Whether you're a White House reporter for The Washington Post or a political analyst for MSNBC, the mission is the same: spin furiously for Democratic advantage. On Sunday's Meet the Press, WashPost/MSNBC pundit Ashley Parker performed a furious Triple Axel spin for Joe Biden on their family profiteering in Ukraine. He calls Hunter his "beautiful son," so he's in the clear!
The Hunter Biden story didn't emerge until 56 minutes into the hour-long show, only when raised by Pat McCrory, an MTP regular and the former governor of North Carolina. Chuck Todd brought up a list of Trump rants against disloyal Republicans as very distracting from whatever a winning message might be. Somehow, Chuck left out how Savannah "Roid Rage" Guthrie snarled at Trump for an hour as distracting from his message. C
McCrory replied: "But there have been September and October surprises also. You had the [Bob] Woodward book, which comes out every election time. You had the Melania Trump tapes, which was incredible how someone tape recorded the First Lady. And so he's been on his heels on this and many other issues. But now, Joe Biden, whether you like it or not, is going to have to deal with the Hunter Biden October surprise between now and Election Day. And so I think.... that's going to be a major issue, in addition to the virus."
So Todd turned to Parker to agree with him that this was a desperate gambit with a "questionable hack."
CHUCK TODD: Ashley Parker, the fact that the Trump campaign wants and hopes that this questionable hack, and we don't know, there're a lot of questions surrounding the story, is this their last card they're playing? This is all they've got left?
ASHLEY PARKER: Yeah, potentially. As you said, it's a rerun in many ways of 2016. But the landscape is different. The Hunter Biden stuff, some of it's not verified. Some of it may seem unsavory for Hunter. But it doesn't really attach to his father. And some of the stuff that has come out in the hack actually makes Joe Biden seem like what voters already believe, a decent guy. In a text with his son Hunter, who has struggled with drug addiction, you have Joe Biden saying, "Good morning, my beautiful son." That's not exactly opposition research, especially for Americans who have their own family members struggling with addiction.
CHUCK TODD: No, that's for sure.
What The New York Post has found absolutely "attaches" Joe Biden to Hunter Biden's million-dollar gig with Burisma, because an email lays out that Joe Biden met with a Burisma executive at Hunter's behest. But Parker and Todd want to pretend that's fake. To use a word NBC loves to use with the Trumps, Joe is "complicit" in Hunter's buckraking. And the Post shows he lied about it, when he claimed over and over again that he didn't talk to Hunter about it.
And "voters already believe" Biden is a "decent guy"? Which voters? All voters? Would Parker suggest if Trump was shown to call his sons "beautiful," that you couldn't attach a scandal to him? This is some really aerobic partisan stuff.
