How the Republican House painted itself into a corner
If Republicans accuse you of something, there’s three options: They’ve done it themselves, they’re doing it to you, or they’re planning it. Sometimes it’s all three together. Fewer people know this better than Democratic politicians and their own families – particularly those politicians who’ve had to endure sham investigations that largely exist for the purpose of making them look bad. Hunter Biden, whose name has been dragged through right-wing media tabloids for the last four years, beginning with the manufactured Burisma scandal, is well aware of it.
For some reason, right-wingers have built a strange obsession around the president’s younger son who isn’t an elected official and has never shown any political aspirations. Largely because of his last name, they’ve thought they could get to his father through him, but they’re used to coverage of Hunter Biden happening through a partisan lens, where he’s unlikely to defend himself – as opposed to a publicly aired hearing, which Republicans shouldn’t be afraid of if they have nothing to hide.
That’s why they didn’t expect him to defy a subpoena to be questioned behind closed doors – a move that would have only worked to gin up their base while finding fuel for more of their conspiracies about him.
It’s really no wonder that the GOP is furious with him right now. He called their bluff publicly – as he should have, and it’s clear that they never had much of a backup plan. It’s probably the worst thing that could have happened to them on Wednesday, just hours before a vote to hold an impeachment inquiry, because they’re only going to be embarrassed further in their stupid antics.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making