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House Impeachment Inquiry

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Skeptic Ginger said:
I am admittedly not a Biden fan even before I knew all this.

Hunter had more than one very high paying job that his father influenced whether actively or not.

It's not like he was an oil company legal expert or anything remotely suggesting the job had nothing to do with his father/name.

National Review (GOP bias): From being appointed senior MBNA vice president (two years out of law school), to a gift of a 2.8-carat diamond from a Chinese energy tycoon, to Burisma Holdings . . .

National Review:follow-up article

Daily Wire: Hunter Biden Admits He Got High-Paying Jobs Because ‘I’m The Son Of The Vice President’

There are multiple articles and Hunter's been using his dad's name for decades.


Might not be illegal, maybe he never did lobby his father, maybe he did or did not have inside knowledge making him a valuable employee. But it is a symbol of business as usual and it is distasteful at a minimum.



It also shows how stupid Trump was pushing Ukraine to do the dirty work. All of this would have looked bad for Joe without any help from Zelensky.
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No question about it. Hunter shouldn't have worked at all until his daddy stepped down from public office.

Even a job flipping burgers could be painted as inappropriately influenced by who his old man is.
 
jadebox said:
Hmmm .... I wonder if the attempts to deflect the conversation from Trump's actions to the Bidens will be successful? :-)
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The reason so much discussion is being had about the Bidens is that reasonable folk can disagree on whether Hunter did anything wrong in accepting the position. There are two sides to this argument.

There are no good defenses of Trump's behavior. Even those who think they're being paid to defend Trump (misguided legislators) come up with: bad but not impeachable; too incompetently executed to count; did not say "quid pro quo" and so on.

In other words, the healthy digression about the Bidens is indirect evidence of the obviousness of Trump's wrongdoing. (Of course, the political leanings of this forum should be taken into account.)
 
phiwum said:
In other words, the healthy digression about the Bidens is indirect evidence of the obviousness of Trump's wrongdoing. (Of course, the political leanings of this forum should be taken into account.)
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I think that’s naive and not at all the way human psychology works.

I just can’t see the thought process being, “Let’s discuss how Hunter Biden is or is not corrupt, it gives insight into Trump’s wrongdoing”. When, in fact, the goal is to have us bickering over Hunter Biden instead of discussing Trump’s misdeeds.
 
Whether or not the Bidens did anything wrong, this thread is about the House Impeachment Inquiry into Trump, is it not? To those arguing that Trump’s actions where justified because he was asking Ukraine to investigate corruption, what other forms of corruption has Trump ever been interested in getting to the bottom of? Indeed, Trump’s own, plainly visible, forms of corruption show he does not care to have just any for of corruption investigated.

The Biden angle is smoke and mirrors to keep attention away from the actual problem.


Separate issue, what is with all the GOP people insisting on letting Trump defend himself during an investigation when it is the actual trial where that would appropriate?
 
It's sad that Superman is on Trump's side. Yes, Dean Cain is a Trumpanzee and is responsible for a person getting death threats when he accused someone publicly of being the whistleblower. Dean Cain should spend a few weeks in a fortress of solitude for this. Sheesh, he seemed like a nice guy.
 
thaiboxerken said:
It's sad that Superman is on Trump's side. Yes, Dean Cain is a Trumpanzee and is responsible for a person getting death threats when he accused someone publicly of being the whistleblower. Dean Cain should spend a few weeks in a fortress of solitude for this. Sheesh, he seemed like a nice guy.
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I remember hearing a rumor about friction with the other cast and crew being the reason why he wasn't appearing on Supergirl anymore as her adopted father, but couldn't find any confirmation. Given that the show hasn't been shy about its criticism of current government policies, with actual aliens as a stand-in for immigrants, it makes sense.
 
Yes, Cain has long been very pro-Trump. I've also heard that rumour about why he stopped appearing in Supergirl which, after all, is a very liberal show.
 
Well if Kevin Sorbo has taught us anything he'll have a long and industrious career in straight to video religious propaganda films.
 
phiwum said:
In other words, the healthy digression about the Bidens is indirect evidence of the obviousness of Trump's wrongdoing. (Of course, the political leanings of this forum should be taken into account.)
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There IS no "healthy digression" about the Bidens other than to say its more BS from the biggest BSer of all time. Trump and his supporters want to make this about the Bidens. That way they can confuse the world.
 
Trump supporters will make this about the Bidens.
Trump detractors will make this about "making this about the Bidens."
Trump supporters will then make this about "about making this about the Bidens."

Distraction is tactic you can't counter because countering it is just more of it.

The Trumpers know this. They know as soon as they get the topic off of Trump it can only be moved back to an argument about the hijack, never back to the topic.
 
acbytesla said:
There IS no "healthy digression" about the Bidens other than to say its more BS from the biggest BSer of all time. Trump and his supporters want to make this about the Bidens. That way they can confuse the world.
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By "healthy", I meant only that it had garnered a lot of activity. I wasn't saying whether or not the digression was a good thing.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Well if Kevin Sorbo has taught us anything he'll have a long and industrious career in straight to video religious propaganda films.
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According to Wikipedia, he's playing a pastor in a film called "Faith Under Fire", which is in post-production. Maybe it's about people struggling to keep their faith while trapped in a wildfire? Or during a military conflict? Maybe?

EDIT: I was being facetious, but it looks like it actually is a play on words rather than a reference to being attacked by evil secularists. "The story of a fireman who has his faith tested when he loses his family to cancer."
 
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Belz... said:
Oh, sure. "Please do your job and investigate corruption cases, including the company where my son works." sounds like a typical case of nepotism! :rolleyes:
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The "nepotism" is him getting the jobs just because people want the Biden last name.

The financial conflict of interest in Ukraine is a totally separate issue.
 
quadraginta said:
This is nothing but badly ginned-up attempts at whataboutism to be thrown to the Trumpista True Believers.
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Except that the criticisms of Hunter working for Burisma go back to 2014, and came from Obama and Biden officials and advisers.

The real point here is that Hunter and Joe did absolutely nothing illegal.

Just keep pointing that out, and there's nothing to argue about.

If you try to argue that it wasn't even a little ethically dubious, or falsely claim it's "nothing but badly ginned-up attempts at whataboutism," you're not going to win that argument, and it makes Trump look less bad.
 
And this is why we're screwed.

Nobody can launch any criticism of Trump because nobody achieves the "You can't criticize anyone until you're perfect" level required to stave off the whataboutism.

I don't give a tenpenny fart if Hunter Biden beats bums to death with kittens wrapped in a burning American flag. We're not talking about Hunter Biden. If you want to talk about Hunter Biden start a thread about it.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
This.

The very fact that we’re back and forth about Hunter Biden shows how effective Trump’s strategy is. Even arguments showing Hunter Biden’s actions were not corrupt can cement a link between Hunter Biden and corruption in people’s minds.

It’s insidious. The alternative is to simply not get sucked into a discussion, in which case the rejoinder will be: “What are you afraid of?” When Schumer rightfully rejects Hunter Biden as an inquiry witness, I guarantee you that’s what the Republicans are primed to say, introducing doubt as the Schumer's motives.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Like I said, insidious.
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I honestly don't understand why people don't just acknowledge that it's unseemly, but it was definitely perfectly legal. Dare the Trumpistas to try to figure out what law was violated, and you'll hear crickets.
 
Upchurch said:
Whether or not the Bidens did anything wrong, this thread is about the House Impeachment Inquiry into Trump, is it not? To those arguing that Trump’s actions where justified because he was asking Ukraine to investigate corruption, what other forms of corruption has Trump ever been interested in getting to the bottom of? Indeed, Trump’s own, plainly visible, forms of corruption show he does not care to have just any for of corruption investigated.

The Biden angle is smoke and mirrors to keep attention away from the actual problem.


Separate issue, what is with all the GOP people insisting on letting Trump defend himself during an investigation when it is the actual trial where that would appropriate?
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"The Biden angle" is unavoidably baked into the Trump impeachment, because what we're talking about with Sorkin and the Bidens is what Trump broke the law to put in the headlines.

The trap they're trying to set, is to get democrats enmeshed in defending a perfectly legal but legitimately ethically questionable quasi-conflict of interest. The more we argue about the (perfectly legal) nespotism and ethically questionable (but also perfectly legal) stuff, the less attention is paid to Trump's overt, criminal, undeniable lawbreaking.

eta:
Regarding: "what is with all the GOP people insisting on letting Trump defend himself during an investigation when it is the actual trial where that would appropriate?"...

They're profoundly ignorant. Often by choice.
 
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acbytesla said:
There IS no "healthy digression" about the Bidens other than to say its more BS from the biggest BSer of all time. Trump and his supporters want to make this about the Bidens. That way they can confuse the world.
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The "health digression" can just be "Sure, it's unseemly, but it was legal" - and that's it.

It's when people start thinking they have to deny that it's even merely unseemly that the distraction tactic has worked.
 
kellyb said:
I honestly don't understand why people don't just acknowledge that it's unseemly, but it was definitely perfectly legal. Dare the Trumpistas to try to figure out what law was violated, and you'll hear crickets.
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yes, it was unseemly, but was it unseemly of Joe or Hunter?
 
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