As the first criminal trial of a former president concludes, the first criminal trial of a sitting president’s son is just getting underway.
Amateur nude model Hunter Biden stands accused of lying on his gun permit, neglecting to check the “I’m a drug addict and should be nowhere near a firearm” box on his application. Is this the kind of thing that normally merits a criminal trial? Hard for me to say, but former Republican congressman and prosecutor Trey Gowdy said on Fox News yesterday morning, “I bet you there weren’t 10 cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possessed firearms or lied on applications.”
Does that mean the case shouldn’t have been brought? I have no idea, but I think it’s worth noting that the party of Defund the Police hasn’t taken to the streets over it. The President hasn’t assailed the Justice Department for bringing the case. Nor has Hunter Biden concluded his court days with press appearances condemning the judge, the DA, immigrants, or whatever other scapegoat flutters to mind.
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In fact, as opening statements get underway, I’m noticing a distinct difference between the hyperventilating way Republicans—the party of “law and order”—viewed the trial of Donald Trump compared to the more staid approach the “All Cops Are Bastards” party is taking with the Hunter Biden case.
Hypocrisy is, of course, the coin of the political realm, but I think there’s something deeper at play.
The MAGA movement has shifted its focus from a single person—Donald Trump—to a broader attack on the nation’s institutions. All of them. The judiciary, the military, our intelligence services, the electoral system, academia and the educational system, medicine, even the postal service.
Donald Trump still leads the MAGA movement, of course, but he is now more than its spokesperson. He has become its avatar. As goes Trump, so goes the nation. The question is, when Trump goes, will the movement go with him?
The Democrats, on the other hand, don’t give a shit about Hunter Biden; hell, they barely give a shit about Joe Biden.
We’re at an odd moment. Just like in the ’60s, when the Ds and Rs essentially switched places over civil rights, it appears they are now doing the same thing when it comes to “personal responsibility.”
No nation can long survive a sustained assault on its institutions, least of all when the attacks are coming from the same people entrusted to guard them.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, departs the federal court with his wife Melissa Cohen Biden, on the second day of his trial on criminal gun charges in Wilmington, Delaware on June 4, 2024.
Kevin Lamarque/ReutersThe MAGA Republicans—which is the same as saying “the Republicans”—have metastasized into a political organization whose only aim is to devour America from the inside. Their goal is to remake the nation in their funhouse-mirror image, which is why Trump’s rantings and ravings outside the courthouse everyday resonated so deeply with his base. The fact of his conviction only validated their fury at a system they’ve been conditioned to view as “rigged,” “corrupt,” and probably run by Jews.
It’s a dangerous game. Thank God the Democrats aren’t playing it. Yes, the legal system needs reform. It’s too slow, too cumbersome, underfunded, and treats minorities, especially poor minorities, unequally. Change is certainly needed across vast swaths of the country, but at least the Democrats understand that reform may be less glamorous than revolution, but it’s also a hell of a lot less bloody.
The MAGA party is built on a bizarro revolution of the rich against the poor. To find one of their own being tried in a criminal court is an insult to a movement whose overriding tenet is that the wealthy and powerful are immune from accountability.
Hunter Biden, on the other hand, seems to be taking his own medicine with something approaching magnanimity. If he’s convicted, he’s convicted, and the world will shrug its shoulders, because it’s a case worthy of a shoulder shrug.
The former president’s case, while weightier in terms of historic import, is also not much more than a shoulder-shrugger. Falsifying business records is hardly the crime of the century, but it was a crime of consequence. An election may have turned on its commission.
While the MAGA voter looks at Trump’s trial and sees political persecution, the Biden voter looks at Hunter’s trial and sees a low-level offense being prosecuted in a high-profile way. Unfair, perhaps, because it’s being blown out of proportion due to his surname, but not unjust.
Look, the closest I’ve ever come to being a lawyer wasn’t even playing one on TV. It was playing a bowling alley manager for the lawyer who owned the bowling alley on the television show Ed. But I don’t think it takes passing the bar to understand the danger we’re facing as a nation. On one hand, you’ve got a normal celebrity trial being conducted in a normal way with normal political analysis and punditry. On the other, you’ve got the first conviction of a former President of the United States being met with inflammatory—and dangerous—rhetoric from his supporters.
Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon has promised political prosecutions against Trump’s enemies, calling for “an eye for an eye.” Stephen Miller—Trump’s resident Roy Cohn lookalike—said on Fox News, “I’m not going to mince my words because that’s what we have in this country. Gangster government.” Megyn Kelly has suggested that a Trump administration should prosecute Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Sebastian Gorka promised that Michael Cohen and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg would be “going to jail” if Trump wins. Almost no Republicans have said that Trump should withdraw his candidacy following his conviction.
If Hunter is found guilty, the Dems will probably send him a “Sorry for your conviction” balloon and continue about their days.
We’re living in two different realities. One is the reality with which I am familiar, the one in which people who commit crimes stand trial and everybody assumes that the truth will win the day. It’s a reality in which horrendous miscarriages of justice are occasionally doled out to mostly poor defendants. But it’s a system that has worked well enough that while we recognize it needs reform, we see no need to pull it up by the roots.
MAGA reality has no issue with the judicial system’s heavy-handedness when it comes to crimes committed by people of little means and a little extra melanin. Their complaint relies on the supposition that wealth and power ought to insulate one from the punishments meted out to those who cannot afford $800-an-hour lawyers. It’s a reality many of us suspect we already live within, but MAGA aims to formalize the arrangement.
The MAGA revolution is being televised. It’s well-funded. It already controls about half of the federal government—and it has a good chance of retaking the White House in November. This tale of two trials is equally a tale of two American realities. I don’t know which one wins out.
