Save for public appearances with their parents, there’s no reason for the media to report on any private behavior of Malia and Sasha Obama or Tiffany and Barron Trump. Let Malia enjoy her music festivals in peace. Stick to Tiffany’s Instagram to follow her jet-setting adventures. The kids of politicians who don’t follow their parents footsteps into public life ought to retain their right to privacy.
But those who ride on their parents’ coattails are and always have been a different story.
Ivanka Trump influences federal policy and actively, by her own volition, represents America on the world stage solely by virtue of her father’s election. Chelsea Clinton actively campaigned for her mother in both the 2008 and 2016 election cycles, serves on the board of not-so-apolitical Clinton Foundation, and now and then talks of running for office herself.
Sure, the media ought not to pry into their personal lives absent any impropriety. But if they are corrupt, how is that not fair game?
Which brings us to Hunter Biden, who according to the New York Times‘ Michael Barbaro, is just a very large, 49-year-old child.
As this fellow circulates personal attacks on a candidates child, remember he’s paid by @NBC and @MSNBC https://t.co/38kbq1UnsI
— Michael Barbaro (@mikiebarb) September 26, 2019
Unlike his late brother Beau Biden, the younger Biden hasn’t served in elected office. But Hunter Biden has overwhelmingly chosen to enter public life using his father as leverage. Although the media has focused on Biden’s controversial role on the board of the Ukranian Burisma Holdings, his apparent nepotistic advantage goes back decades. Fresh out of law school, Biden became the deputy campaign manager of his father’s reelection campaign and got a job with MBNA America — one of his dad’s largest donors at the time. From there, Hunter worked his way from one lucrative appointment to the next, all while apparently popping in on his father’s political career and serving as his envoy.
Biden is also an absolute mess of a human being. He was dishonorably discharged from the military for cocaine use. He left his wife of more than two decades to date his dead brother’s wife, then left her in turn to move to Los Angeles and marry a woman he knew for exactly one week. He has since been sued by another woman demanding child support for his alleged illegitimate offspring.
Biden apparently suffers from long-running substance abuse issues, making his dishonorable discharge relevant to the question of why he earned the Burisma appointment in the first place. That shouldn’t necessarily make all of his personal life fair game. But his ongoing legal battle with a woman who claims he impregnated her and then bailed is cause for concern if he remains active in politically significant roles while the elder Biden campaigns for the presidency. His corruption and legal battles are 100% fair game.
