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Notes -
Ben Schreckinger’s book, The Bidens, builds a pretty strong case that both Hunter and Joe’s brother, Jim, have tried to cash in on Joe’s name with varying degrees of success and failure over the years, and when people close to Joe have raised the issue, Biden has repeatedly chosen to plug his ears, out of familial loyalty, and the belief that if he doesn’t know about it, he is in the clear. But also, that links actually connecting Biden to any corruption have not been uncovered.
Yes, Biden has ignored conflicts of interest and in a better world he would have been disqualified from holding office. But in terms of Washington, he’s sadly rather benign.
The darkly funny thing is the Bidens are so small-time when it comes to money, and a savvier man than Joe could have cashed in far more than Biden did, at least in his senate years when representing a state with only a million people and two-thirds of America’s Fortune 500 companies registered, there. But Joe was always far more interested in holding office, with a personal dream of becoming president. In one sense, hats off to the senile old mick — privately, Obama was never bullish on his prospects — but he did it.
Impeachment when?
This is a culture war section, so one joke of an impeachment needs to be met with one that also appears to be built on flimsy ground, because the other tribe did it? I’d rather wait until some substantial proof is uncovered. Let’s say a benchmark of something worse than Jared Kushner getting $2,000,000,000 from the Saudis six months after his father-in-law left office.
But that just raises further questions! Like if you were a politician with presidential aspirations, would you let family members repeatedly cash in on your good name in shady ways for decades? Or would you try to distance yourself from them as much as possible? Imagine your brother or son just got caught for the third time doing corrupt shit and linking it to you, but they swear they did nothing wrong. Do you believe them?
What about if your boss did that at work, just let his family run around embroiling him in scandals and doing things that made him look corrupt - would you believe him when he said he believed they did nothing wrong? If you did believe him, would you trust his judgement or would you think he had an obvious blindspot rendering him easy to manipulate?
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100% Joe needs to be impeached by the House. Retaliatory strikes are necessary in war. GOP can’t let the first impeachment stand unpunished.
This is what Trump should've taught the Republicans, but didn't really: you must fight.
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A tangent on Jim Biden — the seedier folks involved with Dickie Scruggs were tossing Jim’s name around as part of a new lobbying firm they were going to open in D.C. before the feds came down on them.
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