Were you surprised?
When President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden, many people online and on air acted surprised. Of course the president had promised he would not do it. Of course he did do it. What is remarkable is that so much of the surprise seems genuine.
There is a Lucy-and-the-football quality to the responses in legacy media when Democrats do Democrat things. Legacy media is so deeply biased to the left at every level that it is probably impossible to course correct now, and only alternative media will thrive in the years ahead. Trust in legacy media, like trust in President Biden, ought to be a thing of the past now.
When President Biden set out to make himself FDR 2.0 with massive and unnecessary spending when he took office, and instead sparked an inflationary cycle unlike any we have seen since the late Jimmy Carter years, some people were genuinely surprised. It made no economic sense to do what he did, but Biden did what Democrats do: Spend money on favored constituencies. People like former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summer warned Biden, but Biden waived it off and unleashed inflation. To repeat: spending enormous amounts of money on favored groups is what Democrats do.
When President Biden pulled out of Afghanistan in such a precipitous way as to cause the collapse of the NATO-backed regime in disastrous fashion, followed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, people were surprised. Why? It is exactly what President Obama did with American forces in Iraq in late 2011, and the rise of ISIS followed soon thereafter. Scampering out on allies no matter the predictable, indeed inevitable awful consequences, is what Democrats do.
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When Secretary Clinton turned out to have a private server, people were surprised. When her lawyers deleted thousands of emails, people were surprised. When the Department of Justice and the National Archives and Records Administration ordered a raid on Mar-a-Lago, people were surprised. The “rules” are for Republicans, not Democrats.
We should simply stop being surprised when Democrats do Democrat things, or when the vast administrative state does ridiculous and cruel things like seizing and killing Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon, or when legacy media pretends to being shocked, shocked at events.
It’s what bureaucracies do: abuse power.
BIDEN PARDONS HUNTER AHEAD OF EXIT FROM OVAL OFFICE
When Democrat state officials in Colorado and Maine tried to remove Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, people were surprised, but should not have been. Abusing power is part of the genetic code of big government when run by Democrats. It’s a feature, not a bug. Weaponizing New York State civil and criminal law? Check. Weaponizing Fulton County, Georgia prosecutors? Check. Turning Jack Smith loose to pursue whatever theory he can cook up regardless of existing precedent and likely Supreme Court rulings? Check.
When Dr. Fauci tells you masks don’t work and then tells you he was lying in the so-called public interest, don’t be surprised. When public health officials tell demonstrators that their mass gatherings in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd are not contrary to all prior COVID guidance, don’t be surprised.
Just don’t be surprised by Democrats, bureaucrats, or legacy media. Hold on to two thoughts from 2024: First, for months and indeed years, every senior Democrat and their enablers in legacy media told us President Biden was perfectly fine and had the energy and acuity of all of his young staffers, and they were lying.
When President Biden told us he would not pardon Hunter, he was lying.
There is very little one can do to stop practiced lairs from lying. Just don’t get fooled again. The plummeting ratings and revenue of legacy media suggests that, finally, the gig is up for legacy media and the colleagues in the Democratic Party. We have to hope that audiences won’t revert to a resting position of gullibility when it comes to their assurances of good faith.
The old saying should be true: Trust is earned in ounces and lost in pounds. President Biden, everyone involved in his catastrophic presidency and those in legacy media who have covered it as though Biden’s term was a success have lost scores and scores of pounds of trust. Don’t give it back.
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.