Hunter Biden’s Book Lands Quietly

Olivia Nuzzi reviews Beautiful Things by Hunter Biden.

“A member of the First Family publishing a book is not without recent precedent: Ivanka Trump released Women Who Work, a frilly ode to Girl Boss capitalism, in 2017, and her brother Donald Trump Jr. later published Triggered, a rant about woke dogma, and Liberal Privilege, a screed against Joe Biden. But that was just shallow marketing literature designed to promote the Trump brand. In 2021, on the other hand, a genuine gut-spiller from the First Fuckup, detailing in his own words all the major personal issues the right-wing media has tried and failed to weaponize for years — that had the potential to derail a presidency. Yet Hunter Biden’s ballad of the black sheep landed quietly in Washington.”

Said one senior White House official: “I’m shocked. I get stuff on the dogs all the time. I’ve been so surprised I didn’t get anything on Hunter.”

“Whether they had braced for a media frenzy or not, members of the Joe Biden administration report that, internally, the arrival of Hunter’s book (which was ghostwritten by the journalist Drew Jubera) on April 6 was a big nonevent.”