The Reactions That Reveal Everything About Trump vs. Biden
In the space of two weeks, the country witnessed two major announcements from the Department of Justice: the first federal indictment of a former president (Donald Trump) for unlawful retention of classified documents and related acts of obstruction, concealment, and false statements, and a guilty plea by the son of the sitting president (Hunter Biden) to federal tax and gun charges.
The identities of the defendants mark these as highly significant political events. And the responses to both sets of charges tell us a great deal about the competing visions of governance on display in the early days of the 2024 election—one vision that threatens to destroy core principles of American law, and one that seeks to safeguard them.
Take, first, Trump’s reaction to his federal indictment. In his political rhetoric and in the emerging legal arguments in his defense, Trump claims that he did nothing wrong. The inquiry, by virtue of the fact that it was conducted “,” full stop. Trump leveled similar accusations of political motivation in response to the news of Hunter Biden’s plea deal, although here Trump’s accusation was one of favoritism, not persecution.
