Franklin Foer: “After 18 months of flogging the Hunter Biden story, what does President Donald Trump have to show for his efforts? His opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son culminated in his own impeachment. Despite railing against the scion’s alleged swampiness at nearly every rally, Trump’s convoluted narrative about Biden family corruption has taken root only on Fox News. At the very least, the accusation that Hunter leveraged his father’s high office to enrich himself has failed to measurably move the polls.”

“Even Trump’s ardent supporters are now encouraging him to change the subject. Yet he remains obstinate in his obsession. Without a coherent message or an affirmative vision for a second term, Trump has clearly been betting his reelection on what military planners would call a ‘psyop,’ or a psychological operation. That is, he hopes to use gamesmanship to destabilize the mind of his adversary, forcing him into a moment of anger or incoherence that illustrates his lack of fitness for the office. His attacks on Hunter Biden should be understood as the pillar of this strategy… Spare a moment for Hunter Biden—a man who is recovering from addiction, a brother whose misery is the apparent shame of having survived his siblings, a son who is now the bludgeon that enemies hope will destroy his father. He is being sacrificed to a president who views the sadistic exploitation of a family’s tragedy as his own best hope of salvation. In its grotesqueness, this is a near-perfect closing argument, a presidency distilled.”