After promising evidence of bribes for months, Republicans wheeled out their latest “evidence” of a “quid pro quo” arrangement involving President Biden. But upon closer examination, they offered neither a quid nor a quo.
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While Republicans usually object to participation trophies, it’s time to give them one for their valiant attempts to tie President Joe Biden to his son’s money-making schemes. They really did their best, but in the end, it just wasn’t to be.
So maybe Biden should invite Reps. James Comer (R-KY), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and all the rest of them to the White House and award them a “Presidential Medal of Trying Really Hard” or something, and then we can all move on.
That might be the only way for Republicans to stop embarrassing themselves and making a mockery of what congressional oversight should be.
The latest example of them swinging, missing, and then proudly proclaiming that they hit a home run came Wednesday when GOP lawmakers revealed yet another bombshell that turned out to be yet another nothingburger.
🚨BREAKING🚨
I just released new Biden family bank records & outline how the Bidens received millions from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, & Ukraine while Joe Biden was VP.
After Hunter received millions, VP Biden dined with these oligarchs in DC.👇https://t.co/Qhar4HWFdr
— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) August 9, 2023
Let’s break it down!
“I just released new Biden family bank records & outline how the Bidens received millions from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, & Ukraine while Joe Biden was VP.”
WOW!!! That certainly sounds salacious. After promising evidence of bribes for months, Comer finally came through and demonstrated that Joe Biden did his part in a “quid pro quo” scheme.
But not so fast.
Upon closer examination, it turns out that there is neither a quid nor a quo. Republicans have provided precisely zero evidence that Joe Biden ever received any money from anybody or that he performed any action on behalf of the people who had hired his son.
What they have offered, however, are slanderous insinuations that both of these things happened.
This is apparent even in Comer’s tweet. “Biden Family” and “the Bidens” really just means “Hunter Biden,” but Republicans don’t want to say that because it shows that their time-consuming and taxpayer-wasting “investigations” are all about them going after a private citizen with no role in government.
With no proof to suggest otherwise, the most likely explanation of how all of the pieces fit together is that Hunter Biden is a grifter who used his dad’s name to make money, which he received from extremely rich people who took a chance that maybe he could open some doors for them somewhere (or even just used his family name to promote their own businesses).
None of this is illegal, of course, but that won’t stop Republicans from pretending they found something and then releasing misleading statements like the one above to justify their efforts.
And, even though they know this is all just a heaping pile of dung, GOP lawmakers then blame “the media” for not covering their “revelations” about “bribes” and “the Bidens.”
Let’s also talk about that.
For any news reporter, nothing would be more exciting than getting their hands on evidence tying somebody at the highest level of government to some sort of wrongdoing — criminal or otherwise.
For example, just to make up random scenarios, if it came to light that, after repeated requests to hand them over, an ex-president continued to hoard classified documents and tried to mislead the authorities about that fact. Or if there were troves of documents that proved a president was preparing a coup. Or if you found out that billionaires of a particular political persuasion gave expensive gifts and trips to Supreme Court justices who then forgot to report those “favors.”
Those would be great stories to (un)cover.
On par with that would be getting evidence showing that a president or vice president received millions of dollars in bribes in return for performing certain actions on behalf of those making the payments.
Any journalist worth their salt would be salivating over that story if there were actual evidence to support it.
But it’s not the media’s job to just parrot unsubstantiated accusations made in bad faith.
That’s what Fox News is for.
