The Post (WaPo) does not propose this. The Post quotes a guy who claims that and quotes a different guy who claims Joe Biden was not involved. Furthermore, the guy making the Big Guy claim, Tony Bobulinski, made a lot of claims, none of which have been demonstrated to be true. It’s now very clear he’s not a reliable source of information.
I think it’s worth reiterating that “the guy who claims Joe Biden was not involved” was the guy who wrote the e-mail that referenced the Big Guy.
And the corporation they were discussing was formed a few days later, without an extra 10% going to Hunter. So, whoever the Big Guy was, the answer to the the question “10% for the big guy?” was obviously NO.
ETA- @Sage_Rat Ive been looking for whatever I read a couple of years ago by the reporter that claimed to seen unpublished e-mails that proved the Big Guy was a foreign national, and I can’t find it. Although it might explain why the proposed share wasn’t going to him directly.
The searches just get overwhelmed by right wing BS, it’s even hard to find the reference you posted, the article where the guy that wrote the email clearly says it wasn’t Joe Biden.
A lot of could-be-charged felons in the US due to that box.
Furthermore, that particular venture never generated revenue, and 10% of $0 is $0 regardless of whether the Big Guy got 10% or the identity of the Big Guy.
It would be nice if people could reference which Post they are referencing - WaPo and NY Post could work.
Not to mention that all this happened after Joe Biden left office, when he was a private citizen. I’m assuming his political influence within the Trump Administration was less than zero.
Or better yet, don’t even quote the NY Post.
Now, I have enough life experience to say that it’s impossible to write something that someone crazy and with an intent to do so can’t find fault with. You can tell your crazy girlfriend, “You look lovely, today.” And if she’s in a bad mood, she’ll squint and pull out, “You’re saying that I usually look bad? Is that what you’re telling me!?”
So, sure, I could say, “Yep, that’s a reasonable rewrite of the given quote.” I could also try to nitpick as many flaws as I can possible envision, e.g.:
- You’ve jumped from, “we have been unable to confirm any of his statements” to “all of his statements are lies”. That’s a large leap of faith. It’s like saying, “We haven’t been able to confirm that aliens exist. Ergo, anyone proposing otherwise is a liar and must be ignored on all topics.” This isn’t to say that there isn’t room for skepticism, just that it’s a bizarre leap or that you’ve stated it in a way that implies that you’re making that leap. You would need to support the idea that his statements are demonstrably false. An inability to prove them - which is what you’ve said is our situation - when we have almost no information to go on, isn’t indicative of anything but a void of information and that’s all that this might be without further evidence.
- Liars be as they may, if you’ve only got one witness, no one has any counter-proposals, and the witness’s proposal seems likely, then running against it strongly is, again, a fairly large leap of faith.
- Usually, liars are telling the truth. If they simply lied all of the time on every statement, that would make them less of a problem than they are. It’s the mix that draws people in and build trust, when they shouldn’t.
- Saying that someone isn’t involved has no connection to whether that’s who they were talking about. I might say that I’ll attend an event with Margot Robie and, when I say that, I do mean the actual Hollywood star, Margot Robie. That has no bearing on whether Robie will actually attend, on whether she and I have any connection, nor on whether she is aware of the conversation that’s transpiring about her. I am factually discussing Margot Robie. Robie is not involved.
And so on. And, finding all these flaws, I could point them out in a friendly, clear, and helpful way - in the aim of peer review and community discourse - and then move on. Alternately, I could be a flaming a-hole, scream incessantly that you’re an insane person who goes off on wild leap of logic in every thread, and proceed to chew up dozens of posts in an attempt to force you to say things in the way that feels most pleasing to my sensibilities. The latter isn’t what I’d call the activities of a happy and reasonable person.
I appreciate peer review and I try to humbly accept when I’ve misread, misinterpreted, or stated things in a way that wasn’t clearly understood by most reasonable people. By all means, double-check my statements. But, no, there’s no substantial difference between the statements, “WaPo proposes that Joe Biden is the subject of the conversation” and “The text written by WaPo contains a proposal - and no others - that Joe Biden is the subject of the conversation.” Everyone’s free to click the link or ask for the precise text if they want something more specific.
If I said, “The WaPo says, conclusively, that Joe Biden is the subject of the conversation”, then sure, you’d have an argument. That’s not what I said and acting like I did, to my mind, is not productive to the conversation.
The gulf between “WaPo proposes X” and “WaPo quoted someone claiming X” is indeed vast. You’ve obscured the source of the information making it seem like the claim is coming from WaPo when the claim is actually coming from one of Trump’s guests at a 2020 debate.
Or even more so between the “WaPo proposes X” and “WaPo debunked someone claiming X”, which is what this was. The article was a fact check of those claims, and found that there was no evidence in favor and some evidence against.
If we are going into his laptop and supposed emails, I am out.
Raising doubt is not the same as debunking. Proposing is not the same as endorsing. Reading one to mean the other doesn’t say anything about the speaker, just the listener.
Realistically, they probably are talking about Joe Biden but Joe was not part of the deal and the participants were being wildly optimistic on their ability to pull him in. Their mention of the President doesn’t indict the President.
It’s like Elizabeth Holmes selling instant blood scanning technology. Just because someone
says that they’re selling something doesn’t mean that they actually possess that thing. People can and do sell BS, and I haven’t seen anything to suggest that Jim and Hunter don’t fit that bill.
Realistically, this is completely made up. This is basically xkcd’s citogenesis in action. Every right wing source is claiming this based on known liar Bobulinski for a deal that Joe Biden had nothing to do with, and every other right wing source follows that. There’s basically no evidence that it’s true at all.
I didn’t say that it was true and I said that the evidence is that Joe Biden had nothing to do with it. You’ve just claimed what I was claiming.
I’m saying there’s not even evidence that the Big Guy is Biden.
You got that right. Except for the realistic part. And the probable part.
Yep we got one the one hand we got the person who wrote the e-mail saying it isn’t, on the other side we have Trump fave Bobulinski and 10,000,000 people quoting Bobulinski saying it is. That isn’t 1 vs 10,000,001, that’s one reliable witness vs one unreliable one.
First, let’s make absolutely clear that the word “evidence” is not the same word as “proof”. If you can’t accept that then don’t bother reading forward. If I have a stick on the ground, it’s proof that a stick was able to arrive in that location and could, given other evidence, form the basis for an argument that the stick fell from a tree, was carried to its place by a squirrel, or was artificially manufactured and placed in that spot by a human. The stick itself is only proof of its own existence. It is NOT proof of any of those options on how it got to its location, it’s just evidence - i.e., a thing that has been recorded - that may have relevance to particular arguments in favor of any of those or other options.
You are incorrect. We have a witness saying that the Big Guy is Joe Biden. That is “evidence”. It is not indicative of the guilt of Joe Biden, it is not “proof”, it is an item of record that can be used for varying arguments.
We also have some reason to believe that the primary objective of people in hiring Hunter Biden was in the belief that he could provide a conduit to his father. Again, this is NOT an accusation that Joe Biden was open to or approving of such activities. It’s an impugnment of the people who hired Hunter, despite his being a drunkard, addict, and slob and of their corrupt intents.
Likewise, we have some reason to believe that Hunter may have been trying to sell himself as a conduit to his father. He does seem to have successfully introduced some of his contacts to his father - which doesn’t make sense as part of, say, a simple family visit to his pops. And, likewise, we have a clear thank you letter from one of Hunter’s contacts in Ukraine for introducing him to his father. And for a second time, this NOT an accusation that Joe Biden was open to or approving of such activities. It’s an impugnment of Hunter Biden, both for trying to act as a corrupt influence on his country and also for (likely) misleading his contacts about his relationship (personally and financially) with his father.
I feel like we’re in angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin territory. If a motivated, unreliable witness claims something, that’s not evidence of any sort. But, it doesn’t really matter who the Big Guy was, since we’re all in agreement that this does not impugn Joe Biden in any way, even though right-wingers are trying to spin it that way.
We’re in agreement on that, right? There’s zero cloud over Joe Biden regardless of what Hunter Biden did or said in emails.
Yes, and ergo, almost all of the acrimonious attitude by everyone is nonsensical. If I DO NOT reject any of the arguments being presented:
- The big guy might be a reference to someone else.
- The witness is not trustworthy.
- There’s no demonstrated financial ties that have been presented.
- Etc.
And I’m simply adding as-yet-unmentioned reasons 5, 6, and 7 to reject the conspiracy theories, I fail to see why this is anything but a friendly and cooperative discussion.