Liberal pundits are descending to ever greater depths of self-abasement in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election . On this past weekend's edition of Fox News Sunday, senior political analyst Juan Williams made his case to become D.C.'s swampiest commentator by attempting to spin the Hunter Biden saga into an occasion of sympathy for President Joe Biden . Behold this tour-de-force of sycophancy:

To be sure, such comments could only emerge from someone with no respect for the intelligence of his audience. In order to accept Williams's spin on the Hunter Biden saga — that he is a mere "troubled child" and that President Biden deserves sympathy as a result — one would need to know almost nothing about it in the first place.

For starters, describing a 53-year-old as a “troubled child” is the stuff of Will Ferrell movies, not real life. In this warped fantasy, Hunter Biden’s “troubles” are just an unfortunate family matter to which ordinary Americans can relate.

After all, who doesn't know someone who served on the board of a Ukrainian oil and gas company that paid $1 million per year in exchange for access to the vice president of the United States? Or someone who threatened Chinese nationals with retribution from his vice presidential father if payments weren't transferred to his account by sundown? Or someone who secured at least $20 million in foreign cash for his family spread out across more than 20 shell companies, which included tribute kick ups to the "big guy"? Or someone who potentially violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act while his father served as former President Barack Obama's "point man" on Ukraine?

Any parent who's ever received a stern call from a school principal can surely empathize. And to think, it could have been worse: He could have paid hush money to a porn star! 

The suggestion that Hunter's addiction issues are the main takeaway from this unfolding international scandal, as the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof also recently argued , is so preposterous, so insulting, that it causes momentary dizziness. Going forward, anyone who attempts this spin job on camera deserves immediate derision. Williams's co-guests should have laughed him right off the set.

So why are Democrats running with this spin? Why do intelligent professionals with otherwise distinguished careers make mincemeat of their dignity in order to cover for an octogenarian president with shoddy poll numbers?

Perhaps they feel pressure from their peers in the establishment media who have openly and proudly ditched objectivity in recent years. Liberal journalists are now activists by their own admission, and they aren't kind to non-believers within their ranks. They are invested in an end and don't quibble over the means.

Regardless of the reason, Democrats and their allied pundits obviously believe they can continue to get away with it. After all, they’ve been able to feed their audience drivel like this for years without getting their hands bit.

No matter how patently ridiculous, the Hunter-as-delinquent-youth narrative has real purchase in liberal circles high on bias reinforcement and low on facts. But that doesn't mean the rest of us need to play along.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.