Analysis | Republicans fume at Trump's conviction. Democrats shrug at Hunter Biden's. – The Washington Post
But then, the president’s son didn’t spend years undermining confidence in law enforcement.
In retrospect, Hunter Biden erred in not beginning to disparage law enforcement and the justice system years ago. He could have begun doing so in late 2016, dismissing federal investigations as tainted and biased or framing criminal trials as efforts to silence political opponents.
That’s what Donald Trump did, after all, and the result is that members of his party view his recent conviction on 34 felony counts as unwarranted. Hunter Biden’s recent conviction, by contrast, is accepted by Democrats with equanimity.
Polling released by YouGov this week measured how Americans view the Hunter Biden verdict — a conviction on felonies related to his purchase of a handgun in 2018. About two-thirds of Americans approve of the verdict while fewer than 1 in 10 disapprove. Among Republicans, perhaps predictably, more than three-quarters approve of the verdict, with about the same percentage of respondents disapproving.
Among Democrats? Six in 10 approve and, again, about 1 in 10 disapprove. The conviction of the president’s son on three federal charges is viewed by the president’s party as fine.
Contrast that with YouGov’s poll this month measuring views of Trump’s conviction. Fewer Americans expressed approval of the verdict overall, with a 13-point gap between those who approved and those who disapproved. The gap on the Hunter Biden verdict was 57 points — in large part because fewer people offered an opinion on that more recent and less-covered decision.
Democrats were slightly less likely to say they approved of Trump’s verdict than Republicans were to say they approved of Hunter Biden’s. But Republicans were far less likely to say they approved of the Trump verdict than Democrats were to offer approval of Hunter Biden’s.
A similar divergence emerged on questions YouGov asked about the perceived criminality of both men. The new poll determined that three-quarters of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats, believed Hunter Biden had probably or definitely committed a crime at some point in his life. This is a sensible conclusion given both Hunter Biden’s admitted record of drug abuse … and his criminal conviction.
Fewer Americans were likely to say Trump had ever committed a crime, largely because Republicans were much less likely to say he had done so. Despite his conviction by a jury on criminal charges — not to mention his other indictments, his impeachments, past investigations and recent losses in civil lawsuits — only 1 in 8 Republicans said he’d definitely committed a crime in his life.
There are numerous reasons that these two convictions are not perfectly comparable, of course. Had it been President Biden and not his son who had been convicted of a crime, Democrats might have been less sanguine. That’s particularly true if Trump had been president; a conviction of Biden on federal charges under a Trump Justice Department would likely have triggered more skepticism from Biden’s party.
Trump’s verdict was viewed negatively by Republicans for similar reasons: The former president claimed, without any credible evidence, that the Biden administration was the driving force behind his indictment and conviction. And, again, he’d spent years intentionally poisoning the well against anyone involved in investigating his actions, from judges to legislators to the FBI.
There was one way in which the cases were similar. Advocates for Trump and Hunter Biden argued that the charges were excessive and derived from each defendant’s position. Trump’s charges, like Hunter Biden’s, were framed as unusual or exotic. Biden’s were also at times presented as downstream from politics, given that they followed public pressure from Republicans on special counsel David Weiss.
Despite that — or perhaps because of a lack of familiarity with the claims about Hunter Biden’s case — Democrats accept his guilt. Republicans reject Trump’s. In about five months, those Republicans may make their opposition to his conviction obvious by voting to send him back to the White House.