The secret service this week found a small bag of cocaine at the White House. This is a big deal—any mysterious powder found near the president would be, and if the Biden administration is secretly a coked-up bacchanal instead of a bunch of center-left technocrats, we’d all have the right to be alarmed or impressed. But the details surrounding the blow at The Bidens’ could point to a a much more mundane situation.
Right now we’re in that liminal space between initial reports of “drugs found at the White House” and concrete details from the police investigation, so the information vacuum is inspiring fanciful takes from everyone with a political axe to grind. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and probably MySpace are filled with wild speculation and outright lies about the situation, as well as “it’s obviously not a big deal” takes. None of these is correct, because we just don’t know.
The cocaine was not found in a private area of the White House
Initial reports that the drugs were found in a library at the White House were later walked back by the Secrete Service. According to The Man, the bag of drugs was not found in a private area of the White House or the living quarters of anyone named “Biden.”
According to a Secret Service official, the drugs were found in the West Wing, “near an entrance where visitors taking tours are directed to leave their phones,” This is an important distinction because drugs found where D.C. tourists drop their bags could have belonged to some doughnut who took the White House tour, instead of a member of our government. (Members of our government would never do drugs.)
Did the cocaine belong to Joe Biden?
We don’t actually know whose cocaine it was. The Secret Service is not ruling out any White House personnel, guests or visitors, but Diamond Joe seems an unlikely culprit. He’s a little old for rails of coke, and anyway, the first family was at Camp David for the July 4 weekend, and the drugs were discovered on Sunday night. It’s “inconceivable” that cocaine could sit around the White House for over 72 hours and not be discovered, according to Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Even when he’s home, I doubt the president is in the West Wing tour area of the White House very often (unless he wanders there).
Did the cocaine belong to Hunter Biden?
While the president’s son does have a well-documented history of addiction problems, so do a lot of people. We can’t rule him or anyone out until the official investigation concludes, but Hunter wasn’t at the White House over the weekend either.
Did a White House staffer leave the cocaine?
Those people do work long hours…but we don’t know. White House staffers are drug-tested too—not proof of anything, but it points away from a staffer.
Did a tourist leave the coke in the West Wing?
According to CBS News, a leading theory among senior law enforcement officials is that the drugs came from “an individual on a White House tour of the West Wing,” and I give that idea a lot more credence than the opinions of online wags.
We should know soon: The visitor logs and camera footage are being scrutinized by the authorities, so if you’re wondering where that bag of blow you were planning to snort after your West Wing tour ran off to, I’d get ready for a visit from very serious men in suits in the coming weeks.
But what if the “officials from the White House” are lying?
There’s no way to tell whether the spokespeople from the White House or the Secret Service are covering up a drug problem in the Biden administration. They could be; minimizing, spinning, and outright lies are what people do when they’re caught. But on the other hand, maybe it was planted by a political opponent of the Bidens? Maybe it’s all a set-up, the beginning of the “dirty tricks” leading up to the 2024 presidential election? There’s no shortage of examples of even worse things being done. And this is the problem with political scandals: You can believe anything you want once you discount the official explanation and use your imagination.
Bottom line: We don’t know (but the most boring explanation is probably correct)
With any political scandal, it’s our instinct to jump to a conclusion based on our biases. To me (and the cops looking into it) the most logical explanation for the cocaine is “some knucklehead on a White House tour dropped a bag of dope,” but someone else’s might be, “It’s obviously Hunter Biden!”
Right now, neither side is right, and even though the tourist-dropped-it explanation is the most logical, it’s anything but confirmed, and unexpected things happen all the time.
It’s easy to feel smug about the dumb shit “the other side” believes, but imagine how Twitter would have reacted if coke was found in the White House during the Trump administration. It would have been just as insufferable, but I still would have secretly thought, “Hm, maybe it was Don Jr.” Instead of “Joe Biden would never do that! He’s too old and friendly!” In reality, the coin is still in the air. Until it lands on “heads” or “tails,” it’s best to keep an open mind.
