...The finish-line strategy of the Trump campaign has landed, convolutedly, on the narrative that Hunter Biden is an inconvenient son. ...

Joe Biden’s response to all of this has been to love his son.

Freely, unconditionally. “I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son,” Biden retorted in the first debate, after the president brought up Hunter’s drug use — which both Bidens have admitted and spoken about. “No one said anything he did was wrong in Ukraine,” he said in the second.

In the miasma of one New York Post article about Hunter, alleged text messages presented as part of the incendiary package instead came across as the tender missives of a worried dad. “Good morning my beautiful son,” Joe allegedly wrote Hunter while the latter was checked into a rehab facility. “I miss you and love you.” According to the alleged texts — whose provenance and authenticity have not been verified by the Bidens or by other news organizations — Hunter worried he would be a drag on his father’s campaign. “Only focus is recovery,” Biden reassured him.

WASHINGTON — The Russian government is likely to try to influence the 2020 presidential election, not through the release of stolen emails and other documents but through faked videos, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday.

The United States has become adept at quickly identifying the perpetrators of so-called hacking and dumping operations that result in the release of potentially damaging material, increasing the risk for Moscow that Washington will respond, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the committee.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, emails and documents were stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign and then released publicly, influencing the presidential race.

“The Russians may feel if they are too overt about it, the risk of blowback is simply too great,” Mr. Schiff said at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But there are other ways to have potentially even bigger impact than hacking and dumping.”

Mr. Schiff said he was particularly worried about the effect of falsified videos, known as deep fakes. Such videos could be easily introduced into social media, where they will spread rapidly.