Hunter Resurfaces

Why did Hunter Biden take this video? it screams drug-induced paranoia.pic.twitter.com/Fk6ejyqWcd

— Evan Mahoney (@EvanMahoney_) October 31, 2023

Hunter Biden resurfaced twice in the news this week, first in a video that was posted on X Tuesday, linked above, and then in a USA Today op-ed yesterday, where he claims that he is in recovery and sober, but his enemies keep dredging up old videos to make fun of him. But as far as anyone can tell, this is a new video that appears to have been taken as a selfie from his own phone, the release of which would have been entirely under his control. Somehow it got from his phone to X.

On the other hand, I suspect the USA Today piece was written for him, or was at best heavily revised from notes he provided, probably by his Hollywood lawyer friend Kevin Morris, who likely placed it via his or his wife's media network. The video could possibly support his claim that

The weaponization of my addiction by partisan and craven factions represents a real threat to those desperate to get sober but are afraid of what may await them if they do. . . . part of my living amends is to not only survive this, but to also use my experience to be a living example of the promises we are told await us in sobriety.

But if this is what sobriety promises, I'm not sure why everyone's so big on it. Comments on the video in the post note, however, that Hunter's pupils appear dilated, and his overall demeanor appears to be bizarre. (The most amusing comment, though, is from the visitor who claims it's actually Jordan Peterson.) Nobody is quite sure of the video's date, but if we compare Hunter's haircut in this photo from October 3:

with his hair in the video, it could well represent a month's regrowth plus a couple weeks of not shaving, and he has the same wiggy facial expression as in the video, so I suspect it's quite recent. The most that can be said about the October photo outside the Delaware courtroom and the video, though, is that Hunter doesn't look well at all. I suspect it was a task to get him as cleaned up as he was for his October appearance.

But isn't Hunter under Secret Service protection? Somehow he's getting into things that dilate his pupils, give him a strung-out expression, and drive him into bizarre behavior taking video selfies. I've got to ask if his Secret Service detail is enabling this, and if his current condition is why he's no longer living at the White House. The baggie near the Sit Room was probably a sign that things could be covered up only so long.

The conditons of Hunter's pretrial release include abstaining from illegal drugs. According to the link, US Magistrate Judge Christopher Burke claims Hunter had "submitted to tests for illegal drug use multiple times recently and had tested negative". I would think, though, that an independent probation officer seeing the video might order yet another test, but the repercussions for doing this would likely be severe.

Right now, nobody around Hunter is doing him any favors, unless his wife has placed herself and little Beau well out of reach, which I suspect may be the case. The difficulty for Hunter is that he's surrounded by enablers due to Joe's position as Caesar, but Hunter's continuing episodes do less damage to Hunter than they do Joe, and this is for entirely justified reasons -- Hunter is protected becasue of Joe, and any new episodes point this out.

Hunter's whole argument in the USA Today piece is that he's sober. If he isn't actually sober, which I think is the likely case, his whole argument fails -- he's continuing to make himself an exhibitionist joke without any assistance from Republicans. Why on earth did he make that video at all, much less allow it to get out?