“This Hunter Biden stuff is interesting for reasons beyond the scandal. He’s obviously a man with serious addictions that lead to terrible decisions. Most Americans have known someone, maybe someone close, who has fallen unto the grip of drugs or alcohol. It’s a terrible thing because there’s nothing you can do but hope they snap out of it before they drown.

Joe Biden is not the first famous man to have a screw-up in the family. Jimmy Carter had a brother, who was a constant source of embarrassment. Bill Clinton had a goofy brother as well. Ronald Reagan’s kids were spoiled screw-ups. It is a thing that happens and everyone understands it. You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.

The thing is, those famously screwed-up relatives were mostly harmless, other than to their famous relations. They drank or did drugs for all the reasons you drink and take drugs. Their misadventures were just what you expect from people in the grip of addiction. They’re not bad people. They are broken people who do bad things because they’re broken.

Hunter Biden is something different. He left his wife to marry the widow of his older brother, who died the year before. That marriage eventually ended and he married a women he dated for a week. During that marriage he had a kid with a women of questionable morals in Arkansas. You see, Hunter has a life-long appetite for prostitutes.

Before you get to the drugs and alcohol, Hunter Biden is a horrible human being. If he was just a lady’s man, no one would care. The sons of famous men are often playboys. This guy is a soulless degenerate and a cad. He’s got at least six kids with three women, not of whom are his wife. Throughout all of his marriages, he was visiting prostitutes and strippers.

Of course, the drugs are another thread in this guy’s life. He was a drug addict and alcoholic throughout his first and second marriage, according to court records. Now we know he was doing drugs and banging hookers, possibly underage hookers, up to this year, so that’s three marriages featuring drugs, booze and prostitutes. There’s a pattern here.

These e-mails about his various financial schemes suggest he is a guy who likes crime as much as he likes hookers and crack. The sole purpose of his dealings in China and Ukraine was financial fraud and corruption. You don’t start out running international pay for play schemes, so it is a safe bet this is just part of a long history of criminality.

While men like Carter, Clinton and Reagan could be forgiven for having delinquent family members, Biden has brought a son into the world who is genuinely evil. We can all sympathize with a man who has an idiot son, but Joe Biden produced an evil sociopath, one he supports unconditionally. What the fuck does this say about Joe Biden? Who is this man? What else do we not know about him?”

• the Zman