Elliot defends Joe Biden's pardoning of Hunter

Analyzing the article

Time

false dilemma

slippery slope

appeal to emotion

Our Analysis: 3 Fallacies

Sunday evening's surprise announcement of a sweeping pardon for Hunter Biden sent Washington ablaze with outrage...

Yet, when you take a look at Biden's choice--making use of a power guaranteed in the Constitution with very few limits--it starts to make some sense.

Philip Elliott presents Biden's pardon of his son as a nuanced decision shaped by political pressures and family considerations, offering valid points about the potential consequences of inaction. However, his argument is weakened by a false dilemma that ignores other possible courses of action and appeals to emotion that exploit the reader's sympathy, as well as a slippery slope fallacy that assumes a severe backlash without sufficient evidence.

1. false dilemma • Elliott presents a binary choice for Biden when there is actually a spectrum of options, leading to an oversimplification of the topic at hand.

Inaction was never, really, an option.

The author presents Biden with only two choices—to issue the sweeping pardon he did, or to issue no pardon at all. This ignores alternatives like a more narrowly defined pardon, pursuing clemency through DOJ channels, or negotiating a more limited plea deal.

2. appeal to emotion • There are multiple instances of appeal to pity (argumentum ad misericordiam) in the text:

The President's grief over the death of his son Beau Biden... ...weighing the prospect of even more of his grandkids spending time without their own father... Hunter Biden has been incredibly open about his battles with addiction...

Elliott repeatedly invokes sympathy through references to family loss, separation of children from parents, and addiction struggles to justify Joe Biden's political decisions. This leverages pity to push the reader into an emotional state, distracting from a reasoned analysis.

3. slippery slope • Elliott's reasoning assumes a strong retributive action against Hunter Biden would result under a second Trump term in the White House.

With Trump about to be back in charge of the Justice Department and FBI--including an FBI potentially led by an outspoken loyalist who has endorsed Trump's vow to trample his foes in retribution.

This imagines a direct path to retribution while ignoring multiple potential barriers: Senate confirmation requirements for appointments, career DOJ officials' independence, judicial oversight, congressional oversight, institutional safeguards, and public scrutiny that could prevent such targeted persecution.

References

Philip Elliott (2024, Dec 2). 6 Reasons Why Joe Biden Pardoned His Son Hunter.
https://time.com/7199383/biden-pardon-hunter/

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Disclaimer

Note that there being one or more apparent fallacies in the arguments presented in this article does not mean that every argument the arguer made was fallacious, nor does it mean there are not other arguments in existence for the same or similar position that are logically valid. Also note that checking for fallacies is not the same as verification of the premises the arguer starts from, such as facts that the arguer asserts or principles that the arguer assumes as the foundation for constructing arguments. For more about this, see our 'What is Fallacy Checking?'

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