If you have any doubt that The Washington Post pretty much prints what it is told to print, just look to its two editorials separated by two months regarding the Hunter Biden plea deal.

Back in June, it was all for the deal, taking aim at the conservative critics who saw it as a sweetheart deal that was transparently designed to let Hunter off the hook while sweeping all the evidence of Biden’s corruption under the rug.

Conservatives thought that because, well, the plea bargain was a sweetheart deal that was transparently designed to let Hunter off the hook while sweeping all the evidence of Biden’s corruption under the rug. Any claim to the contrary was pure gaslighting, but the Post was up to the task.

Why Hunter Biden’s plea deal is justified https://t.co/XJBupJgsIx

— Phyllis Weiss (@phyllisweisspr) June 21, 2023

The Post’s editorial–editorials define the institutional opinion of the newspaper itself, which is why they are unsigned–was basically a cut-and-paste job that cobbled together the talking points that had been put out by the Left. They amounted to “This is all perfectly normal and there is nothing to see here at all.”

With the collapse of the deal–it took only the most cursory examination of it to show that it was literally unprecedented in its terms–a new narrative had to be cobbled together. And over the past several weeks the Left has found a way to thread the needle. There are no longer any claims that Hunter was a naif who did nothing wrong but get addicted to drugs, or even that Joe’s influence wasn’t the product that Hunter was selling to his overseas business partners. The new line is that Hunter was committing fraud upon those business partners, selling an “illusion of influence” to unsuspecting purchasers.

In other words, Hunter is guilty of some dastardly deeds, but despite the obvious connection to his father and his father’s participation in the scheme, it was Hunter alone who did things that were criminal. Joe was simply discussing the weather, not knowing that he was a product being sold.

Yeah, right. Whatever.

So now the MSM, Democrat congressmen, and fellow travelers are doing the “limited hangout,” which in this case means throwing Hunter to the wolves (at least rhetorically) in order to protect his father, whom they need at the moment.

“So far, the record suggests President Biden’s behavior was not spotless — but also not criminal.”

WaPo has officially arrived at “not spotless.” https://t.co/WDzJpOlMT3

— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) August 12, 2023

Dutifully the Post has updated its guidance to the Democrat Hoi Polloi, informing them that new talking points have been distributed.

The talking points themselves literally make no sense if you take them at face value, but they have been judged sufficient unto the task.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday his appointment of U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware as special counsel in the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son. This was the right move. It should encourage Americans that the process will be independent and transparent and, therefore, that it is more likely to be fair.

Such assurances might not have been necessary at the beginning of the Justice Department’s Hunter Biden probe, but they became important after a plea agreement between Mr. Weiss and Mr. Biden’s attorneys fell apart under judicial scrutiny. Initially appearing reasonable, the deal turned out to include peculiar details suggesting critics might have been justified to suspect that Mr. Biden was being given special treatment.

Consider the argument for a moment and behold the power you have once you abandon the need for logic:

• Appointing Weiss special counsel was a good move because it will assure people that the process will be independent and transparent.
• No special counsel should have been necessary because everybody should have just trusted that Biden’s DOJ would treat Hunter just like everybody else.
• Unfortunately, it looks like Biden’s DOJ didn’t treat Hunter like everybody else. (Well, duh!)
• So appointing the same guy who gave Hunter a sweetheart deal as an “independent” special counsel will now make the investigation somehow fairer

Huh? We should have trusted the DOJ to be impartial (no we shouldn’t have!), and yet it failed to be impartial. So the DOJ throws us a bone and appoints the SAME PROSECUTOR WHO TREATED HUNTER AS SPECIAL to be an “independent” and “transparent” special counsel, so we can trust the same people to now do the right thing?

Newsflash: nothing changed here but the title of the prosecutor. Nothing. The same people are doing the same thing as before.

But changing things was never the point; keeping things the same was the point. They have only changed the rhetoric because they couldn’t maintain their prior story.

Here was the money graf, telling us exactly what was important to them:

Special counsels should not be appointed lightly. They have tended to overspend and overreach. One temptation in the Hunter Biden case might be to investigate the president himself, as many of his critics wish. So far, the record suggests President Biden’s behavior was not spotless — but also not criminal.

In other words: stay away from Joe.