Honestly, this feels very similar to the rhetoric democrats were using to defend Clinton 2016, as in, how dare people believe that having allegations of corruption/nepotism over your head could hurt a candidate in the general election. And in this case, it is a fact that almost everyone views Hunter Biden getting his cushy job in Burisma negatively.
Sure, but that cannot be separated from Trump and how his family has even more blatantly used Trump's presidency to enrich themselves. That's what's so frustrating. Same with Clinton's emails. Nikki Haley and Trump's Ukraine scandal have made that an even sadder event in our nation's history, that something which continues to prove itself so inconsequential in comparison, managed to cause such a ripple effect in our country and its politics.
Peoples trusting their perceptions more than empirical facts is a major ailment in our republic that is part of many things that is causing it to slowly rot. It's why I cannot forgive American voters and spare them from some of the blame when it comes to elections and their consequences. Voters get the politicians they deserve, and politicians won't change unless the voters change too. Clearly, that's asking for something insurmountable though.
A phenomenon I have noticed is the tendency among independents right smack in the center to believe right-wing narratives about corruption and criminal doings, but not left-wing ones. Compare these two narratives:
1. Trump refuses to release his tax returns because they'll show he has significant financial ties to Russia, who is actively trying to get him elected so Putin can have a puppet in the White House.
2. Hillary Clinton scrubbed thousands of emails from her private server because they will uncover her scheme to sell weapons to ISIS, and (2019 version) conspiring with Cloudstrike and the Ukrainians to interfere in the 2016 election and frame Donald Trump.
To me, these are equally crazy, but independents seem much more likely to dismiss the first as a nothingburger, but find at least some truth in the second.
Probably due to a presumed left wing bias in the media. "If I hear about the right committing wrongdoing, then it must be the mainstream media pushing its left-wing agenda. But if I hear about the left committing wrongdoing, then it must be true."
