In an interview that aired Tuesday night on CNN, President Joe Biden was actually asked a difficult question by a card-carrying member of the establishment media.
Jake Tapper, who began anchoring “CNN Tonight” Tuesday and will be there through the midterm elections in November, according to Deadline, obviously wanted to launch his month-long tour of duty with a bang, and he did so by airing an interview with the sitting U.S. president.
The interview covered what you’d expect — Putin and Russia, the economy, whatever it is that the Democrats claim to be running on this year — but Tapper also stepped, albeit lightly, into a more personal area that much of the legacy media has been trying to ignore: The troubled life of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
“Our reporting, CNN’s reporting, and The Washington Post reporting suggests that prosecutors think they could — they have enough, to charge your son, Hunter, for tax crimes, and a false statement about a gun purchase.
“Personally and politically, how do you react to that?” Tapper asked.
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“Well, first of all, I’m proud of my son. This is a kid, who got — not a kid, he’s a grown man. And he got hooked on, like many families have had happened, hooked on drugs.
“He’s overcome that. He’s established a new life. He is, I’m confident that he is — what he says, and does, are consistent with what happens. And, for example, he wrote a book about his problems, and was straightforward about it. I’m proud of him.
“He came along and said — by the way, this thing about a gun? I didn’t know anything about it. But turns out that when he made application, to purchase a gun, what happened was he said — I guess, you get asked — I don’t guess. You get asked the question, ‘Are you on drugs? You use drugs?’ He said, ‘No.’ And he wrote about saying ‘No,’ in his book.”
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Tapper agreed that Hunter Biden had, in fact, written about that in his book. (Full disclosure: I haven’t read Hunter Biden’s book and don’t plan to, so I’m just going to take Tapper’s word on this one.)
“So, I have great confidence in my son. I love him. And he’s on the straight and narrow, and he has been, for a couple years now,” Biden concluded. “And I’m just so proud of him.”
CNN conveniently posted a clip of this section of the interview on Twitter, but gluttons for punishment can watch the entire interview here or read the transcript of the entire show here.
President Biden on Tuesday for the first time addressed his son’s exposure to possible criminal charges for allegedly lying on a gun-purchase application, but he said he was proud of Hunter Biden for confronting his struggles with drug addiction https://t.co/NscXr1yMlf pic.twitter.com/nnkefrnIVg
— CNN (@CNN) October 12, 2022
Look: I’m not going to beat up on the president for saying he loves his son and he’s proud of him. I have two sons myself; neither is perfect, and both have made mistakes, including some substance abuse issues. Others in my family have struggled with similar problems. Given how prevalent drug abuse is in this country, you almost certainly have family members fighting the same battles. I have no problem with Joe Biden saying that the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of his son is that he’s proud of him for staying in that fight.
What’s more interesting to me is what the president didn’t say in his response to Tapper’s question.
Remember, Tapper asked Biden to react to the possibility of Hunter Biden facing two separate criminal charges, related to tax fraud and a gun purchase, in two ways: personally and politically.
In response, the president said nothing about what Tapper called “the tax crimes” — what The Western Journal has previously reported as Hunter Biden’s alleged failure to report overseas income to the IRS. Nothing. He skipped right over it.
Why? Well, we can only speculate, but there’s at least a good possibility that it was because he suspects his son is guilty and knows the penalty for tax evasion in this county.
“Any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $100,000 ($500,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution,” according to I.R.C. § 7201.
That fine for individuals, by the way, was raised to $250,000 in 1984.
If it were my son, I wouldn’t have wanted to discuss it either.
The other topic the president avoided was how Hunter Biden being charged criminally could affect the president politically.
There are a lot of ways he could have answered that one, but if he were to be truthful about it, his response would have had to have amounted to something like, “Well, it’s not good.”
Then there’s the question that Tapper didn’t even ask: How much of this did Joe Biden know about when it was happening, and how much was he involved, especially in those overseas transactions?
If you think Joe Biden avoided the question Tapper raised, wait until someone has the grit to put that one to him.
