Washington Week with The Atlantic, public television’s tax-funded weekly political roundtable which they tout as "objective" and "known for its depth, balance, and civil discourse," offered no balance as all the liberal journalists went along 100 percent with the Democrat narrative on the Biden impeachment inquiry officially launched last week.
Friday's panel treated the House Republican initiative with mockery and contempt. Guest host Franklin Foer of The Atlantic magazine -- who recently said Biden's media treatment is too tough -- held up a Democratic House member’s snarky dismissal of the move as a wise summary.
Foer: But let's get to the substance, because this week, Congressman Jamie Raskin said, this isn't a whodunit, it is -- this is a what is it? So, the question is, Steve, what is it?
Steve Inskeep, Co-Host, NPR's Morning Edition: I think it's a fair question. If you look at four other presidential impeachments, you can say in each case that the president of the United States definitely did something, and then you could debate whether it was impeachable or convictable….In each case, there was an act by a sitting president that was at the center of the debate. In this case, it's an impeachment inquiry to find out if Joe Biden may have done something while he was not president….
Inskeep somehow skipped the significant fact that Joe Biden was Vice President from 2009-2017, part of the presidential team.
ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, aka the “three-time anti-Trump author,” as we know him at NewsBusters, was blunt in his mockery.
Karl: Well, first of all, because I think that there's a question of what's actually there, and there is nothing there.
Foer: It's kind of the Seinfeld of impeachment votes, an impeachment vote about nothing?
Karl: What are they doing? They've identified that Hunter Biden did some shady things. He certainly profited off his name. He got money. He got foreign money for business dealings. He did a lot of questionable things, and he was close to his father. And he did have dinner with his father at Cafe Milano at one point.
Foer (sarcasm): High crime and misdemeanor, that.
[Laughter]
Karl: But, I mean, I just don't see it going anywhere….
Karl and Foer are intentionally obscuring the point that Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden's foreign clients at that restaurant -- something Joe Biden denies, that he had no such "interactions."
Later, Karl took the sentimental approach, giving Hunter Biden perverse credibility for his embarrassingly graphic autobiography.
Karl: ….[President Biden] loves his son. He's close with his son. They talk all the time now, as you might expect. Look, Hunter -- it's such a tragic case. If you read Hunter Biden's very forthcoming biography, autobiography, that he wrote, really a memoir of his addiction that came out just months after Biden became president, it goes into incredibly lurid detail about his descent into addiction. And, I mean, this is a guy who came close to dying. In some ways, it's amazing that he survived it. And, you know, his father will do anything to stop from losing another son.
Karl’s sympathy rounds continued, sounding passionate.
Karl: And Hunter Biden wants to fight back against this, he believes that he has been, he and the people around him believe that he has been a victim of a political, you know, hit job. He acknowledges he's made all these mistakes. He acknowledged what you heard him acknowledge there in terms of his taxes. He was ready to plead guilty in a plea deal. Now that that's off, he wants to fight back and wants to fight back against the people who he believes, with very good reason, are going after him because the real target is his father….
This sentimental pro-Biden segment has been brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular, and taxpayers like you.
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS Washington Week with The Atlantic
12/15/23
8:03:17 p.m. (ET)
Host Franklin Foer: Asma, I wanted to start with impeachment. Why now? What's the political imperative driving this forward?
Asma Khalid, White House Correspondent, NPR: I mean, the why now is an excellent question, in part because Republicans, at least some Republicans in Congress, had been talking and investigating impeachment charges for a long time. Ultimately, I think what they were looking for was greater legitimacy. There were concerns from the White House that you don't have an official impeachment inquiry. Now, you're seeing House Republicans say, well, we have the official legitimacy to do this.
But I also think that there is a political calculation here that Republicans want to muddy the waters. On the other side, they have a man who is most likely to be their nominee in Donald Trump, who is facing multiple charges. And I will say that there has long been a desire from some Republicans to just muddy the waters, make things confusing for voters. We've had polling, other outlets have had polling that suggest it is working. And a percentage of the population does think, in fact, some of our polling at NPR showed a majority of the electorate surveyed felt that President Biden had done something unethical in relation to his son's behavior. Largely, that's along partisan lines, but not exclusively.
Foer: But let's get to the substance, because this week, Congressman Jamie Raskin said, this isn't a who done it, it is - this is a what is it? So, the question is, Steve, what is it?
Steve Inskeep, Co-Host, NPR's Morning Edition: I think it's a fair question. If you look at four other presidential impeachments, you can say in each case that the president of the United States definitely did something, and then you could debate whether it was impeachable or convictable. Andrew Johnson fired a cabinet member in a way that he wasn’t supposed to, supposedly. Bill Clinton lied under oath. Donald Trump had the perfect phone call to Ukraine, as he called it, and then, of course, January 6th, the fourth impeachment. In each case, there was an act by a sitting president that was at the center of the debate.
In this case, it's an impeachment inquiry to find out if Joe Biden may have done something while he was not president. There's not nothing there, because Hunter Biden and Biden's brother, James, and other people around Biden have been said to cash in on his name. And they certainly have had a lot of business dealings, some of which have gone wrong or been suspicious in some way, but Republicans have yet to connect it to the president.
And when you go on the Oversight Committee's website, and they put a timeline there, which goes all the way to 2023, but there are no acts by Biden during his presidency in their own timeline.
Jonathan Karl, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News: I mean, the astounding thing is they got every single Republican to vote to launch this inquiry. Now, look, he's not going to be impeached. I really don't see that happening with this narrow a margin. There are enough Republicans who have said that they're doing this simply to give the Congress the tools they need to investigate, to put some muscle behind the subpoena power, to allow them to investigate, which is a strange bar for an impeachment inquiry.
As Steve points out, this is not in keeping with how impeachment has been used, but they got every single Republicans, including those, and there are a handful of them who are on the record saying, look, I don't see anything.
Franklin Foer: But just keep going with that, because everybody thought a month ago or two months ago that they would struggle to bring along these Biden district Republicans, and yet they've gone along with this. Why do you think that they won't ultimately go along with an impeachment vote?
Jonathan Karl: Well, first of all, because I think that there's a question of what's actually there, and there is nothing there.
Franklin Foer: It's kind of the Seinfeld of impeachment votes, impeachment vote about nothing.
Jonathan Karl: What are they doing? They've identified that Hunter Biden did some shady things. He certainly profited off his name. He got money. He got foreign money for business dealings. He did a lot of questionable things, and he was close to his father. And he did have dinner with his father at Cafe Milano at one point.
Franklin Foer: High crime and misdemeanor, that.
Jonathan Karl: But, I mean, I just don't see it going anywhere. And I think it -- look, Trump has been pushing for this from the beginning. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene is close to Trump as anybody in Congress, filed the first impeachment resolution the day that Biden got sworn in as president. And Troy Nehls and other Republicans made the point, we really need to do this so that we can show that it's not just Donald Trump who was impeached. I mean, it's nakedly political here.
Franklin Foer: Yes, I'm old enough to remember the Clinton impeachment. I'm guessing some of you are too. And that felt like an event. That was something that was extraordinary. It felt historic. And now impeachment is -- they're like the cherry blossoms. They're just part of the Washington --
Asma Khalid: Every season.
Franklin Foer: Yes, exactly.
Jonathan Karl: Yes. I mean, you remember they brought the Starr report to the steps of the House, unloaded all the boxes of evidence, and then the impeachment inquiry started. I mean, it was a big deal. This is --
Steve Inskeep: There's still time. They'll work on it. They'll work on it. They'll work on it.
Franklin Foer: But what does it mean as a means of constitutional redress that impeachment is just part of this ritual of trying to embarrass your political opponents? Does that mean that it's just been defanged as a way of curbing presidential power?
Steve Inskeep: Well, it wasn't a very easy tool to use to begin with. We are in a strange environment where it is hard to see -- I mean, I don't understand how the tool would work at all. And it hasn't been used to remove a president. It's not about to be used to remove a president, and I think you're right on these terms, no.
Jonathan Karl: I mean, we hit a real high watermark with the second Trump impeachment, the trial in the Senate, where you actually had seven members of the president's party vote to impeach him. It was only the second time that you had seen a member of the president's party vote to convict in a Senate trial. The first time was Trump's first impeachment. That was just one vote, though.
Steve Inskeep: Mitch McConnell famously said impeachment is a political process and the conviction, the trial is a political question, not a legal question, and that has played out at least in the way that people have cast their votes.
Franklin Foer: So, one of the central characters in this saga, Hunter Biden, meandered onto Capitol Hill this week. And since he doesn't make very many public appearances, it's worth listening to what he had to say.
Hunter Biden: There's no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen.
Franklin Foer: Asma, what do you think President Biden is thinking when he watches a clip like that?
Asma Khalid: I have absolutely no clue. But what I will say is that the White House has been very eager to never touch any questions as they relate to Hunter Biden, whether they were about Hunter Biden's artwork, whether they're now about this, any questions, they don't.
What I will also say, though, is that they often routinely tell us in the White House is that, you know, the president loves his son very much. This is a man who has long struggled with addiction, and, look, it's his only surviving son.
And so I think many of us would say there's this constant tussle between what you emotionally want to do for your child. That being said, this is a different dynamic and that this is the president of the United States and anything his son does is going to get a lot of attention.
Jonathan Karl: And the White House has kind of, they have been very careful not to really say anything, but for a while they were saying that Joe Biden had no knowledge of his president's business dealings. And then well-known now, he wasn't involved in his president's dealings.
I mean, he clearly had knowledge. He loves his son. He's close with his son. They talk all the time now, as you might expect. Look, Hunter -- it's such a tragic case. If you read Hunter Biden's very forthcoming biography, autobiography, that he wrote, really a memoir of his addiction that came out just months after Biden became president, it goes into incredibly lurid detail about his descent into addiction.
And, I mean, this is a guy who came close to dying. In some ways, it's amazing that he survived it. And, you know, his father will do anything to stop him losing another son.
Franklin Foer: There's so much scar tissue, there's so much guilt there, and I'm sure it complicates the way that they, the White House, more specifically the president, deals with this Hunter Biden thing, which just continues to loom over things.
Steve Inskeep: Well, it is a strange thing to reflect that the most recent revelation by the Oversight Committee appears to have been payments between father and son, because Joe Biden, prior to being president, helped him make car payments and then was being repaid by Hunter. So, where did he get the money?
But this is a kind of tragic example of what you're saying. This is a difficult family relationship with a guy who had a very difficult time, as opposed to something the president did as president.
Asma Khalid: I will say, though, as tragic as it is, I think from really like an emotional family perspective, it is nonetheless a political liability, right? I mean, the president doesn't want to be discussing his son. He doesn't want any of this. No Democrat that I've spoken to really wants to see this play out ahead as we move into the final election.
Franklin Foer: And you read these reports in Politico and other places that the White House would like to take a different approach than the one that Hunter Biden is taking, but the president has an exceedingly hard time making that case, and he doesn't really want to hear that case.
Jonathan Karl: And Hunter Biden wants to fight back against this, he believes that he has been, he and the people around him believe that he has been a victim of a political, you know, hit job. He acknowledges he's made all these mistakes. He acknowledged what you heard him acknowledge there in terms of his taxes. He was ready to plead guilty, you know, in a plea deal. Now, that that's off, he wants to fight back and wants to fight back against the people who he believes, with very good reason, are going after him because the real target is his father.
That said, he is now facing felony charges on his failure to pay taxes, felony charges that will -- you know, we will see play out amidst the presidential campaign just as we're going to see, you know, felony charges against Donald Trump.
Franklin Foer: Is there anything they can do to diffuse this? Because as Asma says, it's stuck, that there --
Asma Khalid: It’s muddying the waters. And one thing I will say is that while it was certainly, and Hunter says, right, and this is -- you hear from a lot of Democrats, is that it's being put forward to sort of poison the atmosphere and go after the president.
I will also say that more than once, on two different occasions, I have met younger voters of color who specifically cited to me Hunter's situation in saying that they felt like he was not being treated as fairly as some other. I mean, one young woman I met at the NAACP convention over the summer said there are so many young black men in jail, why should he get a pardon? Why should he get a pass? Which I think is an interesting observation of how some of this is percolating down even into fragments of the Democratic Party.
Jonathan Karl: I mean, it's really interesting, because the talking point from Biden's allies, from Hunter Biden's allies is, if his name weren't Biden, he wouldn't be prosecuted for this. He's being prosecuted for failure to pay taxes, taxes that he ultimately paid with interest plus penalties.
So that's a good point. That's not usually charged. Then, again, he wouldn't have been making millions of dollars in these foreign ventures if his name wasn't Biden either.
