Who is Joe Biden's "Buddy"?

(Hint: It's "the smartest man he knows.")

Note to Readers: A version of this essay was published this morning by American Thinker. Special thanks to Andrea Widburg for editing it for AT; I’d also like to recommend her Bookworm Room. And if you like this essay, please click “Like,” leave a Comment, and please feel free to share it.)

Who is Joe Biden’s “Buddy”?

Last week I watched Pres. Joe Biden addressing the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia. Many have commented on the anger he seemed to exhibit, and on his shameless pandering to union labor (which, for Biden, is nothing new). But one little thing in his speech leaped out and caught my interest.

His entire speech can be viewed here; the part I zeroed in on occupies just a few seconds, starting at about the 7:21 mark. That's where (reinforcing his point that when union workers go on strike, the impact is far greater than if, say, investment bankers were to go on strike) he says, "I tell this to my buddy..."

I heard that and thought, "Wait a minute! Joe Biden has a buddy?" I wondered just who, and what kind of person, that could be. Does Joe Biden have anything like a best friend, someone he hangs out with, as Richard Nixon, for example, famously hung out with his friend of more than four decades, Charles "Bebe" Rebozo?

Life Magazine cover from July 31, 1970

And then I remembered a prior reference by Biden to a buddy, and that caused me even more wonderment. It had occurred during a speech in Iowa in 2015, when Biden gave a "shout out" to retired Iowa Congressman Neal Smith. You have to see this clip to believe that Biden, in front of all those people and on video, addressed Smith as "an old butt buddy" (as if there's not already enough about Joe Biden that should be filed under "Creepy" and "Stuff that makes you go Eeewww!").

Even truck drivers, who for years would stereotypically address one another generically over the CB radio as "Good Buddy," now eschew that term (replacing it with "Hand," as in "hired hand" or "ranch hand") because of the Brokeback Mountain sort of innuendo with which "Good Buddy" has become fraught, and "butt buddy" is even worse, no matter how innocently Joe Biden may have intended it in that Iowa speech.

But as to the buddy to whom Biden alluded in Philadelphia, I have an idea of just who that is. And I also have an idea of who it isn't. No matter how much Barack Obama may be whispering in Joe's ear, it's not Barack Obama.

I believe it's the man whom Joe has described as "the smartest man I know [in] pure intellectual capacity." It's the man who has bragged that Joe Biden "respects me more than he respects anyone in the world," that Joe Biden "will talk about anything that I want him to," and that "If I say it’s important to me, then he will work a way in which to make it a part of his platform."

I believe that Joe Biden's buddy, the fellow he'd most like to hang out with, is his son Hunter (the man so generously compensated by foreign governments for his expertise in the petroleum and natural gas business, and the man for whose exemplary upbringing as a thoroughly decent and highly moral person Joe Biden surely deserves the "Father of the Year" or "Excellence in Parenting" award).

One has to give Hunter credit for finding the time to be his father's closest advisor and confidant, given that so much of Hunter's busy day is committed to other activities, like cavorting with hookers and getting down on all-fours to pick parmesan cheese out of the carpet because it might have been crack cocaine. And one has to hope that buddy is an apt descriptor of the relationship; for the Bidens, père et fils, to be butt buddies is just too cringeworthy! It's creepy enough to ponder the extent to which Joe Biden lives vicariously through the libertine exploits of his son.

And that brings us to the photo of Hunter that surfaced recently (but which hasn't seen a lot of exposure, because it's flattering to no one) and which may explain the nature of the advice that Joe Biden is getting on some of the pressing issues of today.

From a video made by Hunter Biden in 2018, recovered from his laptop and provided to the NY Post by the Marco Polo Research Group.

The photo is a still from a video found on Hunter's laptop; in the video Hunter Biden is with a woman identified as a prostitute, and he is naked and handling a gun.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” When it comes to guns, there are people who purport to be experts about guns, but so much of what they know is wrong, because everything they know they learned from movies and TV.

It reminds me of what my NYC Driver Education instructor used to say: "Show me how you park, and I'll tell you how you drive."

Observe how a person holds a gun (be it a handgun or long-gun) and you will have an immediate indication of how much he or she knows about guns, where they learned it, and what kind of training, if any, they've had.

And anyone who really does know something about guns can take just one look at this photo (even leaving aside the question of what a gun has to do with the other activities going on!) and conclude that the person in the photo is a poseur, one of those whose knowledge of gun-handling comes directly from Hollywood (Hint: it has to do with the placement of one's trigger finger).

We've seen and heard Joe Biden pontificate about guns, telling us how "the deer aren't wearing Kevlar vests," or how the best way to protect your home is to "get a double-barrel shotgun, go out on the balcony and fire two blasts" (see the original quote here, and a creative musical send-up of it here), sounding as if he actually knows whereof he speaks.

Those examples, plus Joe Biden's "understanding" of the intent and scope of our Second Amendment (and given that Joe Biden has never been known to have had an original thought!) lead me to believe that his knowledge of firearms and his policies pertaining thereto are all informed by his consultations with his buddy: Hunter Biden, the smartest man he knows.

ST