Biden Snaps at Reporter, Falsely Claims Wall Street Journal Disproved Email Controversy
Americans got a glimpse this weekend at just why the Democratic presidential campaign has kept Joe Biden in the basement.
And it was a bad one.
Following the Democratic nominee’s ramshackle debate performance Thursday, when President Donald Trump needled him repeatedly about the burgeoning scandal around his son Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings, a news reporter started to ask Biden a question about it directly.
And Biden snapped.
Interviewer: “Questions and controversy continue today about Hunter Biden, your son-“
Biden: “There is no controversy about my son. That’s a hell of a lie. That’s a flat lie because the president has nothing to run on… it’s classic Trump.” pic.twitter.com/MQQGvddrHO
— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) October 24, 2020
As Breitbart reported, the question came from Andy Mehalshick, a reporter for WYOU-TV in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“Questions and controversy continue today about Hunter Biden, your son,” Mehalshick began.
“Hunter,” “Biden” and “controversy” are clearly three words the former vice president dislikes hearing in the same sentence. He didn’t let Mehalshick get any further before leaping in to cut him off with a string of attacks on Trump and twisting of the truth.
[firefly_poll]
“There is no controversy about my son,” Biden said, ignoring the reality of a laptop computer that was apparently once owned by his son that has been making headlines in the more honest news outlets of the country.
“It’s a flat lie because the president has nothing else to run on. If you noticed, while the American people are talking about what’s happening to their families, he has no plan and at the debate, he has no plan,” Biden said.
“Everything from The Wall Street Journal, every other major news outlet has said what he’s saying is simply not true about my son, but it’s classic Trump,” responded Biden.
Actually, it was Biden speaking the “flat lie” – claiming that there is no “controversy” when there plainly is one.
And it was Biden lying by implication when he claimed that The Wall Street Journal had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
What he was apparently referring to was a Friday report in The Journal (subscription required) about a news conference held by a former Hunter Biden business associate.
At the Thursday news conference, according to The Journal, former Hunter Biden partner Anthony Bobulinski “said he took part in a meeting with Hunter, Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s brother James Biden in Los Angeles in 2017 when they discussed ‘the Biden family business plans with the Chinese, of which [Joe Biden] was plainly familiar at least at a high level.’”
That’s an explosive revelation by any measure, especially in light of emails recovered from the laptop. One email, discussing a business venture between the Bidens and the now-bankrupt Chinese energy giant CEFC China Energy Co., is particularly relevant. In dividing up the ownership of the company, it includes the line “10 held by H for the big guy?”
The “H” is for Hunter Biden, Bobulinski said, according to The Journal. The “big guy” was a reference to Joe Biden, Bobulinski said.
So, if the point of Joe Biden’s waspish response to his hometown reporter was to claim that The Wall Street Journal had found no reason to suspect misbehavior on his part, the paper’s report was at best ambivalent.
The key sentence was: “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden.” (Emphasis added.)
Of course, searchable corporate records would “show no role for Joe Biden” — there’s too much chance they might end up incriminating someone some day. According to the email, Hunter was holding the relevant percentage – keeping the “big guy” a suitable distance away. (It’s how all great crime families are organized.)
Some Wall Street Journal editors were very kind to the Biden campaign by putting that bit of irrelevancy into the headline — more evidence that even The Journal has become increasingly identical to its more obviously liberal counterparts over the Trump years, outside of its consistently admirable editorial section.
But it still can’t obscure reality completely.
No serious person would consider Biden’s answer remotely satisfactory.
First, Biden denied there was any controversy around his son – a man with a well-documented drug problem and a well-documented history of holding incredibly well-paying jobs with no qualification other than being named, among other things.
No controversy around Hunter? The man is nothing but controversy — it’s his natural habitat.
Second, sheer dint of repetition has robbed Biden’s attacks against Trump of much of their sting. (Repetition might be all Biden is mentally capable of at this point.)
Yes, the American people know that country has been struck by a deadly pandemic – as has the world. To claim that Trump has “no plan” for dealing with it is to deny reality.
Trump is dealing with it. He’s dealt with it since February and before. And while there has been a regrettable loss of life, there is literally no way of arguing that anything Joe Biden or any other Democrat could have or would have done that would have changed that.
Trump is also preparing to lead the country in restoring its pre-pandemic economy, the one that humiliated Democratic governments of the past by overturning their regulations and slashing their taxes to build an economy that directly benefited the very groups — particularly black Americans — that Democrats claim to care about. Biden offers only a “bleak winter” and a national mask mandate.
Finally, Biden’s statement included the implicit acknowledgment that the mainstream media and Big Tech have been running cover for him.
Since the New York Post reminded the country of what journalism looked like on Oct. 15 when it broke the Hunter laptop story, the “major” news outlets Biden referred to have spent their time either diligently ignoring a story the American people have a right to know, or attacking the messenger.
(The social media giants of Facebook and Twitter showed their totalitarian hand early, with Facebook limiting distribution of the story and Twitter freezing the New York Post’s account almost immediately after the first report appeared. It remained frozen Monday.)
No American with any sense is fooled by the mainstream media’s openly subservient coverage of the Democratic candidate. Even liberals can see it for what it is, they’re just happy it’s on their side (like a football player with a hometown referee.)
The real lesson from Biden’s weekend outburst was an idea of what the septuagenarian would look like if he were ever faced with one-tenth the hostility Trump faces from the media every day.
A cadaverous shell of his former self, Biden isn’t a man fit to face even mild questions from the media, which means he’s nowhere near the man to face down the hard cases of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran with anything like the strength the American people require of their president.
His outburst on Saturday – a combination of lies, half-truths and a wandering kind of venomous gossip masquerading as campaign logic – is a perfect of example of what Americans need to see more of before the Nov. 3 election.
It’s no wonder the Democratic presidential campaign keeps Biden in a basement.
It’s where he belongs. And when this election is decided with another four years of a pro-America, pro-liberty and pro-job growth Trump administration, let’s hope Biden stays there.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
