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You may know Hunter deButts as the former Princeton lacrosse midfielder. This Hunter deButts actually exists and has done nothing to require a presidential pardon.

He is not to be confused with the fictitious Hunter deButts whom The View’s Ana Navarro cited as Woodrow Wilson’s brother-in-law — the one whom Wilson pardoned for his crimes. Searching for precedents that would support President Biden’s pardon of his partner in the corrupt family business, Navarro resorted to artificial intelligence and dredged up the fake deButts. Wilson had no such brother-in-law.

Whatever the limitations of artificial intelligence, it is probably more reliable than Navarro’s native gifts. An employee of ABC News and star of its long-running show, she is an idiot. That’s not news, but that’s the case.

Navarro’s error may have a deeper meaning. Navarro sought to expose some kind of double standard at work in the condemnation of the Hunter Biden pardon. But President Biden denied on many occasions that he would promulgate any such pardon. That is one distinction among many it has with the cases of Roger Clinton and Charles Kushner.

While seeking to expose some kind of double standard, Navarro displayed her own propensity to doublethink. This is almost cruel.

Navarro’s error reflects the corporate media’s own work on behalf of Biden over the past five years. Navarro is slow on the uptake. She hasn’t gotten the memo that it’s time to move on. Biden is yesterday’s sharp tack.

Perhaps Navarro had Seymour Butz in mind. Seymour’s name is the kind of joke that might be generated by artificial intelligence.

Or perhaps Navarro had former Nixon/Ford Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in mind. (This Butz is depicted in the thumbnail photo on our homepage.) The New York Times recalled in its obituary of Butz:

He was a man with a penchant for barnyard humor who delighted in showing visitors a wood carving of two elephants having sex that he kept in a cabinet behind his desk, a gift from a friend in Indiana symbolizing Mr. Butz’s quest to multiply farm votes for the Republicans.

But his off-color comments brought accusations of bigotry and his eventual departure from Washington. Trouble first arrived in November 1974 during an informal meeting with reporters in Washington when Mr. Butz, using a mock Italian dialect, criticized on Pope Paul VI’s opposition to using artificial birth control as a solution to world food problems. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York called on Mr. Butz to resign or apologize. He did offer an apology following a rebuke from President Ford.

Butz had said of the pope: “He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules.” Timothy Noah explored the context and meaning of this remark in the Slate column and update appended to “Earl Butz, History’s Victim.” One might say Butz was pardoned for his comment about the pope.

In 1976, however, Butz went a joke too far with jocular if unfunny racist remarks for which President Ford first reprimanded and then fired him. (Noah goes into this as well.) Butz’s good works as Secretary of Agriculture proved unavailing.

Following his government service, Butz pleaded guilty in May 1981 to tax fraud involving the understatement of his 1978 federal taxable income by more than $148,000. He served 25 days in jail and five years’ probation. The offense rings a bell, but Butz received no pardon.