For $500K you can get a Picasso, Renior ... or Hunter Biden
Fox News' Raymond Arroyo and Mark Steyn question how the first son's art could be worth so much
Author and columnist Mark Steyn, hosting "Fox News Primetime" on Thursday, remarked that many classic art pieces can easily fetch $500,000 at auction, but that some lesser pieces can now also be purchased for that lofty amount.
With first son Hunter Biden's abstract paintings now being put on the market for as much as half-a-million dollars, the 51-year-old son of President Joe Biden can now have his name added to the likes of Lorenzo di Bicci, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
"Have you got half a million bucks to spare for a painting position go over your mantelpiece? There are bargains galore to be had out there," Steyn said.
He pointed to a circa-1600 portrait of Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-ruling Ottoman sultan, recently selling for less than $500,000 at Sotheby's of London.
Di Bicci's painting of St. Catherine of Alexandria and the Six Virtues of Christ the Redeemer fetched a similar amount, Steyn reported.
But now, the younger Biden's art can be added to that category, the host said.
Last month, Walter Shaub, President Obama's former ethics chief, eviscerated the White House in a Twitter thread, saying the administration is trying to "make sure we will never know" who the buyers are.
The White House announced its ethics plan surrounding the sale of the presidential progeny's pieces on Thursday, saying the younger Biden would not be privy to who is buying his artwork to try to avoid ethical pitfalls, according to a report by the Washington Post.
OBAMA ETHICS CHIEF BLASTS SECRET HUNTER BIDEN ART SCHEME ARRANGED BY WHITE HOUSE
"The idea's that even Hunter won't know, but the WH has outsourced government ethics to a private art dealer," Shaub continued. "We're supposed to trust a merchant in an industry that's fertile ground for money laundering, as well as unknown buyers who could tell Hunter or WH officials? No thanks."
That art dealer is Georges Berges of New York City.
On "Fox News Primetime," Steyn presented a handful of Hunter Biden's works, including one he described as the Los Angeles resident's "tye-dye tee shirt from his 7th birthday party in 1977 next to some Valvoline 10W-30 he huffed out of his rental car and blew through an art pipe."
"Yes, usually you have to be dead to fetch half a million. Hunter is not dead. Is he just sleeping it off. He has only been a professional painter since, oh, let me see now around about lunchtime on January the 20th," Steyn added.
The host noted that art consultant Martin Galindo recently told the New York Post that another of Hunter Biden's pieces – which Steyn also presented – "looks like COVID."
Further, Steyn proffered that Hunter Biden's secretive art sales are a much more effective "grift" than previous Democratic presidential families allegedly questionable ethics.
"Do you remember a couple years back when impressionable Kazakh oligarchs and Saudi princes were mysteriously eager to pay the Clinton Foundation $2 million for a speech by Chelsea on diarrhea in Africa? Well Hunter's half-million dollar Coronascape is the Clinton Foundation diarrhea speech of contemporary art," he said, calling it a "better racket than the Clinton Foundation."
EWTN anchor and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo later remarked on that matter that while the Clinton Foundation was that famous family's "proxy to get influence and favors," Hunter Biden's art is indeed the same for Joe's family.
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"They say, look, anybody buying Hunter's art will be kept anonymous. No one will know, so, therefore that will absolve us of any influence-peddling [allegations], the truth here you are relying on the guy at the gallery selling Hunter's art, that's the ethical benchmark," Arroyo said.
"I'm not all that confident that he won't tell Hunter – or what's to stop somebody sauntering up to Joe or Jill Biden or a member of the Biden administration and saying, you know, I paid $2 million for the 'Hunter's baby mama' collection."
Fox News' Houston Keene contributed to this report.
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