For the Court of Public Opinion, Trump Relies on a ‘Whataboutism’ Defense

Former President Donald J. Trump now faces 78 felony counts in three different criminal cases, not to mention a slew of civil lawsuits and trials alleging all sorts of wrongdoing. At least in the court of public opinion, though, his defense can be boiled down to three words.

What about Hunter?

The real outrage, Mr. Trump’s defenders maintained, is Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings. The Justice Department, they claimed, is only going after the former president to cover up for the current president. Mr. Trump is a victim persecuted by his enemies, so the argument goes, while Hunter Biden is a one-man crime wave who personifies the Washington swamp.

The wave of whataboutism from Trump world crested with this week’s indictment but has been building for months, a way of shifting attention from the former president’s kaleidoscopic legal troubles. The strategy provides the former president’s hard-core base a narrative to embrace that absolves him of any misconduct while muddying the waters enough to cause at least some independents and swing voters to throw up their hands out of a sense that, well, they all do it.

Never mind that Hunter Biden was not and is not seeking to be the president of the United States and that no hard evidence has emerged indicating that his father used his office improperly.

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