I have to admit that when I first heard that First Lady Jill Biden was attending her stepson Hunter Biden's federal gun trial, I was a bit surprised. The media, of course, portrays this as proof of just how close-knit the Biden family is.
But, is it really? According to text messages found on his laptop — the laptop that the Department of Justice finally conceded was genuine and un-tampered with — Hunter thinks very little of her.
The text messages, first published two years ago, showed Hunter used some rather nasty language about his stepmother, calling her a “selfish silly entitled c—,” “a moron,” “stupid,” and “vain.”
While those messages were sent to his uncle, Hunter claimed that he told Jill to her face that “the drunkest I’ve ever been is still smarter than you could ever even comprehend,” and also told her, “So go f—k yourself Jill let’s all agree I don’t like you anymore than you like me.”
So, I don't think there's a lot of love between them. And yet, she loyally appeared in the courtroom for his trial, save for her brief trip to France as her husband's handler-in-chief, for which she traveled separately from her husband, basically flying out for the day to be there for the D-Day ceremonies and then flying right back to attend the trial on Friday, and then she flew back to France on Saturday.
Imagine the carbon footprint for her trips. Greta Thunberg would be horrified.
The only thing weirder than Jill Biden attending Hunter Biden's federal gun trial in the first place is her flying back early to get back there.
“Of course the family is there en masse,” a close friend of the Biden family told NBC News. “Imagine if this was your son, your brother. This is their family. Their beloved family.”
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"The whirlwind transatlantic shuttling underscores the family’s concern about the toll that the trial — the first of two for Hunter scheduled this year — could take," explains NBC News. "While in France, the president and first lady frequently asked aides for updates on the trial in between official events, according to a person familiar with the requests."
The article makes it clear that there are plenty of Biden family members who have attended the trial, and had the joy of seeing censored versions of the pornographic images of Hunter Biden from his laptop presented in court. Imagine what that must have been like. So, why is Jill there at all, and not only that, but contributing to the supposedly existential threat of climate change by going back and forth twice to France?
Perhaps it's because Jill Biden, as the first lady, is the most public and well-known Biden family member that can attend — the closest link to the White House and Joe Biden that can remind those on the jury that this isn't just your garden variety criminal drug addict on trial, it's the president's son. Joe Biden certainly can't be in the courtroom every day; he's got to pretend to be president, but Jill is a different story. She's as close as you can get to Joe Biden sitting in that courtroom, and for sure, most of the people in that jury box have voted for her husband and seen her on television before.
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There may be no love between Jill Biden and Hunter Biden, but her job is to sit there and be seen by the 12 men and women who will decide her husband's son's fate.
And, despite how bad this trial is going for Hunter, I suspect it will work.
