After nearly eight months of Morning Consult approval ratings above 50 percent, President Joe Biden dipped underwater for the first time in late August. And he’s basically stayed there since.

A Morning Consult survey conducted September 10-12 among more than 15,000 registered voters pegged Biden’s approval rating at 47 percent, compared to 49 percent disapproval. That’s down about 10 points from a peak in February and March. (The pollster adjusted its weighting of results in June.)

Morning Consult’s Biden poll trajectory syncs up with FiveThirtyEight’s polling tracker, which similarly finds Biden’s approval rating sagging from around 54 percent on Memorial Day weekend to about 45 percent by Labor Day.

The proximate cause of Biden’s slide seems to be the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the critical coverage it prompted. More broadly, however, Biden’s approval ratings slipped throughout the summer as optimism about the end of the Covid-19 pandemic gave way to the grimmer news about the delta variant and rising cases and hospitalizations.

“One thing that we’ve seen in our polling not just of the president — we also track approval ratings of all 50 governors — one thing that we’ve seen throughout this pandemic is that regardless of the policy decisions that are made, there’s a pretty strong correlation between the Covid picture and a governor’s approval rating, and therefore a president’s approval rating,” says Morning Consult senior editor Cameron Easley.

While circumstances vary, this sort of erosion happening six to eight months into a president’s first term is far from unprecedented.

President Donald Trump, you might recall, sunk below 40 percent approval in the late summer and fall of 2017 after he pushed an unpopular bill to repeal Obamacare that failed by a single vote in the Senate, then followed that up by defending white supremacists who rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia. Perhaps more analogously for Biden, in August 2009, President Barack Obama’s approval rating dipped below 50 percent for the first time (according to Gallup) as Republicans publicly agitated against his push to pass health care legislation.

Still, Biden’s approval slide — coming amid indications Senate Democrats don’t have the votes to pass a $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill that was supposed to represent one of the president’s major legislative accomplishments — is an inauspicious development for Democrats. They’re heading into a midterm cycle, where the president’s party generally faces an uphill battle to retain control of the House, and with another challenge from Trump or a successor likely looming in 2024.

“Clearly Trump was in a worse position four years ago than Biden is now,” Easley said. “But given the margins in the House and Senate, how much solace can the White House and the Biden administration take in that fact? I don’t really think it’ll mean that much to them.”

To get the 30,000-foot view of why Biden’s approval rating has slid and what it means, Vox spoke with Easley; a transcript of that conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.

Aaron Rupar

As we talk today [on September 14], how have Biden’s number held up since they first dipped below 50 percent last month?

Cameron Easley

Today’s numbers, which are based on surveys conducted from the 12th through the 14th, we have his approval rating at 47 percent and his disapproval rating at 50 percent, so just about where it was when we wrote that story about his net approval rating dipping underwater for the first time.

Aaron Rupar

Obviously, there’s an inclination to compare these numbers with Trump’s. Did Trump ever hit in the Morning Consult polling 47 percent, or would that be a high-water mark for him?

Cameron Easley

He did hit 47 percent. We did have something of a honeymoon period captured in our polling in early 2017 that a lot of pollsters weren’t picking up, but eventually things reverted more to the industry mean.

You’ll remember that around this time, August and September 2017, things were pretty brutal for Trump as well. The party had failed to accomplish its years-long quest of repealing and replacing Obamacare. That caused a lot of internal food-fighting between then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Trump himself — just kind of some ugly stuff that spilled out into the open. And then of course the horrific scenes in Charlottesville and the way that Trump responded to those as well helped drive his numbers down.

So looking at the summer of 2017 and the summer of 2021, they were both pretty bad for the [presidents], all things considered. Of course, it’s worth noting that at that time four years ago, the floor for Trump was already apparently much, much lower. At this time he was at 43 percent, and in August 2017 he had dropped all the way down to 39 percent.

So clearly Trump was in a worse position four years ago than Biden is now. But given the margins in the House and Senate, how much solace can the White House and the Biden administration take in that fact? I don’t really think it’ll mean that much to them.

Aaron Rupar

Obama had a similar dip around this time in his first time. We’ve already talked about how Trump’s polling slid in his first fall in office. So this isn’t an unusual thing.

Is it too early for the Biden White House to be concerned that his approval is underwater? Perhaps it’s better to have an ebb early in your term than later.

Cameron Easley

I think the main concern for the White House right now — and this gets back to something that has been more of the historical trend for the Democratic Party — is that when they are in power, sometimes their base disengages a little bit. And I think one of the big questions for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterms is what happens to their enthusiasm without having Trump quite so involved in the equation.

One thing that we saw with the fallout from the Afghanistan picture is that Biden’s strong approval numbers among Democrats dipped below 50 percent for the first time. That’s right around where they are now as well. So I think that’s a concern.

We saw something similar happen to Trump four years ago, and those strong approval numbers among Republican voters didn’t truly recover until the tax law was enacted. So I think you can say that what this recent movement in Biden’s approval rating does is it probably adds a little bit of pressure just to what they’re feeling with regard to reconciliation and infrastructure.

I don’t think “Build Back Better” is going to completely change the midterm outlook for Biden and the Democrats, but I do think passing the party’s major priorities would probably go a long way in shoring up some enthusiasm among the base, and that’s something that seems to be a problem right now that could be solved in a few months by passing those priorities.

Aaron Rupar

The approval trend line for Biden has gradually gone down as Covid has had a resurgence this summer. What’s your sense of what the sentiment of voters is about how much blame Biden is receiving for Covid? And if we’re in for another tough winter of cases spiking and hospitals being full, how politically problematic will that be for Biden?

Cameron Easley

One thing that we’ve seen in our polling not just of the president — we also track approval ratings of all 50 governors — one thing that we’ve seen throughout this pandemic is that regardless of the policy decisions that are made, there’s a pretty strong correlation between the Covid picture and a governor’s approval rating, and therefore a president’s approval rating. We saw that continue this summer.

In addition to just tracking overall approval rating, we also track issue approval rating, and we have seen perceptions of Biden’s handling of Covid and of the economy come down during the summer, particularly among independents, as cases and deaths rose, and as inflation rose. So I think if you’re looking at how Biden got from having a 53 percent approval rating to a 47 percent approval rating, half of that movement is Afghanistan, but the other half of it, and the longer-term trend, are just souring perceptions of his handling of Covid and the economy.

Aaron Rupar

I think there’s a perception among Biden defenders on the Afghanistan issue that he was faced with no good options. He could’ve stayed in Afghanistan and risked an escalation if the Taliban starting attacking US troops, or with the withdrawal, which we’ve just experienced, with all the chaos and the attack that killed 13 troops outside the airport in Kabul. So I’m wondering if the polling has indicated that one option or the other would’ve limited the political damage for Biden.

Cameron Easley

What the polling shows is more than half of voters backed the timeline and think we should’ve pulled out, but the big problem is the way it was handled. Poll after poll has shown that a strong majority of voters disapprove of how that’s been handled.

When you look at the news and media environment of the year, the Afghanistan story is kind of the biggest story since January 6 in terms of real world events that are on camera, that people are able to see. You see these dire consequences for people, and I think that sticks with people, at least for a little while.

Do I think that suggests that with more time the Afghanistan situation becomes less of a political liability for Biden? I do, I think that follows. If you were to ask me if I think the situation with Covid or the economy or Afghanistan would be a bigger issue in next year’s midterm elections, I would definitely say Covid and the economy. But nonetheless, I do think the administration’s handling of the pullout has had a clear effect on Biden’s popularity to date.

A high-profile error can end up having knock-on effects for the way voters perceive a president’s administration’s generally. Obviously, it’s too early for us to tell if that’s the case here or not.

Two days ahead of a Trump-inspired rally outside the Capitol on behalf of people who have been charged with crimes in connection to the January 6 insurrection, former President Donald Trump released a statement supporting the cause of the Justice for J6 movement.

“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election,” Trump said, invoking his oft-repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden. “In addition to everything else, it has proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice. In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!”

Trump’s statement tosses fuel on a combustible situation. A Monday statement from the US Capitol Police warning about “concerning online chatter about a demonstration planned for September 18” already raised worries that Saturday’s Justice for J6 rally could spiral out of control and result in violent scenes reminiscent of January 6. But extremism experts are skeptical.

Jared Holt, a domestic extremism researcher with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, wrote recently on his website that online chatter indicates the event is likely to be a bust.

“I am highly skeptical that [right-wing extremists] would appear in any kind of significant numbers without at least some kind of indication of that appearing in the communities they so often frequent,” Holt wrote. Reached this week via Twitter direct message, Holt said he still isn’t seeing indications September 18 will amount to much. In fact, he is seeing members of far-right groups warning that the event is likely to be swarming with informants.

Holt’s assessment is backed up by Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, who told Talking Points memo he’s “not witnessed anything that would indicate large numbers of far-right demonstrators, or Proud Boys in particular, will attend this event.”

But Capitol Police’s warning and decision to mobilize extra law enforcement resources illustrates how much of a concern Trump-inspired extremism remains nine months after the insurrection — as well as how focused law enforcement is on preventing another January 6 from happening.

It’s also indicative of how wrapped up a significant faction of Trump supporters continue to be in false beliefs about the election being stolen from the former president.

What September 18 is about, briefly explained

The September 18 event, which is being organized by a right-wing fundraiser and former minor Trump campaign official named Matt Braynard under the guise of his Look Ahead America nonprofit, is ostensibly meant to draw attention to the plight of the more than 560 people arrested in connection with the January 6 insurrection. But at its core, it’s about sustaining former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him.

An examination of the numbers actually indicates that January 6 defendants are getting off comparatively light. The Guardian reported in May that at least 70 percent of the people arrested in connection with the insurrection were sent home pending trial, compared to a typical rate of 25 percent for federal defendants. Talking Points Memo added this week that “only a few dozen” people remain behind bars in connection with the insurrection.

Of those convicted, their sentences so far have ranged from probation to a maximum of eight months in jail. The insurrection left 150 officers injured and five people dead.

Braynard, however, has gone as far as to tell BuzzFeed that the plight of the January 6 defendants is “the modern civil rights struggle of our time.”

In addition to advocating for the J6 defendants, Braynard has also been a leading voice in the Trumpist effort to make a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt was shot and killed on January 6 by a Capitol officer Lt. Michael Byrd as she tried to lead a mob through a glass pane that represented the last barricade between rioters and the government officials.

CNN, citing a law enforcement intelligence report, recently reported that online chatter about the September 18 event started increasing last month after Byrd revealed his identity in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. And as Ben Collins of NBC notes, some of that chatter has threatened more violence against law enforcement officers.

The two focuses serve the same goal. As Holt explained to Vox, what’s really going on here is a “desire to rewrite the history of the January 6 Capitol riot into a story of government over-reaction and political persecution.”

Braynard recently told Steve Bannon as much, saying “this is really about fighting the narrative about what actually happened on January 6.”

September 18 will be very different than January 6 in security prep

Capitol Police is determined not to allow a repeat of January 6, when, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear, the force was caught unprepared by pro-Trump protesters and quickly overwhelmed, leading to scenes of chaotic violence in and around the Capitol. Temporary fencing is being reinstalled around the Capitol, all available officers will be on duty on September 18, and Capitol Police have reportedly asked the Department of Defense for National Guard support should it be needed.

These preparations, combined with law enforcement’s effort to prosecute the January 6 insurrectionists and monitor far-right groups in order to prevent future insurrectionists, appear to be having an impact.

As Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny report for NBC, “users in extreme far-right Facebook groups and extremist forums such as TheDonald and 4chan, which previously hosted pictures of users streaming into Washington hotel rooms and even maps of the Capitol tunnel system in the days before the Jan. 6 riot, are largely steering users away” from the September 18 event over concerns it’ll be “a setup for a ‘false flag’ event or ‘honeypot,’ in which they’ll be entrapped and coerced to commit violence by federal agents.” That reporting is echoed by Holt, who writes that far-right groups are “scared shitless” to attempt another January 6 and told Vox they’re focused on agitating at the local level.

“Many are instead … applying that political energy into local and regional scenes,” Holt said.

Still, about 700 people are expected to attend the event, and while none may end up being Republican members of Congress, the false idea that Trump had the election stolen from him — and that therefore the January 6 insurrectionists were fighting for a righteous cause — continues to be central to mainstream GOP politics.

So while the September 18 Justice for J6 event may not turn on to be another January 6, it highlights how central antipathy to free and fair elections has become on the American right — as well as how deeply invested Trump’s most fervent supporters, including Trump himself, are in the idea that the insurrectionists’ cause was fundamentally just.

Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Saturday threatening to withhold his endorsement from any Republican who supports the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. Hours later, 18 Republican senators voted to advance the infrastructure package anyway.

It was just a procedural vote (the Senate hasn’t voted yet on passage of the bill, as of Monday afternoon). But the chain of events illustrates that at least when it comes to infrastructure, the former president’s threats don’t seem to carry the weight they once did.

This was on stark display on Fox News on Sunday morning as one of the Republican senators who voted to advance the infrastructure bill, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, went on Maria Bartiromo’s show and was castigated for not toeing the line.

“Are you betraying the Republican base?” Bartiromo asked Cramer to open the interview. He responded by arguing that the bill addresses important national priorities.

“It’s not just infrastructure — it’s roads and bridges specifically. In addition to that, there’s ports, waterways, railroads, airports, broadband, all of which are critical to the movement of goods and services around the country and around the world,” Cramer said. “We couldn’t get North Dakota soybeans to South Korea if we didn’t have ports in the Pacific Northwest. and we certainly couldn’t get pasta in New York without trucks getting the wheat from the field to the bins and then off to the mills and the factories.”

Bartiromo later pressed Cramer to specifically address Trump’s threat. Trump said on Saturday that “Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill will be used against the Republican Party in the upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. It will be very hard for me to endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal.”

But Cramer, who is up for reelection in 2024, didn’t back down.

“He didn’t give one reason why it’s a bad deal, other than it’s Joe Biden’s [bill] … I think he’s wrong on this issue,” he said.

It should be noted that Cramer is known as a fierce Trumpist, not a Mitt Romney-type moderate who occasionally breaks with the former president. He campaigned in 2018 as the most MAGA-friendly candidate in the North Dakota race, and after getting elected ended up being among the top 10 Republican senators in terms of reliably voting in step with Trump.

In February, Cramer voted against Trump’s conviction for inciting the January 6 insurrection following his second impeachment trial, then mocked Democrats for impeaching the former president in the first place, saying, “Why are Democrats so concerned about having [Trump] on the ballot 4 years from now?”

But Cramer’s thinking on Trump now seems to have evolved: Satiating the leader of his party is no longer the only political consideration worth weighing. And he’s far from alone.

Other Trumpy Republicans who voted to close debate on the infrastructure bill — a necessary step toward its expected passage this week — include Lindsey Graham (SC), Chuck Grassley (IA), and John Hoeven (ND). Meanwhile, 29 Republicans voted against allowing the bill to proceed.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has become a frequent target of Trump’s ire after McConnell came out against his efforts to overturn his election loss to Biden, voted in favor of the infrastructure bill proceeding. Last week McConnell characterized the legislation, which includes $550 billion in new spending over five years, as “an excellent chance” for “a bipartisan success story for the country.”

But Trump, unsurprisingly, is not interested in “bipartisan success stories.” The irony is that when Trump was president, he could have theoretically been the one to have such a success story: During his administration, empty promises of infrastructure legislation were bandied about so often that “infrastructure week” became a punchline. But now that he’s out of office, Trump is urging Republicans to hold off even longer.

“Whether it’s the House or Senate, think twice before you approve this terrible deal. Republicans should wait until after the Midterms when they will gain all the strength they’ll need to make a good deal,” Trump said in his Saturday statement, without specifying what “a good deal” would be to him.

Senate Republicans decided bipartisanship was in their interest this one time

While infrastructure is proving to be an area where Senate Republicans are willing to break with Trump, it’s too early to say whether this is the start of a trend.

For one, some of the 18 Republican senators who voted to close debate on the infrastructure bill may still end up ultimately voting against it. But ultimately the votes are expected to be there for the bill’s passage, meaning that in this case Republican senators seem to have calculated that doing something for their constituents and demonstrating that the Senate isn’t totally broken is worth the tradeoff of handing Biden a major bipartisan win.

That doesn’t mean that it’ll be smooth sailing for Biden’s legislative agenda heading forward, however. McConnell, after all, said in May that “one hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration,” and with Republicans entrenched against any sort of voting rights legislation, it’s unclear what major policy areas if any could be ripe for bipartisan agreement after infrastructure.

It’s also easier for Senate Republicans to inch away from Trump than it is for GOP House members. While characterizing the infrastructure bill as “one of the most significant steps to date by elected Republicans to defy Mr. Trump,” the New York Times’ Luke Broadwater and Emily Cochrane note that Republicans like Cramer who aren’t up for reelection in 2022 aren’t quite feeling the heat. But for House members, a sour statement from the former president could spell serious trouble for their political futures.

The vast majority of Republicans are opposed to the legislation. House Republicans are as tightly bound to Mr. Trump as ever, with many continuing to support his election lies and conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. And with the approach of the 2022 elections, members of his party will have less and less room to maneuver away from a figure whom their base still reveres.

But whether it’s an aberration or the beginning of an era in which Republicans are less scared about incurring Trump’s wrath, the fact remains that for the first time in many years, a significant number of GOP elected officials are voting in favor of a major piece of legislation that will provide their constituents with something beyond tax cuts aimed disproportionately toward the wealthy. That’s something to celebrate.

It would be hard for President Joe Biden to not do better on government ethics issues than his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, whose legacy in that area was one of self-dealing and blatant corruption. But Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) under President Barack Obama and briefly under Trump, has been outspoken about a significant way in which he thinks the Biden administration is falling short.

On Twitter, Shaub has been regularly criticizing the Biden White House for its handling of Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s efforts to sell his works of art for as much as $500,000. White House officials recently announced an agreement with the art seller by which the identities of buyers will be shielded from Hunter to avoid the transactions being used to curry favor with the president’s family, but Shaub argues that the prices are egregious, and at a minimum more light needs to be shined on the deals.

“Hunter Biden should cancel this art sale because he knows the prices are based on his dad’s job,” Shaub tweeted on July 10. “Shame on POTUS if he doesn’t ask Hunter to stop. If that fails, he should ask that the names of buyers be released & pledge to notify us if any buyer ever meets with admin officials.”

Shaub is far from the only one criticizing the White House’s handling of Hunter’s art sales. As has been the case with much of the controversy surrounding Hunter dating back to when Trump was impeached for allegedly pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate him, much of the criticism is coming from right-wing media outlets and Republicans who are operating in bad faith and in some cases without shame.

But Shaub — who left government in July 2017 over objections to Trump’s failure to divest from his businesses and other concerns and now is a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight — says people (namely, a certain segment of liberal Twitter) who think he’s doing that sort of bad-faith critique are missing the point.

“When I was criticizing Trump, a lot of his supporters assumed it was driven by partisanship, so it shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of Trump opponents assumed it was driven by partisanship,” Shaub told me. “From their perspective, I guess it looks like I switched sides, but that’s misunderstanding the side I was on. I was always on the side of democracy and government ethics, and that’s the work I’m continuing to do.”

White House officials declined to comment on Shaub’s criticisms on the record, instead referring me to statements press secretary Jen Psaki has made about the art sales at recent White House press briefings, during which she’s defended the administration’s arrangement with Hunter’s gallerist, Georges Bergès.

Hunter “has the right to pursue an artistic career, just like any child of a president has the right to pursue a career,” Psaki said on July 9. “But all interactions regarding the selling of art and the setting of prices will be handled by a professional gallerist, adhering to the highest industry standards. And any offer out of the normal course would be rejected out of hand. And the gallerist will not share information about buyers or prospective buyers, including their identities, with Hunter Biden or the administration, which provides quite a level of protection and transparency.”

Shaub, however, counters that since Hunter is likely to meet with prospective buyers at two upcoming art shows, the public would actually be better served by knowing more about who buys the works and for how much.

“The recommendation I’ve been pushing all along is you should be promising that if you happen to learn who one of the buyers is, you’re gonna immediately tell the public, ‘We learned this,’” said Shaub. “And then if that buyer gets a meeting with any political appointee in the government, or any community — email, telephone, letter, in-person meeting, Zoom meeting, teleconference — that they will notify the public every time that buyer has an interaction with a political appointee in this administration.”

Shaub readily acknowledges that the Biden administration is “doing 1,000 times better than the last administration” on ethics, but argues that the bar needs to be higher.

“We’ve just come through a four-year period of abject ethical failure, and the world is looking to see if the United States is able to clean up its act now that the norms have been stretched out of shape like an elastic pair of sweatpants put on somebody much bigger than they were made for,” he said. “And you don’t go about showing the world or the American people that this guy capitalizing on his connection to the president is any kind of sign that we’re ready to go back to having integrity in our government.”

A transcript of my conversation with Shaub, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.

Aaron Rupar

I think there’s a sense among people on Twitter and I think more broadly as well that Hunter Biden is a private citizen, he doesn’t work for the government, and therefore he should be able to do what he wants with his art. What do you think people who hold that view get wrong?

Walter Shaub

I think that these same people found it easier to be upset when Donald Trump Jr. was offering dinners to investors — the chance to have dinner with the president’s son. Or when Jared Kushner’s sister — another private citizen — was touting what she hoped she could do for investors with regard to EB-5 visas.

People have long asked questions about what the relatives of public figures do when they appear to be capitalizing off the presidency. And the administration clearly doesn’t disagree with the principle, because there was reporting that they asked Meena Harris [Vice President Kamala Harris’s niece] to tone down the efforts to connect herself to this administration while promoting products. So they seem to only disagree in the specifics of this instance, but not with the idea that relatives of elected officials shouldn’t be capitalizing on their public service.

Aaron Rupar

In what respects specifically do you think the White House could do better with this Hunter Biden stuff?

Walter Shaub

I think what’s lost in this discussion is that there are really two considerations, only one of which has to do with Hunter Biden. The more important one, from the governmental perspective, is what the White House has been doing in this case. If we stand back and say a legitimate concern for the public is whether or not people who purchase this art are really paying for access to the presidency, then the White House must’ve recognized that concern because they told us, “Well, we went and ensured that the names will never come out and that way we won’t have to worry about them buying influence, because they can’t buy influence if we don’t know who they are.”

So there too they have conceded the principle that the public has a right to be concerned about whether people — who are paying a relative of the president sums that seem wildly disproportional to what he would get if he weren’t the president’s son — are getting access. And when you start from that point of agreement — that this is a legitimate concern — then it becomes relevant to look at what they did.

And what they did is they intervened with an art dealer who by all accounts was already planning to keep it secret, to make sure he keeps it secret. And they claim that they negotiated an ethics agreement the terms of which they refused to share with us. They won’t show us what written communications memorialized the discussion. So they inserted themselves in the process, sealed up the possibility the public could know, and then refused to tell us the details.

And we’ve already learned that we’ve paid a price for their refusal to share the details with us because they told us Hunter Biden could not possibly find out who the buyers were. And subsequently it’s been discovered that he’s going to be at two showings where it appears he’s going to meet the universe of prospective bidders. And they failed to mention that to us, so then they backpedal and say, “Yes, but he won’t talk to them about the sales.”

And so you’ve taken it from the universe of fabulously wealthy people around the world to the universe of the small number that actually show up at this show. And suddenly it becomes a lot easier to say, well, he’s gonna have a pretty good sense of who the buyers are by gauging their reactions and hearing the things they say to him.

And when asked directly by a reporter last week, what will happen if one of the people at this show says, “I’m going to buy this piece of art” — and I’d go further and say, what if they say, “I’m going to buy this piece of art and I’m going to pay x amount” — and Psaki’s only response was, “He won’t find out. He won’t know and we won’t know.” And then she quickly went to another questioner. So she deflected and refused to answer the question: What happens if a buyer says that I’m going to buy the art for this amount?

On top of that, they say he’s not gonna take any inappropriate bids. Well, they’re asking $75,000 to $500,000 for art by a guy who has never even juried into a community center art fair, let alone sold a single piece of art. Anything in the range that they’re asking is obviously inappropriate. So the statement, “Don’t worry, they won’t take any inappropriate offers” — well, what the heck is the definition of “inappropriate” in that context?

So again, this sounds entirely disingenuous. And then beyond that, it’s implausible that the identities of these buyers are not gonna come out, because for one thing, the buyers aren’t party to this secret ethics agreement with the White House.

So it really then starts feeling like the White House intervened specifically for the purpose of keeping the public in the dark, because it doesn’t sound like they changed anything other than pressured the dealer not to say publicly who’s buying it, and it’s almost as if, one could wonder, were they just worried that watchdogs would hound them and start printing stories about “this buyer got this meeting and that buyer got that meeting with the administration, so let’s just nip that in the bud and keep the public in the dark”?

But what they didn’t do is establish a mechanism by which, if Hunter Biden learns or if members of the administration learn who buyers are, that they’ll turn around and disclose that to us.

Aaron Rupar

What would you like to see the White House do?

Walter Shaub

The recommendation I’ve been pushing all along is you should be promising that if you happen to learn who one of the buyers is, you’re gonna immediately tell the public, “We learned this.” And then if that buyer gets a meeting with any political appointee in the government, or any community — email, telephone, letter, in-person meeting, Zoom meeting, teleconference — that they will notify the public every time that buyer has an interaction with a political appointee in this administration.

Now they may feel that’s ridiculous, because they don’t feel that anybody is gonna get preferential treatment. And it certainly seems like the president’s supporters on Twitter think that. The problem is that that is absolutely the opposite of government ethics. Government ethics isn’t, “Let’s assume everybody is good and will never do anything wrong and trust blindly that they will never do anything wrong with no mechanisms or safeguards to check on that.”

And frankly, half the country — nearly half the country — voted against this guy, and if [Biden] wants to be the president of the entire country — unlike the last president, who seemed to only want to be the president of his supporters — then he owes it to those people who don’t necessarily trust him that he’s gonna be transparent and they can gauge for themselves whether these people are gaining access to government.

Aaron Rupar

There’s also the issue of the sums of money involved.

Walter Shaub

The prices are so absurd. And people will say, well, the famous people sell art for high prices. I see that as an admission that people saying that know he’s only getting this money because he’s the president’s son. And he’s got a history of taking jobs or deals that appear to be enhanced or offered because he’s related to government.

And unfortunately so many smears and untruthful things have been said about him — some of them bordering on ludicrous — that I think the public gets into this mode of knee-jerk reaction to the idea that then any criticism of him must be exactly the same as the far-fetched, fantastical ideas that Rudy Giuliani and others were selling. But two things can be true. Those can be ridiculous, and the guy can have made his entire career practically off of being Joe Biden’s son.

And so that gets us to the unsavory aspect of this. We’ve just come through a four-year period of abject ethical failure, and the world is looking to see if the United States is able to clean up its act now that the norms have been stretched out of shape like an elastic pair of sweatpants put on somebody much bigger than they were made for. And you don’t go about showing the world or the American people that this guy capitalizing on his connection to the president is any kind of sign that we’re ready to go back to having integrity in our government.

Now I will readily concede that Joe Biden cannot readily control his son. But he certainly can try, and he certainly can call up his son and say, “You know, I worked really hard to be the president, my legacy matters, you’ve never sold this art before — can’t you wait until I’m out of office and sell it the day after I leave the White House?” And he could even put pressure on him. “Look son, if you want to come to Thanksgiving dinner, you’re not going to do that.”

But ultimately that’s Hunter Biden’s choice to make, and if he’s not patriotic enough to care about the message this sends regarding the integrity of our government and our elected leaders, then that’s on him and not on Joe Biden. That’s on Hunter Biden’s lack of patriotism. But nobody who’s objective is going to believe that this first-time art seller isn’t asking for these prices because of the fame that comes with being Joe Biden’s son. And I feel like because people have been unfair to him that now other people feel they have to go overboard and say, “Well, he’s owed one free little bout of profiteering off the presidency to make up for all the mean things that were done for him.” And that just isn’t how it should work.

Aaron Rupar

So what sort of work do you think it’s acceptable for relatives of public officials to do?

Walter Shaub

I think there has to be some wiggle room that when it’s a close call, you need to err on giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think that it would be impossible for Hunter Biden to sell art if he were willing to sell it for the prices someone might get at a local artists cooperative. So if these pieces were selling for $5,000 a piece, that’s probably more than you’d get as a first-time artist, but it’s a low enough amount where it wouldn’t have raised eyebrows.

So people keep saying, “What can he do for a living that wouldn’t cause criticism?” Well, there’s always going to be unfair criticism — you can’t worry about that. But there wouldn’t be fair criticism if he were just to avoid clearly appearing to benefit off the presidency by either selling art at normal prices for a first-time artist, or doing a job that he’s done before, like being a fund manager or an attorney.

So I don’t think that saying he can’t sell the art for $500,000 a pop means he has to go live on a steam grate.

Aaron Rupar

I want to get your assessment on a broader level of how the Biden administration is doing on government ethics. There has also been criticism of Joe Biden plugging Hunter’s book during a recent town hall event and some of the insider lobbying that’s been going on. What’s your assessment of how things are going coming off a presidency that shook our conceptions of what standard procedure is in terms of government ethics?

Walter Shaub

I think they’re doing a good job on compliance. And I think that unfortunately, they view the ethics program as a compliance program. We have a weak ethics program with weak rules, and they are doing a good job complying with those weak rules.

They are certainly doing 1,000 times better than the last administration. But their talking point is “the administration with the highest ethical standards in history.” They have an ethics executive order that goes further than any past administration, and I applauded it when it came out. It doesn’t go miles further — it goes a bit further. And it’s a good thing, it’s a good document. But it’s not transformational. It’s a somewhat incremental improvement over the past, and a good improvement, but not transformational.

I think after the catastrophe of the Nixon presidency, there was a sea change when Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act, the Inspector General Act, the Civil Service Reform Act, and while those changes wouldn’t have prevented Nixon doing what he did, they did establish a new culture and a new set of norms for the executive branch that were largely followed until 2017. And then what Trump taught us was those reforms didn’t go far enough. They were weak tea and they didn’t create any kind of enforceable mechanisms, and public confidence in government has been shaken. And in that context, we needed transformational change, and we had a narrow window of time in which to pass legislation that would change the culture of government, and we needed an administration to come in and say, “We’re not gonna just go back to the old ways of Washington that many people found unsavory, we’re gonna set a new course.”

And unfortunately what they got is a double-edged sword. They brought in really talented, really smart, really experienced people, which is ideal when you’re walking in in the middle of a pandemic for addressing that pandemic. Unfortunately, people like that come with baggage and a belief that the old way of doing things worked, and that there’s no problem with the revolving door, and there’s no problem with having people come from representing corporations to then regulating those corporations, and they don’t achieve a different standard.

And so, in that context, every little bit of sloppiness undermines public faith in government— even if they may perceive it as minor because it was done before. And so when you have someone like Steve Ricchetti having multiple family members working for the government, that undermines things. You cannot convince me that that many members of the family wind up in political posts — and so many other relatives in government of top Biden advisers are suddenly in political posts — that it’s all a coincidence.

It may not meet the legal definition of nepotism because the parents or other relatives may not have put in a word for them, but you get the feeling that there’s this cozy process where whoever is making the decisions either thinks this will please them or thinks the relative is trustworthy, so let’s have them in here. And then you have to start wondering, well, you know, what happens with the disadvantaged kid who didn’t get born with the silver spoon in their mouth and parent in government who now has one less slot they can compete for in government?

And so that bothers me a lot. It bothers me that the secretary of energy was touting energy vehicle technology while holding stock in an electric vehicle company. She could’ve divested sooner or made a decision to stay far away from it. Now she probably is in technical legal compliance with the criminal conflict of interest law, which has some complex concepts addressing what’s covered. But that doesn’t make it right just because it’s not a crime. It undermines confidence to have the secretary of energy touting a technology in which she has invested.

Aaron Rupar

What do you think it says about the state of our politics that sounding the alarm about the ethical issues surrounding Hunter Biden’s art sales has made you a lightning rod on Twitter?

Walter Shaub

I’m not surprised, because when I was criticizing Trump, a lot of his supporters assumed it was driven by partisanship, so it shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of opponents assumed it was driven by partisanship. And from their perspective I guess it looks like I switched sides, but that’s misunderstanding the side I was on. I was always on the side of democracy and government ethics, and that’s the work I’m continuing to do.

If that’s a necessary purge, to get rid of people who don’t really care about government ethics and democracy, and instead have been so traumatized by the partisanship of their times that they begin to think the means are justified by the ends and anything goes as long as your team is on top, then good riddance to those. And I’m so pleased to see how many more people truly care about democracy and government ethics.