Conspiracy Theory of the Day: Does the Hunter Biden Pardon Signal that Biden Is Planning to Resign?

It was the classic day for a negative news dump, but I didn’t think he’d actually do it. There was no need.

In the PR industry, we’re mostly paid to maximize publicity, but every now and then, we’re paid to minimize it. This is how we deal with negative news — such as an embarrassing legal admission, or a troubling financial disclosure. For a very long time, the time-honored play in the PR playbook was to schedule the release when everyone’s distracted, traveling, or on vacation — the classic news dump on Christmas, Thanksgiving, or the July 4th weekend.

Believe me, it wasn’t accidental that Joe Biden announced his full, unconditional pardon of Hunter Biden late on Sunday evening of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend!

But it was still a weird move, because January 20 is an even better date than Thanksgiving. Dumping your negative news during a holiday is effective, but it’s not nearly as good as disseminating it when a bigger, brighter, bolder story will suck all the oxygen out of the room.

And on January 20, the big news will be the Trump inauguration.