Smack in the middle of the 2024 presidential election, America has been confronted with two trials. One involves Donald Trump, the former president, whose sentencing is scheduled for July 11. The other involves Hunter Biden, the son of the current president. Thousands of broadcast hours and miles of newsprint have been generated to cover these courtroom dramas, with pundits parsing every legal nuance and offering sage pronouncements on what the two proceedings say about politics and justice in this country.

I’m interested in what they say about family.

By complete coincidence, last Wednesday I was in Wilmington, Delaware, to speak at SNF Dialogues’ Consumers or Citizens conference, hosted by the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy and Administration. I was billed as a mainstream Republican voice opposite my old colleague and political counterpart from Showtime’s The Circus, Democratic strategist Jennifer Palmieri, a sometime Vanity Fair contributor. When I got the invitation, I wanted to make sure the sponsors were aware that in the last year I’d been sharply critical of President Joe Biden, but they assured me they had done their due diligence and thought my presence would add credibility to the discussion.

When my plane landed, I received an urgent call from my wife. She informed me that my brother, Chris, had passed away suddenly. It was a huge emotional gut punch, and I briefly thought about canceling. After all, in the course of the past two years, I had lost my sister, my mother, and now my brother. As the sole survivor of our nuclear family, I was now reeling from the emotional toll.

I quickly realized, though, that it would take at least until the next morning, with all the travel logistics, to get to Chris’s home in Santa Fe and be with his wife. So, I concluded: I’ll soldier on and stick with the plan. My reasoning: If anyone knows family loss, it’s this gang. And who better to be with? Surely they’ll understand if I’m off my game—literally in this hour of grief.

I spent time with President Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who was part of the program that night. (The next day she joined a gathering with her nephew Hunter and many other Bidens to honor Beau Biden on the anniversary of his death, in 2015, from a brain tumor.) As I suspected, Valerie provided just the right notes of comfort and understanding for my own loss.

On the flight home, lost in my own thoughts, I skimmed the headlines about the Trump and Biden trials and at one point got to asking: What did my time in Delaware, and these two legal ordeals, say about family?

One, obviously, features a man found guilty on 34 felony counts stemming from a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged consensual sexual encounter—one that Daniels claimed occurred just months after Trump’s third wife, Melania, had given birth to their son, Barron. And during the course of that trial, Mrs. Trump never made an appearance to show her support. In fact, according to accounts by journalists who observed the proceedings, the defendant, for the most part, seemed isolated, solitary, even lonely.

The other trial, which has just gotten underway, features the prosecution of Hunter Biden, on felony charges of lying about drug use on a gun-purchase application. Sitting front and center on his first day in court was his stepmother: first lady Jill Biden. It happened to be her birthday. She was joined by Hunter’s wife, Melissa, and his half sister, Ashley.

“Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today,” the president said in a statement that addressed Hunter’s struggles with substance abuse. “Hunter’s resilience in the face of adversity and the strength he has brought to his recovery are inspiring to us…. Our family has been through a lot together, and Jill and I are going to continue to be there for Hunter and our family with our love and support.”

The pain Joe Biden feels is palpable. It’s clear he knows that if he were not president, and not running for reelection, his son would almost certainly not be prosecuted for the crimes of which is accused. But Biden, taking a page out of Job, takes it in stride as best he can, aided by family. He lost a wife and baby daughter in a car crash. He lost a son to brain cancer. And now he may see a son incarcerated—simply because of politics. One can only imagine the sense of anger and guilt that has swirled around and inside of him—to go along with all the grief.

I was reminded of a quote from a prominent politician who appeared in a 2015 video that made the rounds during the 2020 election: “The bottom line is: If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, you got a problem. You need to do some self-evaluation, ’cause what’s not to like? Here’s what I can tell you: Life can change just like that. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t take relationships for granted. I called him after Beau died, and he basically said, ‘Well, Beau was my soul.’ We talked for a long time…. He’s the nicest person I think I’ve ever met in politics. He is as good a man as God ever created…. His heart’s been ripped out, but he’s gonna make sure that the other members of his family are well taken care of, and he started talking about his grandkids—more worried about them than anything. We just talked about the future. He started talking about the future, the future of his family.”

Those are not the words of a Democratic partisan or a Biden sycophant. They are the candid sentiments of South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham.

We still await Trump’s sentencing. And three other potential trials on 54 additional counts. Hunter also faces another trial—on tax charges. But for me the case is closed.

Republicans love to talk about family values. But if the outcome of this coming election were to turn on the question of which candidate genuinely values family, the verdict would be unanimous.