Is Hunter Biden’s Laptop Actually a Big Deal?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2022
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An obsession with Hunter Biden’s laptop has been written off as the byproduct of a right-wing media bubble—but the reality is that what you don’t know can hurt you. It’s past time for Democrats and their supporters to confront some uncomfortable facts.
Guest: Olivia Nuzzi, Washington Correspondent for New York magazine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think that the holidays feel like frozen noses. I love walking with the dog for long periods of time. |
| 0:10.0 | Hopefully it's snowing and you've got to wrap up warm. So I think a frozen nose is a sweaty armpit |
| 0:15.0 | because your wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps and heath and you get to the top |
| 0:20.0 | and you're like, and then you can see the breath but then your nose is still freezing to touch. |
| 0:25.0 | Join in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks. |
| 0:32.0 | Hey there what next listeners. There is some salty language ahead. |
| 0:42.0 | Olivia Newsie and her colleague Andrew Rice. I've got this thing back in their office. |
| 0:47.0 | They're almost afraid to touch it and before we opened it first we just thought, you know, what the hell do we do with this thing? |
| 1:00.0 | Should we just burn it? Should we send it to the FBI like what should we do? |
| 1:04.0 | And Andrew made the decision to put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, sign and date the envelope, |
| 1:14.0 | put the envelope in a locked safe in our office and then send an email to me and our editors |
| 1:24.0 | and I believe our lawyers and just establishing where this object was. |
| 1:35.0 | This object is Hunter Biden's laptop. Well sort of, it's a copy of what some Republican operatives say |
| 1:42.0 | was once Hunter Biden's laptop. It felt very much like, oh, God, we have this evil possessed object |
| 1:51.0 | and we need to do away with it. We need to just put it in a straight jacket and keep it somewhere where it can't get out. |
| 2:01.0 | It doesn't sound like you were excited to open this thing up. We were not. We dreaded it. |
| 2:05.0 | I think of Hunter Biden's laptop as a right-wing horror crox, a mythical object rumored to contain pieces of Biden's soul. |
| 2:15.0 | It also seems to contain a whole lot of selfies, some homemade pornography and email messages, hinting at cozy relationships between Chinese and Ukrainian business people |
| 2:26.0 | and the son of the now leader of the free world. But if you don't read the tabloids or watch Fox News, |
| 2:32.0 | this laptop might have fallen off your radar. You might not remember the way Olivia does. |
| 2:39.0 | Hunter Biden's emails bursting onto the scene in October of 2020, just before the presidential election. |
| 2:46.0 | They suggested that Joe Biden's son was profiting off the family's name, developing close ties to business people abroad, |
... |
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