*(Please read through the note at the bottom to fully understand this post)
Close your eyes.
Picture the son of an American president.
Picture him entering the orbit of a powerful foreign businessman with close ties to an authoritarian government, someone whose wealth and influence are deeply connected to that country’s political establishment.
Picture the president’s son being welcomed into the businessman’s international organization.
He appears beside its leader at a major event. They discuss the future of the industry. Afterward, the organization announces that the two men have “joined forces.” It declares that their relationship will not remain symbolic and promises that more joint initiatives will follow.
Now picture the president’s son receiving an extraordinarily valuable personal benefit from that same foreign businessman, something reportedly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Would any of this have happened if he had a different last name?
Was the businessman interested in his knowledge and experience, or in his proximity to the most powerful office in the world?
Was he cultivating a friendship, creating a sense of obligation or purchasing access that might become valuable later?
Did the vice president know?
Did the vice president benefit?
What did the foreign businessman expect in return?
There is no publicly established evidence that the president’s son promised him anything. There is no proof that the president participated in the arrangement or received anything from it. The men say they are simply friends. The president’s son’s representative says they have no business relationship.
Perhaps that is all true.
But we have heard repeatedly that a vice president’s son does not receive extraordinary opportunities and enormous benefits from foreign interests simply because people enjoy his company.
We have been told that his last name is the product.
That access is the currency.
That proximity to power is the service being sold.
We have been told that the appearance of influence is enough to justify investigations, subpoenas, hearings and years of accusations, not only against the son, but against the father as well.
Now open your eyes. Picture Donald Trump Jr. standing beside his new bride at their wedding party with their guests and ask yourself: if Hunter Biden’s position with a foreign company warranted years of scrutiny because his father was vice president, what standard should apply when the son of a sitting president accepts post-wedding celebrations reportedly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foreign businessman closely connected to Vladimir Putin?
The circumstances are not identical…but at the very least…shouldn’t the same questions about access, influence and the value of a powerful family name be shouted from rooftops, adorn the social media of all Republicans and MAGA influencers who coined the phrase…Biden Crime Family?
*A NOTE: I modeled this post after the closing monologue from A Time to Kill because, in my head, its dramatic reveal offered the perfect way to expose the hypocrisy of MAGA and Republican leaders who relentlessly attacked Hunter Biden and the so-called “Biden Crime Family,” yet routinely overlook… and excuse the grifting and questionable dealings of the Trump family.
However, no matter how many times I tried, even with a little help from AI, I couldn’t quite recreate the power of the movie’s original perspective-shifting reveal or make the parallel work as perfectly on the page as it did in my head.
Why?? Because the open grifting and thievery of the Trump’s is simply too hard to mask.
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