Much is made of the ‘quality’ of President Joe Biden’s character. His carefully crafted public image paints him as the ultimate family man, and that persona has gotten him far in Washington, D.C.
More than 50 years later, however, the varnish appears to be starting to wear off. The media is finally beginning to pay attention to the fact that President Biden has refused to acknowledge the existence of his seventh grandchild Navy, who his son Hunter Biden fathered while in the throes of addiction. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine to discuss President Biden’s ‘family man’ image and whether or not he has actually exploited his loved ones to gain political and personal favor.
Who’s Exploiting Whom?
As it relates to the seemingly never ending corruption cases linked to the Biden family, Megyn admitted that she has always pinned the ‘blame’ on Hunter. “I thought it was corrupt, hot mess Hunter exploiting the dad’s name and kind of bringing Joe in on a deal here or there to pay some bills,” she said. Now she’s not so sure. “It’s just now dawning on me that, no, this was a Joe Biden operation using Hunter,” she noted. “It’s the other way around.”
At the New York Post, Devine has done extensive reporting on the Bidens and is responsible for breaking much of what we know about the bribery schemes, influence peddling, tax evasion, and laptop drama (to name a few). She told Megyn that she has come to “feel sorry” for Hunter. “I do feel a lot of sympathy for Hunter,” she said. “His life is a mess.”
As Devine outlined, the First Son is a recovering “crack addict,” who “had great tragedies in his early life.” Hunter lost his mother in a car accident that also took the life of his sister. She noted the crash “badly injured” him and his late brother, Beau Biden, but that didn’t stop then-Senator Elect Joe Biden from politicizing the moment. “Joe Biden has had this image that he’s carefully cultivated for many decades of being such a good father, and family man, and a man full of empathy because of the genuine grief he himself has suffered losing his wife and his baby daughter in that car accident,” Devine explained. “But I also look at the photos from his swearing in – he didn’t have to go into that hospital room where his little bandage boys were lying and have them in the foreground of these photos… he could have done it out in the corridor.”
You can’t look at the photos of “those little motherless boys lying in the hospital bed with their father behind them with his hand up, swearing an oath” and not “be moved” or “feel weepy,” Devine said. But, in her view, “it’s a very cynical photograph” – and it’s an image that Joe Biden has “used it in every campaign since.”
Tragedy struck again in the Biden family with the passing of the then-Vice President’s oldest son Beau in May 2015. “Beau Biden died tragically of a brain tumor… and he was really Joe Biden’s golden child that was supposed to be president,” Devine said. “He’s traded off that tragedy in his career to a rather lackluster intellect to rise to great heights.”
So while Devine feels sympathy for Hunter, she has no empathy for his father. “There has been tragedy in the family, but I don’t see a lot of empathy really in Joe Biden because he’s exploited his son,” she explained. “That seems like a very harsh thing to say, but it’s what I’ve observed.”
She pointed to the many corruption scandals currently swirling around the Bidens to prove her point. “Hunter Biden did have an addiction problem that you could expect maybe from someone who suffered early childhood trauma,” she said. “What kind of a father puts his addicted son in front of gushing torrents of unaccountable cash – which is exactly what was happening from Ukraine, from China, etc?” In her view, “you would keep your addicted son away from that if you really cared about them.”
Master Manipulator?
After listening to Devine’s argument, Megyn said she was looking at the Bidens – particularly the president – in a whole new light. “This is giving me just a whole new lens through which to see this entire story,” she said. “This is exactly contrary to the way the media portrays him and he portrays himself.”
A situation that stood out to her is how President Biden speaks about Beau’s passing. “When Joe Biden was thinking about running for president, he said Beau wanted him to do it – it was like a deathbed wish,” she noted. “And now that he is president… he says Beau died in Iraq to try to ratchet up the sympathy.”
While Beau, who was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, died tragically of glioblastoma, he did not die while serving in Iraq. “There’s just these little manipulations that tug at your heartstrings,” Megyn concluded. “But they are actually incredibly cynical and not a lovely example of a loving father.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Devine by tuning in to episode 583 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.