‘Morning Joe’ Trots Out Biden Shills to Defend Hunter’s Influence Peddling: ‘He Was on Some Phone Calls Talking About the Weather’
MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the daily four-hour in-kind campaign contribution to Biden 2024 outdid itself on Tuesday as it sought to excuse and obfuscate the obvious ethical issues inherent to Hunter Biden’s foreign business activities, trotting out a murderer’s row of shills for President Joe Biden.
Devon Archer, a former close friend and business partner of the president’s son, told the House Oversight Committee Monday that Hunter Biden made a habit of calling his powerful father during business meetings, sometimes at the behest of associates, despite President Biden’s repeated claims that he’s never participated in — or even spoken to his son about — Hunter’s business activities.
The Tuesday guests of Morning Joe are absolutely sure that this is a veritable nothingburger that represents no threat to the first family’s reputation or the president’s political prospects. But they nevertheless spent all morning laboring to mount defenses of father and son.
Morning Joe defends Biden & Hunter’s working relationship:@Lemire: “We should put this in context; this is the time when Beau Biden, the president’s other son, was ill & dying & then passed away. So perhaps he wasn’t as attentive to what he should have been”@Eugene_Robinson:… pic.twitter.com/N47jSklbrC
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 1, 2023
Host Jonathan Lemire offered a smorgasbord of explanations for the Biden family’s behavior: It wasn’t “illegal.” House Republicans haven’t proven that Joe Biden “had anything to do with it.” “We should put this in context, this is a time when Beau Biden, the president’s other son was ill and then dying.”
“They’re trying to create a scandal when there’s no evidence that they have one,” Lemire finished, before the Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson jumped in to make a similarly deferential and haphazard case.
“I think it’s pretty clear there is nothing there,” declared the woefully misinformed newsman before doubling down on using the tragic death of Beau Biden to paper over his family’s ethical failings.
Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) has emerged as one of the Biden family’s most vigorous defenders in Congress. Naturally, he also found his way on air Tuesday.
“The critical part here for Congress, and that’s what we have to make sure we understand, is that Joe Biden was doing nothing to benefit his son,” claimed Goldman on Morning Joe, a day after he insisted that the then-vice president would only exchange “niceties” or discuss “the weather” with his Hunter’s business partners.
Goldman’s assertion that Biden avoided impropriety by removing his “vice president of the United States” hat to don his “meteorologist” one was picked up by another Morning Joe guest and congressman.
“Hunter Biden’s business partner [Archer] said, ‘Yeah, he was on some phone calls talking about the weather.’ Talking about the weather! Exchanging pleasantries. You know, is that in the category of presidential family members that are problematic? Billy Carter, Hugh Rodham? Maybe it’s in that category. But it is sure and absolutely not a crime,” argued Rep. Jim Hines (D-CT) before his impressed hosts.
To sum up the arguments of those most willing to debase themselves for the Bidens: It was acceptable for the sitting vice president to assist his son in his influence-peddling campaign in countries where he was serving as the point man for U.S. policy (Ukraine), because his other son was sick, and because the demonstration of access to American power was veiled behind small talk.
Biden should be thankful the contingent at Morning Joe is willing to marshal any argument — no matter how weak — in defense of this behavior, because there are no good ones to make.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
