The Joe Rogan Experience was the host of Elon Musk, recently, giving Elon a platform almost as big as Twitter on which to expound on his views and discuss, in a long-form manner, the issues he sees as pressing and in desperate need of being addressed. Among those issues was Hunter Biden’s artwork.
Elon and Rogan were discussing NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and the insane speculation and immense grift surrounding them when the topic came up. Elon was expounding on how the art market is skewed towards those needing to launder or avoid taxes on large amounts of money, leading to he massively inflated prices, saying, “With art, there is a fair bit of money laundering and tax avoidance.”
Continuing, he said, “So some of these things that seem inexplicable –” That’s when host Joe Rogan cut him off and brought up the president’s not-so-financially-trustworthy son, Hunter Biden, and his artwork. “Like Hunter Biden? You want to talk about Hunter Biden’s paintings?” Joe asked.
Musk seemed somewhat surprised that the Hunter Biden art sales actually happened rather than just being a joke about Biden family corruption on the internet, asking, “Did he actually sell paintings for large sums of money?” Rogan, responding, told him, “Immense sums of money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Musk, shocked and smiling, said, “That seems unlikely to be a legit transaction.” Rodan, agreeing, said, “Unlikely, right?” Laughing, Musk said, “Yeah.” Rogan then joked about how much Hunter is making off so-so art, saying, “the work’s not bad, though … for that kind of bulls*** art.”
Watch them here:
Elon Musk Weighs in on Hunter Biden's Artwork Sales
"That seems unlikely to be a legit transaction." pic.twitter.com/bvSBzT5fgy
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) October 31, 2023
For reference, Hunter Biden sold $1.3 million of his paintings through the Georges Berges gallery as of July of 2023. Of that figure, a massive amount, $875,000, came from one unnamed individual. That individual bought 11 of the paintings.
Even Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics under the Obama Administration, was shocked and horrified by the Hunter Biden art sales and the appearance of impropriety created by them, saying, “I just think that’s absolutely appalling.”
Shaub added, “Now, that’s a criticism of Hunter Biden, and he’s a sympathetic character, who we can feel bad for on many levels. But some of his problems are of his own making, in that he has always built his career around being Joe Biden’s son.”
Shaub then questioned Hunter’s guiding star, noting that someone concerned with the country and not giving an appearance of corruption would have avoided the sales…unlike Hunter. “If he were a patriot — if he cared about this country — he would not want to tarnish his father’s reputation that way,” Shaub said.
“Now we can’t fault him for not being a patriot. We can’t fault him for not caring enough about his father’s legacy to avoid this. That’s a personal failing and he doesn’t technically owe us anything because he’s a citizen and not a government official, but then the White House crossed the line and they got involved in this deal and the art seller was theoretically always planning to keep the names secret, but the White House intervened to ask him to keep the names secret,” Shaub continued.
And, describing the sales as “absolutely appalling,” Shaub said, “There is simply no way an artist who has never even juried into a community center art fair is going to suddenly show up in New York selling art for half a million a pop,” Shaub went on. “Let’s talk about the magnitude of this. … That’s $6.5 million going to the president’s son for being the president’s son, not for being an artist, and I just think that’s absolutely appalling.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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