Joe Scarborough was so hell-bent on defending Hunter and Joe Biden, that on Wednesday's Morning Joe, he flagrantly twisted the facts about what Republicans and conservative voices were saying about the pair. Scarborough concluded that the real "witch hunt" is against those poor Bidens.
Said Scarborough:
"I saw [the Way Too Early] Tim Scott clip where he's thanking God for Chuck Grassley. A guy who mumbled, a guy who mumbled on television, yeah, well, when suggesting that there's nothing in the tapes or the documents, he says, well, we don't care whether he did anything wrong or not.
You talk about a witch hunt?! That is like where a guy goes, we're going after him and it doesn't matter whether he did anything wrong or not. And then you've got Comer, where the Wall Street Journal editorial page, says!, a lot of smoke, no fire.
First to Grassley. As seen in the actual clip of his comments on Fox News, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said:
"We asked for the document a month ago. It's been subpoenaed. He ought to respond to a subpoena . . . We aren't interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not. We're responsible for making sure the FBI does its job . . . I'm not going to characterize [the document.] . . . Let's put it this way. There's accusations in it. But it's not for me to make judgments about whether these accusations are accurate or not. It's up to my job to make sure the FBI is doing their job."
In other words, far from Scarborough's misrepresentation that Grassley said that there's no evidence of wrongdoing, but that Republicans will go after Hunter regardless, Grassley's point was the document he was demanding that FBI Director Chris Wray make public does contain accusations, but that Grassley would not prejudge it. That's precisely the opposite of a witch hunt!
And Scarborough's misrepresentation of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board column was even more egregious. Scarborough depicted it as concluding: smoke but no fire.
To the contrary, the editorial indicated that there was a ton of evidence pointing to illicit influence peddling by the Bidens. The headline set the tone: "The Biden Family Business—House report shows how Hunter and relatives profited while Joe was Vice President."
From the editorial [emphasis added]:
- "Hunter Biden and his relatives traded profitably off the Biden name with transactions that suggest the main family business is influence peddling."
- "House Oversight Chair James Comer’s staff report shows in detail that Hunter had extensive dealings with unsavory foreign actors. This yielded millions of dollars for Biden family members via a web of shell companies that would be hard to untangle without subpoena power. Why so much complexity?"
- "Bank records show that more than $10 million was delivered to Biden family members, associates and companies from these foreign entities, and in curious ways."
- "A fair conclusion is that these foreigners were buying influence with a powerful family."
- "The report shows the Biden family profiting from Joe Biden’s political power ... There may not be a smoking gun, but there’s plenty of suspicious smoke worth investigating."
And THIS was what Scarborough points to in order to exculpate the Bidens? When the editorial's conclusion was that there's "plenty of suspicious smoke worth investigating?"
This was nothing less than a fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts by Scarborough. It reveals just how deep he was willing to sink in defense of Democrat political prospects.
Joe Scarborough's claim that the real "witch hunt" is against Hunter and Joe Biden was sponsored in part by Constant Contact, Booking.com, Allstate, and Golden Corral.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC' Morning Joe
6/21/23
6:19 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: The political defense, because Donald Trump seems to have no defense legally, the political defense seems to be the James Carville, look over there, look over there, look at the bird, look at the bird.
And whether it's Hillary Clinton, which of course Donald Trump's Justice Department refused to, to prosecute her for four years in a row because they said there was nothing to prosecute her over. Donald Trump's Justice Department, by the way.
And now it's moved to Hunter Biden. And I saw, I saw on Way Too Early, I saw your Tim Scott clip. And we're going to talk about this a lot more in the next segment. But I saw your Tim Scott clip where he's thanking God for Chuck Grassley. A guy who mumbled, a guy who mumbled on television, yeah, well, when suggesting that there's nothing in the tapes or the documents, he says, well, we don't care whether he did anything wrong or not.
You talk about a witch hunt?! That is like where a guy goes, we're going after him and it doesn't matter whether he did anything wrong or not.
And then you've got Comer, where the Wall Street Journal editorial page, says!, a lot of smoke, no fire.
And that's what -- again, it, it, it, it's one after another after another, these investigations. A lot of smoke, no fire. And, and yet, this is what they're saying, what they're doing in a hope, hopes!, of distracting, distracting!, from a ex-president stealing nuclear secrets.
