Reminding me of Gilligan's Island's Gilligan, who said, "I'm not gonna dress like a girl, and you can't make me," Joe Biden says he won't testify in any Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.

Watch: @JoeBiden says he wouldn't comply with a Senate subpoena in @realDonaldTrump's impeachment trial because it would create a narrative that would let the president "off the hook."



Read more from our interview earlier today: https://t.co/xgpO6OOPw2 pic.twitter.com/bqrapiVhVO — Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) December 28, 2019

His logic for defying such a subpoena was comical: Trump, he said, was "trying to take the focus off him."

Trump? Trying to take the focus off himself? Don't think so.

Biden's vow to defy the subpoena comes just on the heels of House Democrats' hullabaloo over White House figures, past and present, who refused to participate in their politicized trial of President Trump. Remember all the howls when chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton said they wanted no part in the Democrats' kangaroo court?

Now that the trial is in the Senate, Joe Biden is claiming the same privilege, as if Bolton and Mulvaney had been right all along. Hypocrisy? One set of rules for Republicans, and another set for Democrats? You decide.

Here's the other thing: keeping out of a Senate trial is just the thing for keeping quiet news of his son's Hunter Biden's amazingly lucrative deals with foreign countries, which seem to follow every time Joe made a trip as vice president abroad. The impeachment of Trump is closely tied to the upcoming presidential election, and Joe's already been damaged badly by it. The Senate trial is bound to pull Joe's Democratic competition back to Washington and take away from their campaign time, which is why Democrats wanted to get it over with in the House. Now Joe's complicating things, as if to keep himself out of it. What is he hiding?

Biden spoke dully to the board of the Des Moines register in his televised meeting with them (why are these televised ones always so boring? Real editorial board meetings, which I've been in a lot of, are places of fireworks) but got especially disgusting when he brought up God as his reason for not getting the TV cameras onto him to explain his corrupt doings in the Senate, saying that in his church, it is all about "examine your conscience." As if Biden has one of those.

All he does by vowing to defy any Senate subpoena is call to mind that Democrats set their own rules and expect Republicans to abide by their terms. And that his refusal to testify is somehow mighty convenient for his electoral prospects. And somehow, not testifying sure has a handy way of keeping facts from coming out. But Trump, see, is the bad guy, somehow not wanting the spotlight.

No wonder Biden's not generating much voter enthusiasm.

Image credit: Digital Campaign Manager Doug Jones for Senate — Doug Jones for Senate Committee,via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.