There are the things everyone knows, but that everyone understands you are never supposed to say out loud. One of the things our ruling “elites” are never supposed to say out loud is exactly how the Washington money-laundering machine really works, even though it’s as obvious as it is simple. Tax dollars go to Washington, where lawmakers and bureaucrats redistribute them to favored entities, who then use some of that money to “influence” lawmakers and bureaucrats to give them more money.

In Washington’s $4 trillion scheme of things, the amounts are relatively small, which means that not only can our lawmakers and bureaucrats be bought, but they can be had for cheap.

With that in mind, huge kudos to Steve Hilton for saying out loud what mustn’t be said. Watch this video, which is the best minute and 41 seconds you’ll spend all day.

So, ummm, WOW! Fox News host Steve Hilton straight-up accuses his Fox News colleague Marie Harf of "covering up the corruption" of the Bidens in Ukraine because she worked at the State Dept during the Obama years. "Are you kidding me?!?!" Harf yells at one point. pic.twitter.com/9767n2mSOr — Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) November 4, 2019

Before her Fox News gig, Marie Harf served as director of strategic communications to Secretary of State John Kerry. She also worked for a bit as acting spokesperson and deputy spokesperson of the State Department. She got her start as a CIA analyst on the Middle East, before getting involved in Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection effort. A fully-fledged member of the Revolving Door Community, Harf turned her low-responsibility duties as a bureaucrat and campaign official into a sweet-paying media gig. If anyone knows how the system really works, it’s a beneficiary of it like Harf.

And if the phrase “deep state” suddenly popped into your brain, well, it did into mine, too.

But when people like Hilton spill the beans, it risks upsetting the apple cart, if you’ll allow me a terrible mixed metaphor. When a president threatens to withhold aid to a foreign country in furtherance of American policy (in Trump’s case, a corruption investigation), that’s just time-honored statecraft. When a foreign recipient of American tax dollars pays a handsome salary to the untalented kid of a high-ranking American official, that’s corruption — the kind we’re not supposed to talk about. So it’s thrilling to hear Hilton say on network television, “The only real corruption allegation is against Joe Biden.” Hilton went on, “He supervised Ukraine policy, supervised billions of dollars of aid that went from the U.S. Taxpayer to Ukraine. Much of that went to a gas company paying his son. How much money did Joe Biden channel to his son’s business?”

It’s a fair question, given what we’re learning about the deep and profitable ties between Ukraine and the Democratic machine:

Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple contacts with the Obama State Department during the 2016 election cycle, including one just a month before Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating his son’s company for corruption, newly released memos show.

That’s the lead from investigative reporter John Solomon’s latest, and I highly recommend that you click over and read the whole thing. If you were a MSN-DNC creature like Harf, reports like this would have you in Panicked Denial Mode, too.

What follows is from the Daily Beast’s writeup of the dustup:

“There’s no evidence that anything you said [is true], I worked at the State Department then,” Harf exclaimed. “Well you’re covering up the corruption, too. You defend it,” Hilton fired back, causing Harf, now a Democratic strategist, to shout: “Are you kidding me?!” “I am on this couch with you covering the news,” she added. “Please don’t accuse me of covering something up.”

The biggest laugh I got was Harf insisting that she — a Democrat operative with a byline — can’t slant the news from her perch on Fox’s comfy sofa.

As our own Jim Treacher noted years ago:

The simple fact that Harf is a Democratic operative and a former CIA/State Department worker is exactly why someone, almost anyone else, should be sitting in her seat at Fox News. The fact the Hilton was able to get under her skin so quickly, just by saying what everyone already knows, proves it.

On second thought, let her stay right where she is. Because the discovery process in this case is an absolute thrill to behold.