'Degrading finale': NY Times columnist lays into Biden 'hypocrisy' after son's pardon

A New York Times opinion writer denounced president Joe Biden's pardon of his son as the sort of "naked self-dealing" that has soured so many Americans on politics.

The president had insisted he would not pardon his younger son Hunter Biden if he was convicted on three felony charges related to his purchase of a gun while he was a drug addict. But that's exactly what he did Sunday with less than two months left in his term, and New York Times conservative columnist Bret Stephens said that actions shows there's no wonder Democrats lost the election.

"If Democrats want to understand one of the reasons the Republican Party is ascendant, they can look to President Biden’s pardon on Sunday for his son Hunter," Stephens wrote. "In its rank mendacity, political hypocrisy, naked self-dealing and wretched example, it typifies so much of what so many Americans have come to detest about what the MAGA world calls 'the swamp.'"

ALSO READ: Will Trump back the FBI’s battle against domestic extremists? He won’t say.

Biden claimed in his statement announcing the pardon that his son's prosecution was the result of “political pressure” on the judicial process, which Stephens dismissed as "nonsense." The columnist argued that the president was undermining his party's message on gun safety by letting his son off the hook for violating a firearm law.

"After the news of the pardon broke, a liberal friend wrote to say that perhaps it wasn’t such a big deal, at least when considering Donald Trump’s choices for attorney general and F.B.I. director," Stephens said. "OK. But when a Democratic president behaves as Biden just did, it fuels the corrosive public cynicism that helped elect Trump yet again while licensing and excusing whatever plans the president-elect may have for politicizing justice and using it for the benefit of friends, family, and self."

"What a degrading finale for Biden’s feeble, forgettable, frequently foolish presidency," the conservative added.