San Francisco: Harbinger of Democratic Horrors to Come

by Paul De Quenoy for American Greatness 

Earlier this month, President Biden held a reelection campaign rally in San Francisco. For a campaign that has already suffered numerous gaffes and scandals, and will likely suffer more, the choice of locale sent a powerful message. As a recent visit revealed to me, the City by the Bay is absolutely as bad as everyone says.

The downtown area, stretching down historic Market Street from the City Hall to bayside Embarcadero, is gutted, with 47% of businesses in the city having closed their doors since 2020. There and in the surrounding neighborhoods, commercial storefronts are almost all empty except for the occasional liquor store. After nightfall, the sidewalks are crowded by groups of homeless people living in makeshift encampments. Most looked like they were on drugs and/or severely mentally ill. The only people walking with purpose appeared to be selling drugs or women.

The ground was covered with all manner of filth. Being around it felt less safe than in any American city before urban governments adopted policies advocated by Black Lives Matter, which are now the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and anyone who aspires to leadership in it. Most notably, San Francisco gutted its police force’s budget and scaled back criminal prosecution of a wide range of crimes directly affecting quality of life.

A 26-year old tech executive friend who tolerates the city but, like many young people is looking to move, calls his fellow residents in this category “zombie people.” The number of people in his age group living in the city has fallen 21% since April 2020, while the number of San Franciscans in their thirties fell by 13% in the same period. Office attendance is hovering at about 45% of capacity. In the first quarter of 2023, the city’s murder rate was up a staggering 83% over the same period last year. This followed on an annual increase of 17 percent in 2021 and 20 percent in 2020.

This year’s victims included prominent tech CEO Bob Lee, who was stabbed to death in the once-posh Mission district. Entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose Twitter headquarters sits precariously on Market Street, has publicly stated that many people he personally knows have been violently assaulted. On the night I arrived, nine people were shot in a gang incident despite strict gun control laws that almost totally outlaw private gun ownership.

Mind you, this is nearly one year after the radical progressive city district attorney Chesa Boudin, a child of imprisoned domestic terrorists, was recalled by a majority vote in arguably the most leftist municipality in America. Last month, however, Boudin was appointed executive director of the University of California Berkeley Law School’s new Criminal Law and Justice Center, suggesting that patterns of law enforcement and prosecution are unlikely to change any time soon.

The massive downtown Hilton – one of the largest hotels in the world and a convention mecca for decades – was “abandoned” in early June, after Hilton’s parent company declared itself unable to make any more mortgage payments due to the severe urban decline. AT&T has announced that it will withdraw from its city flagship store in the nearby Union Square area. The Westfield shopping mall, Cinemark Holdings, Nordstrom, T-Mobile, Old Navy, and numerous other retailers are also joining the exodus this year, building on the departure of at least 22 well known retail brands in 2022. In Westfield’s case, it is abandoning $558 million in financing.

The Four Seasons Residences property that opened in the formerly fashionable South of Market area two years ago reportedly sold only 13 of its 146 units in the 18 months after it opened, likely because nobody of means and sense wants to live anywhere near there.

At the same time, every major public building, Grace Cathedral, the remaining big league hotels, and other surviving large businesses are all flying multiple versions of the LGBTQ flag, huge posters with BLM slogans, and other propaganda talking about diversity, inclusion, belonging, and, ironically, “safety.” The steps leading up to Grace Cathedral are painted in rainbow colors, suggesting not merely­ de rigueur “inclusivity,” but a symbolic message that salvation may be through DEI alone.

“We saw people defecating on the street. We saw people using heroin, we saw people smoking crack cocaine,” said Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on a recent visit, “the wreckage is really sad to see.”

Indeed it is, but unfortunately San Francisco’s atomizing and impoverishing anarcho-tyranny is how the President of the United States and almost anyone of importance in his political party would prefer for you to live.

X22, And we Know, and more- July 2nd

 

Under Biden, Fake News Soars to Whole New Level

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness 

“Biden calls China’s Xi a dictator; Beijing slams remark as ‘provocation,’” headlined the Washington Post on June 20.

“Biden calls Xi a dictator, who was kept in the dark about spy balloon,” chimed in the New York Times.

“Biden Compares China’s Xi Jinping to ‘dictators,’” proclaimed CNN, “even as Washington and Beijing work to thaw relations.”

“Biden calls Xi a ‘dictator,’ fueling Chinese anger,” headlined the NBC News story, in perfect harmony and ignorance.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Joe Biden explained at a June 20 event in California. “No, I’m serious. That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened.”

That is not exactly the same as saying “China’s Xi Jinping is a dictator,” or “Xi Jinping is like other dictators.” Contrary to what the reports assume, Xi Jinping would have no problem with the label.

The People’s Republic of China is a Communist country, and in Marxist-Leninist doctrine the dictatorship of the proletariat rules. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu-Wen and Xi Jinping are all totalitarian dictators in the true sense. Marxist-Leninist doctrine allows no party but the Communist Party, and the Party decides who will run the show. Xi Jinping is the man of the hour, and the notion he “didn’t know” about the balloon is ludicrous.

China’s high-altitude surveillance device was capable of navigation. It overflew the Aleutian Islands, passed over Canadian territory and reentered U.S. airspace with no official acknowledgement from China or Biden. The surveillance device only became public knowledge when a private citizen in Montana spotted the craft and took photos.

China’s foreign ministry said the balloon was “mainly meteorological,” and the craft had been “affected by the Westerlies,” and “deviated far from its planned course.” And China “regrets the unintended entry” into U.S. airspace. Biden’s proclamation that “it was blown off course up through Alaska and then down through the United States,” echoed the Chinese position.

While in U.S. airspace, China’s balloon overflew missile installations such as Malmstrom Air Force Base. Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told CNN the balloon passed over “a number of sensitive sites,” but did not present a “significant intelligence gathering risk.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin advised against shooting down China’s balloon while it was over land.

Joint chiefs of staff boss Gen. Mark Milley recommended against “kinetic action” to bring down the balloon, CBS News reported, because of the danger of debris hitting the ground, and because “the U.S. government had determined the balloon does not pose a threat.” The military did not shoot it down until it had crossed nearly the entire continental United States.

According to Biden, the balloon contained “two box cars full of spy equipment.” but like a typical dictator Xi Jinping didn’t know it was there. Far from offending China’s Communist dictator, Biden was parroting CCP propaganda, and nothing to see here folks.

On June 29, Gen. Ryder told reporters that China’s surveillance device “did not collect while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States, and certainly the efforts that we made contributed.” No inventory on those “two box cars” full of spy gear.

Gen. Ryder was just following orders, and the establishment media is all-in. The real story here is Biden’s longstanding collaboration with the Communist regime.

As the Atlantic pointed out in 2012, vice president Biden “got China” through the efforts of longtime supporter Tom Donilon, who would serve as national security adviser under President Obama. Donilon sees no conflict between a “rising power and an established power” and contends that “a deeper U.S.-China military-to-military dialogue is central to addressing many of the sources of insecurity and potential competition between us.”

In similar style in 2019, presidential candidate Joe Biden went on record that the Chinese are “not bad folks” and not even competition for the United States. In reality, Chinese agents strip mine the USA for classified information, trade secrets and intellectual property. The Biden DOJ has dropped the case against some Chinese spies apprehended by the FBI.

The CCP uses the Confucius Institutes to push propaganda on U.S. college campuses. President Trump demanded that the institutes register as a foreign mission but the Biden Junta allows them to function as a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the IRS.

The Biden Junta also allows China to operates police stations in New York, Los Angeles and other American cities. This is a clear breach of American territorial and judicial sovereignty, and far beyond anything National Socialist Germany or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was able to achieve.

For a statement calculated to anger a Communist dictator, recall President Reagan challenging Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” An equivalent with Communist China would be “Free Tibet,” or  “democracy for Hong Kong,” and “freedom for Taiwan.” Nothing like that from the Biden Junta.

“We do not support Taiwan independence,” Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed on June 19, after meeting with Xi Jinping. They want the same things but the story was supposedly that Biden had called Xi a dictator.

According to Biden, Xi didn’t even know the balloon was there, and it didn’t collect anything from the sensitive military sites it overflew. In Joe Biden’s America, fake news is soaring to a whole new level.

Three Dead and 29 Injured in Two Mass Shootings Where the Police Aren't Talking and the Media Aren't Curious

posted by streiff at RedStateVIP 

On the night of “Juneteenth,” which is sort of becoming the American equivalent of Cinco de Mayo in terms of a celebration in which 90+% of participants can’t tell you what they are celebrating, a mass shooting took place in Willowbrook, IL, left one man dead and no less than 22 people injured. The shooting took place outdoors at a strip mall around 12:30 a.m. Police are looking for numerous suspects, but two weeks after the shooting, no arrest has been made.

On June 6, 18-year-old Shawn Jackson and his step-father Renzo Smith were gunned down by 19-year-old Amari Pollard outside the venue for Richmond, VA’s Huguenot High School graduation. In addition to the two dead, seven were wounded. Four firearms were recovered. One belonged to the shooter and another to an unidentified person not involved in the fracas. Adding to the mystery of two unaccounted-for guns, Pollard has only been charged in the two deaths, raising the question of who shot the other seven people.

What do these incidents have in common? They are mass shootings where the investigations have stalled, and the media has stopped asking questions.

I’ve written on this topic twice before. In April, see Five Killed in Texas Shooting, Police Are Searching for the Shooter, and the Gun Grabbers for a Reason to Look Away; I posted on mass shootings in Cleveland, TX, Jasper, TX, and Dadeville, AL. At about the same time, I posted on the unresolved questions about the mass shooting at a Louisville, KY, bank, see The Media Will Forget the Louisville Shooting Because It Doesn’t Support the Gun Control Narrative.

In the case of Cleveland, TX, an illegal immigrant gunned down four adults and a child, also illegal immigrants, because someone had complained to the police about him discharging a modern sporting rifle in a residential area. In Jasper, TX, nine teenagers were wounded at an “after prom” party, and four suspects have been arrested. The Dadeville, AL, shooting left three dead and 32 wounded or injured at a “sweet 16” party. Police recovered 89 cartridges from six different weapons. Six men, all older than “sweet 16,” have been charged.

In Louisville, an anti-gun progressive shot down five colleagues (The Media Will Forget the Louisville Shooting Because It Doesn’t Support the Gun Control Narrative). Eventually, murderous Nashville transman Audrey Hale was declared the real victim despite the six bodies left on the floor (see Mainstream Media Finds the ‘Real’ Victims of Nashville Mass Shooting in Predictable Turn).

Just like the shootings I cataloged a couple of months ago, no one is interested in investigating the Willowbrook shooting or getting to the bottom of the Huguenot shooting, where there were initial stories that the victims were armed and fired some of the shots.

This is why I don’t take the policy proposals of gun-grabbers as anything but what they are — a way to steal firearms from law-abiding people. This is why I know the gun control people are deeply dishonest about having any desire to reduce “gun violence.” What they want is a high level of gun violence to bolster their case and a small number of killers who follow a prescribed narrative, even if that requires labeling a Hispanic man as a “white supremacist,” see Washington Post Rushes to Call Texas Mall Shooter a White Supremacist, Shoots Itself in the Foot.

If we enter into negotiations with these people over our right to own and carry firearms, we deserve any and every bad thing that comes from that blunder.

Progressives Seize on SCOTUS Case to Threaten to Refuse Service to Christians; I Completely Support Them

streiff reporting for RedState 

Thursday and Friday, the US Supreme Court made two astonishing rulings. In a pair of 6-3 decisions, the Court decided that the US Constitution actually applies to people who are not part of a privileged caste. In the combined case of Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, the Court ruled that discriminating against anyone on the basis of race was unconstitutional and no amount of lipstick that you smeared on the hog of good intentions could make it anything other than the odious act it is (BREAKING: Supreme Court Rejects Race-Based College Admissions). In the second decision, 303 Creative vs. Elenis, the Court ruled that the government cannot make private citizens espouse opinions that are objectionable to them; see Supreme Court Rules Christian Web Design Company Does Not Have to Promote Gay Weddings. In this case, a web designer said she would not create websites that “celebrated,” if that is, indeed, the word we should use for a shameful parody, homosexual weddings or, presumably, other such anti-Christian messages.

Naturally, the left reacted to these cases with lies on a heroic scale. In her dissent to the Students for Fair Admissions cases, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson claimed “for high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician is tantamount to a miracle drug: it more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.” See ‘Ted Talk’ Given After Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Disputed Claim About Black Babies in AA Case. In reality, the study she cited found the difference in survival rate for a Black infant with a Black doctor to be 99.96% while a Black infant with a White doctor had a 99.91%. Sonia Sotomayor, our beloved wide Latina, regurgitated in her 303 Creative opinion the urban legend that Matthew Shepard was killed because he was homosexual instead of mentioning that he was a drug addict and dealer, a homosexual prostitute, and had an ongoing sexual relationship with one of his killers, who was also a drug dealer. All of this would presumably be legal because a web designer opposes homosexual marriage; see Say What? Sonia Sotomayor Is Compared to Mazie Hirono After Astonishing Claims in AA, 303 Case Dissents.

Two big criticisms have been directed against the 303 Creative decision. First, the critics claim that 303 Creative was a “hypothetical” case because 303 Creative’s owner sued for an injunction before Colorado could slap her with a fine. Here is an example of this. I have no idea who “Kaivan Shroff” is when he’s up and has his trousers on, but this is his take.

This is dumb for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court decides if the cases it takes are hypothetical, not some Twitter rando. If it takes a case, the case is, de facto, not hypothetical, in the opinion of a majority of the Court. Second, this case had been heard at the district court level and was taken on appeal from the Tenth Circuit, whose decision the Supreme Court reversed. Obviously, the case was not hypothetical.

The second line of attack is that the 303 Creative is based on the incoherent dissent by Sotomayor, who turned a very simple case briefed by both sides on the government’s ability to make citizens hold a certain viewpoint into one of public accommodations, see Gorsuch Savages Sotomayor’s Brain-Melting Dissent in the 303 Creative Case. As Gorsuch said, the 303 Creative decision has zero to do with public accommodations as the designer had no problem serving homosexual clients.

It is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case. Much of it focuses on the evolution of public accommodations laws, post, at 7–13, and the strides gay Americans have made towards securing equal justice under law, post, at 14–17. And, no doubt, there is much to applaud here. But none of this answers the question we face today: Can a State force someone who provides her own expressive services to abandon her conscience and speak its preferred message instead?

Here is a Twitter rando parroting an argument made a few thousand times yesterday but with the lack of introspection to understand they were being low IQ derivative and not an edgelord.

For the record, I’m opposed to public accommodations laws based on liberty and free association grounds. If your magenta hair and ear gauges gross me out, I should have a right to tell you to shove off when you show up in my business. The only thing damaged by that interaction is my wallet. And if you don’t want me in your business, I don’t want to be there. As my friend and colleague, Jim Thompson replied to this twit:

 

 

The era of the Woolworth’s lunch counter is over. In fact, the left is leading the charge in this direction (see The Sarah Sanders and the Red Hen Restaurant Story Takes Turn Directly Where You Thought It Would). Where possible, I give my business to Christian and conservative businesses. I don’t shop at places that wear their progressiveness on their sleeve; looking at you, Starbucks. I don’t go to stores displaying “PRIDE” signage (theological note, this is very appropriately named as pride is the sin that got Lucifer booted from Heaven). I won’t buy an Anheuser-Busch beverage even for someone else. I’m definitely not going to eat food made by openly gay caterers or hire any business that makes their sexual aberrations part of their business model. I haven’t returned to those businesses that required a face mask once the government mandate ended. In fact, the quicker the left goes in this direction, the quicker we will be able to easily identify businesses that adhere to traditional values and keep our money with like-minded Americans.

So, as far as I’m concerned, withhold services all you wish. There are plenty of businesses run by normal people who aren’t controlled by the random twitches emanating from their crotch. I’d much rather send my money in their direction than subsidize values and beliefs I find to be abhorrent.

New Trade Analysis Shows Longevity of President Trump’s Tariffs Diminishing Chinese Imports – China Fails...

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

New analysis of the long-term impact from Section 301 tariffs triggered by President Trump against China, shows just how consequential economic nationalism can become.

Our own analysis of U.S. consumer prices in 2019 showed that prices of imported goods actually declined despite the tariffs. A recent report from CPA takes a look at the impact to Chinese exports to the U.S.  [SEE DATA HERE] Bottom line, the tariffs worked to reduce Chinese imports.

CPA – […] Since the Section 301 tariffs were imposed, the share of imports from China has steadily declined from 21.6% in 2017 the year prior to the tariffs to 16.5%, a decline of 5.1%. No other country has lost as much share of total U.S. import penetration over the past five years.

In terms of total import value, Mexico gained the most from the tariffs, adding $110.8 billion. Vietnam gained the second most in import value by $78.4 billion and by far gained the most of total share of U.S. imports. In 2017, Vietnam accounted for about 2% of U.S. imports at $46.5 billion. In 2022, the U.S. imported $127.5 billion in goods from Vietnam, and the share of the total nearly doubled to 3.9%. Other countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia all saw significant increases in their value of imports by the U.S. (read more)

With the leading opponent to President Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, not supporting tariffs on behalf of the multinationals and Club for Growth donors who stand behind him, it’s worth revisiting the actual outcome to American consumers to dispel the popular myths about tariffs raising prices here at home.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!

Overall, year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; yup, that was our inflation rate.  The rate in the latter half of 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate basically remained consistent.   [See Below]  The U.S. economy was on a smooth glide path, strong, stable, and Main Street was growing with MAGAnomics at work.

A couple of important points.  First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers, and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America First MAGAnomic initiative.  Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.

Which brings us to the second important point.  Notice how food prices had very low year-over-year inflation – 0.5 percent.  That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag’s hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:

(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)

For the previous twenty years, food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand.   The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.

President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process.  As farm products were less exported, the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle.  Food prices dropped, and our pantry costs were lowered.

The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July 2019, when Amazon held its two-day blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits.   Likely that’s because blue collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong.  Yes, MAGAnomics was working.

Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?

Well, exactly the opposite happened [BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:

[Table 1 – BLS report link]

This was a really interesting dynamic that no one in the professional punditry would dare explain.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products.  [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.]  However, when the EU and China responded by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.

Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper.   Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere.   All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.

This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.

This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.

Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:

[…]  Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.

[…]  Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.

[Page #4 – BLS Report, pdf] – BLS press release.

So yes, we know President Trump can save Social Security and Medicare by expanding the economy with his America First economic policy.  We do not need to guess if it is possible or listen to pundits theorize about his approach being some random ‘catch phrase’ disconnected from reality.  Yes folks, we have the receipts.

This was MAGAnomics at work, and this is entirely what created the middle class MAGA coalition.  No other Republican candidate has this economic policy in their outlook, because all other candidates are purchased by the Wall Street multinationals.

America First MAGAnomics is unique to President Trump, because he is the only one independent enough to implement them.

That’s just the reality of the situation.  They hate him for it… 

Joe Biden Disowning His Granddaughter Goes Much Deeper Than Originally Thought

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Amidst all the proclamations of the supposed incredible decency and love of the Biden family has been a very uncomfortable reality: Joe and Jill Biden have disowned their small granddaughter.

After Hunter Biden recently settled with the mother of the child to reduce his child support payments, the situation once again found itself in the public eye. This time, things escalated further, though. Not only did the president’s son reduce his payments by a huge amount, but part of the settlement was denying his own daughter the use of his last name.

As a father, I can’t even begin to process what kind of person does something like that, but responsibility for this situation doesn’t end with Hunter Biden himself. Behind him stands two enabling parents who have openly joined him in assuring the child in question is shunned and effectively erased.

For years, Joe Biden has stated he only has six grandchildren. Some of that has been written off his senility flaring up. I suppose the excuse is that if he never sees his granddaughter, why should be expected to remember she exists?

But a new report is shedding light on just how deep the plot goes. Per two sources, reported on in The New York Times of all places, White House aides are being told specifically that the Bidens only have six grandchildren.

And then there is President Biden.

His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.

I’d ask how the Bidens could possibly get away with such a directive, but then I remember they are Democrats and how that means that nothing matters. Still, what a brazen move. Not only are they disowning their granddaughter for no reason other than disgusting spite (and through no fault of the child), but they are designing an entire messaging strategy around that disowning, making sure White House aides are on the same page.

It’d be one thing if Hunter Biden were just a terrible human being going rogue. In that case, Joe and Jill Biden would be expected to back away from him and his transgressions while still seeking to be part of their granddaughter’s life. That’s exactly how my parents would respond if I put them in a similar position. They wouldn’t cease to love me, but certainly, they’d hold me to account for my behavior before disowning an innocent grandchild in support of me.

Again, the logical explanation here is that Joe and Jill Biden are just awful people. Even if there was some dictate from the mother for the Bidens to stay away from her and her child (and I believe the opposite is true), that’s still not a reason to pretend she doesn’t exist. Is this really how arrogant the president and his wife have become? That they believe they can get away with acting this way? That’s a rhetorical question at this point.