Quote:The allegation that Biden’s son Hunter is guilty of sketchy business practices seems legitimate enough — he accepted a paid seat on the board of a Ukrainian business that was under investigation at a time when his father, as vice president, had direct dealings with the Ukrainian government on corruption issues. But the charge that Joe Biden was freelancing foreign policy to protect his son simply doesn’t hold water if you spend five minutes reading up on it.

Biden was acting on orders from President Obama in coordination with allies and State Department policy to force the former Russia-backed Ukrainian regime to fire a dirty prosecutor who was failing to properly investigate corruption, including at the firm Hunter Biden worked with.

But even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter. Let’s assume Joe Biden is guilty of something bad. We should still be appalled that the president of the United States would use his office to pressure foreign powers to do opposition research for him. I mean, my God, the day after Robert Mueller testified to Congress about his report investigating whether the Trump campaign had colluded with one foreign power, Russia, the president got on the horn and encouraged another foreign power, Ukraine, to help with his re-election.

If Trump threatened to withhold funds unless Ukrainian officials investigated Biden, that would make it worse, but the aid issue is something of a red herring. In the language of diplomacy, hectoring a foreign leader — eight times, according to the Wall Street Journal — to investigate a domestic political opponent is as subtle as wearing a sandwich board and clanging a cowbell.

For two years, Trump defenders had an infinite supply of indignation over the mere suggestion that the president would collude with Russia. But now that indignation is reserved for anyone who suggests the president shouldn’t have tried to collude with the Ukrainians? Come on.

We’re supposed to believe a president who has never shown an iota of real concern over corruption in China, Egypt, Russia, the Philippines, North Korea, and elsewhere is upset about the one corruption story that coincidentally touches on the potential Democratic opponent who’s crushing him in the polls? Does anyone believe Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, is calling Hunter Biden a “drug addict” on TV because this is all a matter of statecraft? Show of hands: If Biden weren’t running, would the president have brought up Biden eight times — or at all — with the Ukrainian president?

The questions answer themselves.