child — have unavoidably dented her grandfather's image as a family man. The New York Times captured poignantly the elements that make the daughter's story so — there's no other word for it — sad:

There is a 4-year-old girl in rural Arkansas who is learning to ride a camouflage-patterned four-wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days, she wears a bow in her hair, and on other days, she threads her long blond ponytail through the back of a baseball cap. When she is old enough, she will learn to hunt, just like her mother did when she was young.

The girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden and that her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them.

As Brittany Bernstein noted in this week's Forgotten Fact Checks column, the press has started to inquire about this drama too. The White House's callous on-camera reply to the question of whether the president acknowledges his granddaughter — "I don't have anything to share from here" — is just one indicator of how the mystery bag is not the only thing impairing judgment in that building.

NAME. RANK. LINK.

EDITORIALS

Literally: Yellen Bows to China

The case for caution: Ukraine Should Not Be Let in NATO

On the heartbeat bill: A Win for Life in Iowa

ARTICLES

Rich Lowry: The Biden Debacle Waiting to Happen

David Bahnsen: The Moment Trump's Invincibility Became a Thing

Ryan Bangert: It's Time for Corporate America to Ditch the Southern Poverty Law Center

Stanley Kurtz: Kaepernick Leads Team Marx against DeSantis, Gets Sacked

Charles C. W. Cooke: Joe Biden Is an Asshole

Dan McLaughlin: Justice Kagan's Student-Loan Shell Game

Daniel Buck: What If Kids Just Stopped Attending School?

Jeff Eager: The Oregon Legislature Does Something Right, Finally

Ryan Mills: Ted Cruz Lays Out Road Map for Next Big Conservative Supreme Court Battle

Ryan Mills: A Principal Sought to Expel a Student Charged with Attempted Murder. He Was Fired Instead

Brittany Bernstein: Notre Dame Professor Sues Student Paper for Reporting on Her Abortion Advocacy

Michael Brendan Dougherty: After Populism

Christian Schneider: The Tyranny of Media 'Firstism'

Noah Rothman: What Is Kamala Harris Trying to Say?

CAPITAL MATTERS

Capital Matters has launched a new feature, the Forgotten Book, a column written by historian and National Review Institute fellow Amity Shlaes. The goal, per Andrew Stuttaford, is "to introduce readers to books or other primary sources that warrant a second look." The first is here: The Curse of Bigness

Patrick A. McLaughlin notices something that's more frustrating the more one thinks about it — many federal regulations aren't publicly available, for free, to read: Roll Over, Hammurabi: Federal Regulations Are Hidden behind Paywalls

LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.

Madeleine Kearns looks at what all the buzz is about: Sound of Freedom's Moral Clarity

Brian Allen reports from Steel City, with an appreciation for Andrew Carnegie and his art museum: Pittsburgh's Carnegie Art Museum Offers Showstoppers and Discreet Gems Alike

Armond White says the new M:I is no Ghost Protocol: Mission: Impossible's Actor-Auteur Theory

FROM THE NEW, JULY 31, 2023, ISSUE OF NR

David Satter: A Kremlin in Disarray

Jonathan H. Adler: The Restrained Roberts Court

Charles C. W. Cooke: Supreme Modesty

Sebastian Junger: Our Chosen Chains

Rich Lowry: England's Great Triumph over the Spanish Armada

Jessica Hornik: Correct Me If I'm Wrong

THE ONLY THING HOTTER THAN THESE TEMPERATURES IS THESE EXCERPTS, AMIRITE?

The new issue of NR is out, and it's a weighty one (literally, figuratively). A special section on the Supreme Court and multiple examinations of Vladimir Putin's, um, situation are included. David Satter's cover story on the fallout from the Prigozhin mutiny argues that the revolt indicates the Kremlin does not have time on its side in the war with Ukraine, raising the risk of wider conflict:

If a war of attrition against the Ukrainians threatens to spark an internal revolt capable of threatening the regime and dooming the war effort, Russia may decide that the only alternative to defeat is to use its nuclear arms. . . .

The unexpected end to the mutiny avoided bloodshed and restored the Russian political status quo ante at least temporarily. But in several important respects, Russia has been seriously weakened.

In the first place, the Kremlin can no longer sustain the impression of massive support for the government. The mutiny created an opening for the venting of long-suppressed anti-government feelings. In areas the Wagner forces passed, the population appeared to support the insurgents. In Rostov-on-Don, the majority of the people who gathered in the city center cheered the mutineers and took selfies with them and their equipment even though Putin, in a televised address, had called them traitors. According to Prigozhin, in cities along the M4 highway to Moscow, people welcomed his forces with Russian and Wagner Group flags. Military units offered no resistance and expressed their support.

The only direct conflict took place when the Wagner columns were attacked from the air by the Russian air force near Voronezh. Wagner shot down six helicopters and one Ilyushin Il-18 airborne command center, killing as many as 30 Russian airmen. The Il-18 is used to transmit commands to airplanes and helicopters operating at ultra-low altitudes. Russia has only twelve of these planes, and the loss of even one could undermine its ability to coordinate its forces during high-tempo operations.

Even in this operation, however, the only reason the pilots fired (again, according to Prigozhin) was that they were told that the Wagner column was a Ukrainian army unit that had broken through and was on its way to attack the Kremlin. A military observer in Moscow said he believes that the Wagner forces would not have met resistance if they had tried to enter Moscow.

Christian Schneider nails it, in pointing out a calcifying media tendency:

Non-news now being the lifeblood of news, the online world lit up last week with a curious "breaking news" story. It seems as though singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman had just become the first black female to write a No. 1 country song when a cover version of her 1988 hit "Fast Car" topped the country charts.

The news was everywhere. Rolling Stone covered it, as did Billboard, Al Jazeera, and numerous other music sites.

Of course, with the number of news outlets exceeding the supply of actual news, anytime anyone does something for the "first" time, it is splayed across an internet page as if Richard Nixon had just resigned the presidency.

But the Chapman example isn't exactly one for the history books. Her song reached No. 1 only in the form of a note-for-note cover by a white guy. Country singer Luke Combs effectively stole her song, added nothing to it, and in the process simply reminded people how good the Tracy Chapman version was. . . .

All this is to say: Exactly what are we celebrating here?

Given that media outlets have grown so addicted to reporting on meaningless "firsts," the Chapman story must have seemed revolutionary. When someone is the first to achieve something, editors' ears perk up. It's an immediate story, it probably has some sort of racial or gender angle, and it doesn't require calling anyone to verify facts.

But addiction to "firsts" can often be awkward. Remember when Michelle Yeoh was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress? Media outlets couldn't identify her as the first Asian actress to be nominated, because the late actress Merle Oberon, who hid her partial Asian heritage, was nominated in 1935. So in order to ramp up the drama, news outlets put the English language in a choke hold and called Yeoh the "first person who identifies as Asian" to be nominated or the "first Asian-presenting" woman to win an Oscar.

Keep in mind, Yeoh's win came two years after Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her wonderful role in the delightful small-budget film Minari. So are we to believe that 2021 was the dark ages of minority representation in Hollywood because Asian women were winning only Best Supporting Actress awards, and Yeoh's win somehow signaled a whole new glorious era of representation?

That isn't to suggest that Yeoh and Youn didn't deserve their Oscars — both their performances were worthy. And, of course, cultural representation is an all-around good thing.

But the rush for newsrooms to congratulate themselves by being the first to notice is obnoxious.

A guest essay by Ryan Bangert at Alliance Defending Freedom gets at the heart of what's wrong with the Southern Poverty Law Center — namely, its inability to distinguish ordinary conservatives and center-right Americans from actual hate groups:

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently added several mainstream parents' groups — including Parents Defending Education, Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and Parents' Rights in Education — to its "hate map." Questions now are being raised about whether the White House encouraged the SPLC to target these groups after reports that Susan Corke, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, met earlier this year with National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli.

Dear Corporate America: Now might be a good time to ditch reliance on the SPLC.

While the SPLC's "hate" designation long ago ceased to be plausible proxy for actual hatred, brand-name businesses have often turned to the SPLC for guidance when deciding whether to deny service. With the SPLC targeting parents — including mothers, who, along with other women, control or influence 85 percent of consumer spending and control more than 60 percent of all personal wealth in the U.S. — corporate America would be wise to steer clear of the politicized "hate map" and explicitly cut ties with the SPLC, now.

The SPLC boasts that in 2022 it "tracked 1,225 hate and antigovernment groups across the U.S." To be sure, that mélange includes some groups that affiliate with monstrous injustices, like the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. But it also includes a much larger number of mainstream public-policy groups that the SPLC has decided are antigovernment merely because they take widely held positions that just happen to offend the SPLC's radically left-wing vision of society.

Now the SPLC is targeting groups devoted to advancing and defending the right of mothers and fathers to have a say in their children's education. Why? Because (according to the SPLC) they're "antigovernment." The SPLC attempts to define "antigovernment" at length, but the sheer breadth of its definition renders it incoherent. For examples, SPLC points to obvious antigovernment activities such as the 1993 tragedy at the Branch Davidian compound, the horrific 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the effort by members of a Michigan militia to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Amid this litany of violent acts committed by cults, terrorists, and militias, the SPLC pivots to add that some "antigovernment groups" have opposed "critical race theory" in education and spread "conspiracies about the government's role in education." One could be excused for suffering mental whiplash after the transition from bombing government buildings to debating curriculum policy in public schools.

David Bahnsen pinpoints the moment when the legend of Donald Trump was born, and he makes a darn good case:

As I have studied the business life of Donald Trump from the 1970s to the 1990s, a period of his life exponentially more interesting to me than his 2000s TV life and more recent presidential life, one moment sticks out above all others as simply inexplicable in reinforcing Trump's immunity from consequence. This moment, in concert with so many others but still unique for a variety of reasons, helps clearly establish why Donald Trump feels completely immune from the consequences of his decisions.

Of all the fascinating stories in Trump's business past, the one least explainable in the ebb and flow of business rationality, the one that has to have produced the biggest smile on Trump's face, and generated the greatest sigh of relief, but also an aura of invincibility, was the financial outcome around his purchase and subsequent bankruptcy of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Now, this is a story of Teflon luck.

Those with a cursory understanding of Trump's business background, and even some with a more granular understanding of various transaction particulars, may find it odd to focus on this particular deal. His Atlantic City failures are well documented and did not bring him down, and they cover larger losses and reputational damage than the Plaza Hotel. All told, there are five different bankruptcy events around Atlantic City properties and holding companies. Yet in each case there was little personal recourse that lenders had, and there was an arguable brand value in Trump's likeness and marketing support that had to enter the fray for bondholders and other creditors in how terms were negotiated and adjudicated. . . .

What makes the Plaza Hotel in New York City matter so unique is the favorable outcome despite a lack of leverage. It is a story for the ages. Donald Trump bought the hotel in 1988 for $409 million from the Bass Group of Texas. He took a $300 million mortgage secured by the property and then a $125 million second mortgage that he personally guaranteed entirely. He had no personal funds in the property at all and was over 100 percent encumbered on the property. In 1992 he put the property into bankruptcy, as cash flows were not even close to servicing the debt. What did Donald Trump lose as a result of this bankruptcy? He gave 49 percent of the equity of the hotel to Citi (as the lead bank in a consortium of lenders), and he kept 51 percent. The personal guarantee on his $125 million second mortgage was eliminated. The banks had every right to seize his other assets to protect their $125 million. They had every right to seize 100 percent of the Plaza Hotel, not 49 percent, to protect their $300 million. And when all was said and done, they exited the bankruptcy plan losing their personal guarantee and not even taking back the entire (depreciated) value of their own collateral.

I don't think it takes a con man to get a bank to give him a deal like this. It takes a really dumb bank or some aura of invincibility. Trump clearly was dealing with both.

Shout-Outs

Sallie Baxendale, at UnHerd: Doctors have failed detransitioners

Christine Rosen, at Commentary: The End of Cable News?

Fred Lucas, at the Daily Signal: Fauci, Other NIH Officials May Have to Pay Back Year's Salary

CODA

This somehow seems appropriate given the news cycle.