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No person with a loved one who has suffered through addiction could feel anything but empathy for Hunter Biden and his family. There are a lot of Hunter Bidens in this world, people who fell in way over their heads, who long for someone to believe they can recover and construct their lives differently, Patti Davis, a recovered addict and the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, wrote last week in the New York Times. You just dont hear about them on the evening news.

The tragedy, pain and trauma of drug addiction is not lost on millions of Americans. And as Davis noted, Some observers argue that if Hunter Biden were not the presidents son, he wouldnt be on trial for buying a gun while being addicted to drugs, since he had the gun for only 11 days and it wasnt used in any crime.

That a prosecutor appointed by felon and former president Donald Trump should bring a case of the type so rarely charged only heightened the queasy feeling that Hunter Biden was forced to bear the burden of being a presidents son. As former president Donald Trump complains that he is a victim of selective prosecution for his brazen attempts to defy a federal subpoena, Hunter Biden may actually be experiencing it, David Graham wrote for the Atlantic. Even a juror said the prosecution was a waste of tax dollars.

The reaction of many MAGA types and their captive right-wing media seemingly disappointed that the allegedly rigged judicial system apparently wasnt so rigged after all was one sign of the moral chasm and twisted logic that has come to define MAGA-era politics.

On every score, the Biden family throughout the public ordeal exemplified dignity, decency and the sort of unconditional love that many endlessly needy narcissists and other damaged adults were denied as children. (One is reminded of Henry Kissingers dig at Richard M. Nixon: Can you imagine what this man would have been like if somebody had loved him?)

First lady Jill Biden regularly attended her sons trial; President Biden never impugned the judicial system. Biden promised not to pardon his son or commute his sentence, and embraced him after the trial. In a written statement, the president said: Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery. He added, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.

Trump, convicted of falsifying documents to cover up hush money paid to an adult-film actress in an effort to block the story from appearing before the 2016 election, alternately fumed and slept his way through his trial. His wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner never showed up to demonstrate support. Only his son Eric was in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

During and after Trumps trial, he and his MAGA minions attacked the judicial system, smeared the judge and jury, and then refused to accept the legitimacy of the verdict. Trumps bizarre call to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) demanding that we have to overturn this epitomized not just his constitutional ignorance but the MAGA movements determination to burn down a judicial system that could not be corrupted to do his bidding.

At its worst, cynical political coverage and punditry about the two criminal trials often regurgitated MAGA spin that Trumps conviction could help him. Hunter Bidens case was frequently portrayed as a potential election-year problem or trouble for the president. (While some polls show Biden has improved by a couple of points, Trump has not benefited from either trial.) The New York Times even appeared to question President Bidens judgment for inviting Hunter to the White House.

The Biden family in these past few weeks have demonstrated qualities such as respect, empathy and decency that have long defined public virtue. (Even the term seems quaint these days.) For a time, Republicans insisted that presidents needed to embody those characteristics. No more. Now the MAGA Republicans and their warped cult leader celebrate cruelty, vindictiveness and lust for power.

This gaping moral divide has been nowhere more evident than in the candidates (and their followers) conduct and rhetoric during these two trials. Now the question has been sharpened: Which candidate should we emulate and what sort of country do we want to live in?

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Opinion | The Hunter Biden and Trump trials were a litmus test. Only the Bidens passed. - The Washington Post

My nephew Scott was recently made a judge in Virginia, which isnt exactly headline news for the rest of you, but pretty cool for me, even though it makes me think you have to be pretty old for someone to call you a judges uncle.

I went to the ceremony, which is called an investiture, which is sort of like a judicial version of a bar mitzvah. You get judge-like gifts (mostly with a gavel motif), people say nice things about you, and you give a speech. Fortunately for my nephew, no Hebrew school was required this time just three years of law school and many more as an attorney.

The courtroom was packed with friends, colleagues and family, but not only friends, colleagues and family. Local politicians, too. And the Virginia speaker of the House, who showed up because circuit judges are appointed by a majority vote of the legislature.

Which brings us to the reason Im writing this today, I mean besides being a proud uncle.

This was a political appointment most judges are, of course, either appointed by elected officials or otherwise elected themselves in a hyperpolitical time when it can often be hard to distinguish a smoke-free courtroom from a smoke-filled backroom.

I went to see my nephew in action and left his court thinking that maybe, just maybe, not all is lost.

Or maybe not.

I mean, Scott did become judge in a political appointment at the same time when Donald Trump the former president who may be president again routinely trashes judges, calls them dishonest and worse, suggests that a jurys verdict is somehow corrupted by politics, implicitly makes the case that trust in the judicial system is just one more dispensable commodity, sort of like election law.

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And Scott got his political appointment in a time when a U.S. Supreme Court justice or two take expensive gifts and trips as a matter of course, when Supreme Court justices are the lone decider of their own ethical standing, when a justice, or maybe his wife, hangs a flag upside down to protest government policy and agrees, in a surreptitiously taped interview by a liberal filmmaker, that the nation needs to be godly.

And when the idea of justices calling balls and strikes as Chief Justice Roberts claimed in his confirmation hearing is held up for ridicule.

The Supreme Court rulings come fast and furious this time of year and after each one, we seem to wonder, often furiously, whether the ruling is based on good jurisprudence or is a sophisticated version of jury rigging. I mean, the 6-3 conservative majority never would have happened without Mitch McConnells devious machinations.

For instance, the court rules unanimously that the complainants in a case involving the fate of a widely used abortion pill dont have standing. Its a ruling that ducked the real issue in which justices could have sensibly decided that mifepristone is an FDA-approved drug that no one argues isnt safe but instead delayed it until presumably better complainants come along.

Meanwhile, maybe not coincidentally, Trump is presently trying to persuade Republican politicians to moderate their abortion stances to speak correctly about abortion, at least until after the election. Did the six conservative justices get that message? Well see. Theres another abortion ruling coming.

Its hard not to be cynical, especially when we have to keep waiting for the court to rule on the absurd notion that a president enjoys unlimited lifetime immunity from the law. By delaying the ruling, whatever the ruling happens to be, the justices already made it nearly impossible for this case to happen before Election Day. That, Im sure, is a crime.

And the hits keep coming. On Friday, the six conservative justices overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks. Yes, after the horror of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, in which the killer fired 1,000 rounds in 11 minutes, even Trump knew something had to be done. A bump stock, which the killer employed, allows a semiautomatic gun to fire at the rate similar to a machine gun.

But the court ruled that bump stocks dont strictly make a weapon qualify as a machine gun the three liberal justices had a different view and so back out on the streets the bump stocks go.

Unsurprisingly, Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion. The conservative justices said Congress could change the law. You should try not to laugh when you read that. I doubt the families of those killed in the deadliest shooting in the modern era are laughing.

But still, theres another way to tell this story.

Just because my nephew was appointed by a legislature doesnt mean hes politically corrupt. I knew that, of course, but it was all reinforced when I went to see him do his judging thing. It was a Friday, meaning it was a day in his court to hear civil proceedings. He also hears criminal cases, though none, to this point, involving a former president paying off a porn star and then fixing the books.

There were no fireworks that morning. There was no showboating. There was a judge listening carefully to both sides of an argument. Scott helped a woman, who didnt have an attorney, walk through a complicated part of her divorce suit. He tried to convince another divorced couple that not every move the other made was done with malice.

In a more complicated case, this new judge, still learning the ropes, had to decide what to do with an attorney who desperately wanted to walk away from a client who had basically disappeared. The opposing attorneys argued that the first attorney was the only link their clients still had in their efforts to collect a judgment.

My nephew the judge said hed take it under advisement and would have to research the issue. He didnt pretend to know more than he did. He didnt dismiss the notion that both sides had legitimate points to make. He looked, well, judge-like.

The thing about the case, and all the cases that day, is that they had nothing to do with politics. They were just ordinary, run-of-the-mill cases, unless, that is, they were your cases.

As Scott said in his investiture speech, people often come to court as the place of last resort. It may not be where they want to be, but its a place where they believe, or hope anyway, they can be heard fairly and honestly.

It was strange being in a courtroom where all were required to rise upon the entrance of someone Ive known since birth and at every other stage of his life as father, son, husband, lawyer, now judge.

When he was 13, I took him with me to spring training as a bar mitzvah gift. Hes now nearly 50, and when I saw him in the courtroom that day and watched him at work, I knew just seeing him in his robes was his investiture gift to me. It was nearly enough to restore faith in, you know, truth, justice and the American way.

That feeling lasted all of a week, all the way until yet another hyperpartisan Supreme Court ruling would be handed down.

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mikes newsletter.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom.Read our ethics policy for more on The Suns opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column.Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.

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Littwin: Spend some time in a courtroom without Trump, and it just might restore your faith in truth and justice - The Colorado Sun

Donald hates his birthdays, Ivana Trump once said of her former husband.

He seemed to hate this one, on Friday, especially. He looked genuinely upset earlier this week when his supporters sang an early Happy Birthday to him at a rally in Las Vegas. You know, he told them, theres a certain point at which you dont want to hear Happy Birthday. You just want to pretend the day doesnt exist.

No doubt. Now 78, he is trying to convince the country to give him another four years in office, at the end of which he would be the oldest president in American history a mantle held by the current, 81-year-old occupant of the Oval Office.

On the campaign trail, both men try to downplay their age while making the other appear as creaky and cranky as possible.

The Trump team spent the week blasting out selectively edited videos of Mr. Biden toddling around Europe, looking like Corrado Soprano lost in Newark. We have a president who has no clue what the hell is going on, Mr. Trump said at a birthday celebration with supporters in Palm Beach, Fla., on Friday evening.

The Biden campaign hit back with an email on Mr. Trumps birthday, reminding voters that he had fallen asleep at his own trial, a case that resulted in felony convictions. He is unhinged, unable to focus and diminishing before our very eyes, James Singer, a Biden campaign spokesman, said of the former president.

Mr. Trump used to have fun on his birthdays. Donald was the child who would throw the cake at the birthday parties, his younger brother Robert once told the journalist Marie Brenner. After he became a mogul, Mr. Trump would throw swinging parties at his casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., like the one at Trumps Castle in 1988, for his 42nd birthday, when he played videos of Liza Minnelli and Billy Crystal wishing him a happy birthday. (President Ronald Reagan sent a telegram.)

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It's Donald Trump's 78th Birthday. He Isn't Happy About It. - The New York Times

Former President Donald J. Trump, courting Black voters at a church on the west side of Detroit on Saturday, sought to harness animus toward migrants crossing the border, sanitized his track record on race and sold himself as the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln.

As he spoke to roughly 200 people, Mr. Trump largely ignored his history of racist statements and his decades of calls for tougher policing that have fueled his three presidential campaigns.

Instead, during short remarks before a panel with Black residents of Detroit at the citys 180 Church, Mr. Trump tried to cast Mr. Biden as anti-Black, focusing intently on the presidents role in shepherding the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a sweeping bill that criminal justice experts have said laid the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately hurt Americas Black communities.

Mr. Trump, at one point, seemed determined to ensure that Mr. Bidens role in the crime bill would be the events main takeaway. He falsely accused Mr. Biden of coining the term super predators and then insisted that those in the audience should not forget Mr. Bidens role, as a U.S. senator, in championing the bill and helping pass it.

He was the one with the super predators, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Biden. So just please remember that if youre going to vote Democrat because you shouldnt vote Democrat.

Mr. Trumps visit was part of a larger effort by his campaign to chip away at Democrats traditional support among Black voters as he seeks to reverse his 2020 loss to Mr. Biden.

Though Black voters have overwhelmingly favored Democrats since the civil rights era, recent polls have shown the party losing some of their support. A New York Times/Siena College poll of battleground states in May showed 23 percent of Black voters supporting Mr. Trump, a record level. Mr. Trump won just 8 percent of Black voters nationally in 2020.

As he tries to appeal to Black voters, Mr. Trump often cites his record as president, but the reality is more complicated than what he often presents.

In Detroit, Mr. Trump highlighted the funding bill that he signed for Black higher education institutions, which Congress passed. And he celebrated his role in the First Step Act of 2018, his signature criminal justice reform bill.

But critics have said that Mr. Trumps frequent pro-police rhetoric while president often undercut his work on criminal justice reform. And while he often takes credit for a low Black unemployment rate during his presidency, he frequently overstates his role in it and ignores other economic indicators.

Saturdays round table in Detroit brought out a more diverse crowd, and a larger share of Black attendees, than is typical of a Trump campaign event, even as a significant number of the roughly 200 people in the crowd were white.

Angelo Brown, 61, a Black independent voter, said he had come to the event because he was still unsure which candidate he would vote for. And, he added, the chances of an independent getting in there, you know, are almost zero.

Though he did not support Mr. Trump in the previous two elections, Mr. Brown, who is retired, said he was open to a candidate who would help improve the economy and would bring about an end to the war in Ukraine.

At the church, Mr. Trump stuck to the themes that have animated his outreach to Black voters. He again tried to seize on pessimism over the economy by blaming Mr. Biden for inflation and high rents.

Mr. Trump also sought to stoke resentment toward immigrants, arguing that Mr. Biden had enabled the surge of migrants crossing into the United States, which he said had hurt the economic prospects of Black Americans. And he falsely claimed that 100 percent of the job growth under the Biden administration had gone to illegal immigrants.

Theyre coming into your community, and theyre taking your jobs, Mr. Trump said, repurposing an idea that successfully motivated his base of white working-class voters in 2016.

Mr. Trumps appeals to Black voters in recent months have been aggressive and direct but sometimes clumsy.

Shortly before Mr. Trump arrived at the church, his campaign started a renewed outreach effort for Black Americans, Black Americans for Trump, which included endorsements from Black politicians, former professional athletes and entertainment figures like the model and singer Amber Rose and the rapper Kodak Black, whom Mr. Trump pardoned.

This year, Mr. Trump has hawked gold sneakers to young men of color and suggested that Black people related to him more after his mug shot was taken in Atlanta last year. He told a group of Black Republicans that Black people like him because he, too, had been unfairly targeted by the criminal justice system. And he has frequently accused Black prosecutors investigating him of reverse racism.

After the church event, Mr. Trump spoke at a convention hosted by Turning Point Action, an arm of Turning Point USA, an increasingly influential conservative group that courts young voters. Turning Points founder, Charlie Kirk, has been criticized for statements and social media posts with anti-immigrant or racist views.

The juxtaposition of the two events reflects the extent to which the Trump campaign is trying to knit together a mixed and at times conflicting coalition that expands beyond his conservative base as he looks to pick up battleground states he lost in 2020, including Michigan.

Its an honor to be here, Mr. Trump said at the church after he took the stage. Its a very important area for us.

Such a sentiment was markedly different from the years in which Mr. Trump has denigrated Detroit, a majority Black city, which he previously referred to as one of Americas most corrupt political places while making broad and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

And during his 2020 campaign, as Mr. Trump was frequently trying to stoke suburban fears around violence and crime in cities, he said in an interview that living in Detroit and other cities was like living in Hell.

Jasmine Harris, Mr. Bidens Black media director, criticized Mr. Trump for sanitizing both his past comments denigrating and disrespecting Black Americans and his record while in office.

We havent forgotten that Black unemployment and uninsured rates skyrocketed when Trump was in the White House, Ms. Harris said in a statement. And we sure havent forgotten Trump repeatedly cozying up to white supremacists and demonizing Black communities to his political benefit because thats exactly what hell do if he wins a second term.

Mr. Trumps speech at the Turning Point event, in front of thousands of people, took place in the same convention center where his supporters had tried to interfere with the counting of absentee ballots in the 2020 election.

During his remarks, Mr. Trump repeated his blatantly false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and he again sowed doubt about the integrity of the upcoming election.

As has become standard. Mr. Trump, who turned 78 on Friday, attacked Mr. Bidens cognitive abilities. But as he argued that he is more mentally fit to be president, he referred to his White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, as Ronny Johnson.

Building on his comments about the economy at the church, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Biden of an inflation-causing spending spree. He then seemed to attack Mr. Bidens commitment to Ukraine with an aside about Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

I think Zelensky is maybe the greatest salesman of any politician thats ever lived, said Mr. Trump, who this year tried to block efforts to provide more aid to Ukraine. Every time he comes to our country, he walks away with $60 billion.

Simon J. Levien contributed reporting.

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Election Updates: Trump surrogates denounce some Jan. 6 prosecutions; Biden goes to Hollywood. - The New York Times

Age is just a number, the adage goes. For Donald Trump, that number just got bigger.

Trump turned 78 on Friday, and would be the oldest president ever inaugurated if he wins in November a distinction he shares with his older rival.

President Biden, who is the record holder, and would be 82 at his second inauguration, has faced more skepticism in the campaign from voters about his health and acuity, polls show. But Trumps septuagenarian status has also drawn notice from some voters and experts on aging.

The risk for the two of them is about the same for demonstrating some degree of cognitive decline over the next four to five years, said Joel Kramer, the director of the neuropsychology program at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.

If Trump is elected this fall and serves a full term, he would eventually become the oldest U.S. president in history, eclipsing Biden.

Trump celebrated in the evening by speaking at an event hosted by the Trump fan group Club 47 USA in West Palm Beach, Fla. While the crowd sang Happy Birthday as he came onstage, the former president mentioned his birthday only briefly.

This is the biggest birthday party Ive ever had, by far, Trump said.

Trump delivered a speech that hit on his usual themes, including disparaging undocumented immigrants and attacking Biden.

Both Trump and Biden have released statements from their medical teams indicating that they are fit for office. While actuarial tables indicate that Biden and Trump are far more likely than not to live through a second term and some experts caution their verbal gaffes should not be seen as proof of cognitive decline voters have still expressed skepticism about their fitness for the job.

A Marquette Law School poll in May asked registered voters how well the phrase too old to be president describes Biden and Trump. Seventy-nine percent said it described Biden very or somewhat well, while 54 percent said it described Trump very or somewhat well.

A Pew Research Center survey from April found that 62 percent of voters said they were not confident in Bidens mental fitness, and 65 percent said they were not confident in his physical fitness. Trump drew more positive ratings but still faced doubts: 48 percent said they were not confident in his mental fitness, and 39 percent said the same of his physical fitness.

Fewer than half of Bidens supporters said they were extremely or very confident that he had the mental and physical fitness for the job, while the majority of Trump supporters said they were extremely or very confident Trump had the mental and physical fitness for the job, the poll shows.

While Biden, who has a stutter he has spoken openly about, has come under scrutiny for verbal fumbles such as referring to the late French president Franois Mitterrand instead of current French President Emmanuel Macron, and misstating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi was the president of Mexico Trump has also stumbled over his words. He mixed up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi during an event this year, and he has a long history of making false comments and going on meandering rants, including a recent one at his Las Vegas rally about shark attacks.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt pointed to Trumps frequent hostile media interviews and hours-long speeches, at times without a teleprompter, as evidence that he is sharp as a tack and ready to lead our country back to greatness.

When it comes to Biden and Trump, Republicans have argued that Trumps combative persona helps explain the disparity in the way many Americans think about age. Longtime Republican strategist Scott Reed argued that Trumps aggressive strategy of finding ways to regularly fire up his base overshadows any age talk.

Trump has repeatedly mocked Biden at his rallies, imitating him as being lost onstage. Yet he and some of his allies have also sought to walk a fine line, suggesting that age itself is not the issue.

In a recent Truth Social post, Trump posted a video declaring: Joe Biden is not too old to be president, I know a lot of people that are older than him and theyre at the top of their game. Its not even close. But he is too incompetent and he is too corrupt. He is the worst president in the history of our country. Thank you.

Biden and his allies have repeatedly defended his fitness for office. Biden has addressed questions about his age by arguing that he brings wisdom and experience. He has also attempted to bring in humor. I know I may not look like it, but Ive been around a while, Biden said at his State of the Union address. And when you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever before.

Strategically the Republicans have made a mistake, because the bar is so low that the presidents easily going to clear it, said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a Biden ally. Trump has an aesthetic of vitality that hes cultivated his whole life, he benefits from that image on that issue. But I believe that when he is put side by side in a debate, and its not just about the projection of an image, but its people evaluating how hes answering questions that will be to the presidents advantage.

Trump has released limited medical information. In November, he released a letter from Bruce Aronwald, a doctor of osteopathy, that declared his overall health is excellent and his cognitive exams were exceptional. He has repeatedly boasted about passing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test, used to detect dementia or cognitive decline. (The creator of the test has said it has never included the specific combination of animals described by Trump in any versions.)

All presidents should have aptitude tests, IQ tests or cognitive tests, Trump said, before referring to Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), his former White House physician and a staunch ally. Dr. Ronny Jackson gave me one. Did I ace it? I aced it. He said I aced it.

Trumps father, Fred Trump, lived until the age of 93. In his later years, he had dementia, an experience Donald Trump has publicly spoken about.

Several members of Congress spoke at the event, including Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both of whom are potential vice-presidential candidates. The Palm Beach County Convention Center featured screens that said Happy Birthday Donald J. Trump Born in the USA on Flag Day.

Attendees wore party hats and American flag-themed clothing. Items for sale included shirts that said Im voting for the felon.

Trump has a history of high-profile birthday celebrations. Trumps 50th birthday party in 1996, according to the New York Times, included a surprise appearance from Tony Bennett, as well as blown up black-and-white photographs of Mr. Trump as a child (with his confirmation class, on a tricycle, in the tub), a Marla mermaid ice sculpture (a reference to his then-wife), and 600 gold balloons.

Scott Clement and Joel Achenbach contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump, potential future oldest president, turns 78 - The Washington Post