Joe Biden Was Always Going to Pardon Hunter Biden (Quick Take)
The Michael Steele Podcast
The Bulwark
4.8 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2024
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
Michael Steele speaks with Michael Smerconish about Joe Biden pardoning Hunter Biden and why an open Democratic convention wouldn't have worked.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the whole Hunter Biden part. So I'll let you go first because you're the guest and let you |
| 0:07.5 | share your thoughts on the Hunter Biden, Arden, before I share mine. Okay. So I sense we may disagree |
| 0:14.8 | on this. I think the big mistake that President Biden made was in ever saying this was something he wasn't going to do. |
| 0:24.4 | I wasn't sure how it was going to end, but I was sure that Hunter was never going to step a foot in |
| 0:31.1 | jail. I didn't know if it would be Kamala Harris as the president. Donald Trump, I mean, |
| 0:35.7 | here's an interesting thought, Michael. I wondered on radio |
| 0:39.2 | if when Trump visited the White House, I guess by now two weeks ago with that roaring fire in the |
| 0:44.9 | fireplace, I wondered when the aides were out of the room, is this something that Donald Trump |
| 0:49.9 | said to Joe Biden, don't worry, I've got Hunter covered. And then the question would be, could Joe Biden |
| 0:55.7 | rely on that promise? But I'm not surprised. I'm only surprised that for so long he told us and |
| 1:02.3 | Corrine Jean-Pierre told us that that was something that was never happened. Because there was no way |
| 1:07.7 | Joe Biden was going to let his son go away, having lost two kids. |
| 1:12.6 | And now the part that we might disagree on, if we haven't disagreed already on that, |
| 1:16.7 | I believe that he was being treated preferentially, initially, too leniently. |
| 1:23.6 | The idea that he was going to cop that guilty plea, I guess it was two June's ago. |
| 1:28.3 | Right. |
| 1:29.0 | And that nothing was going to happen to him for the gun charge and he was going to get to plead down to misdemeanor on the tax offenses was too lenient. |
| 1:36.3 | And then because of the judge questioning it and now DOJ appointing a special counsel, Merrick Garland, and having a second look at it, I thought the book |
| 1:45.2 | was going to get thrown at him in a way that would not have happened if he weren't Hunter Biden. |
| 1:50.6 | And so like neither of those did I think was the appropriate outcome for Hunter Biden. |
| 1:57.3 | Bottom line is, I'm fine. I'm fine with Joe pardoning him. I wish he hadn't handled it |
| 2:03.6 | the way that he did, but I'm okay with it. So we'll pick up there because that's where I am. |
... |
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