NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd tore into President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden after the president issued a pardon on Sunday to their son, Hunter Biden, who was facing possible prison time over gun and tax crimes.
In a discussion with journalist Chris Cillizza, Todd said he knew “100%” the pardon was going to happen and insisted President Biden “needs therapy” because he has “not processed” the death of his older son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who passed away of brain cancer at the age of 46 in 2015.
President Biden has an “issue” with Hunter Biden in which he blames himself for Hunter Biden’s struggles over the years, including drug addiction, “second-guesses everything” with raising Hunter compared to how he raised Beau, Todd contended.
Todd also reportedly said he believed that Biden was never going to stand for the possible “humiliation” that President-elect Donald Trump would be the one to pardon Hunter Biden.
I talk to @chucktodd every Monday for my newsletter.
It’s always a good conversation.
But, I thought Chuck NAILED it today on why the Hunter Biden trial really mattered when thinking about the Biden presidency and the pardon.
Watch the whole thing at the link in my bio. pic.twitter.com/FzBUBKM1cI
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) December 3, 2024
The conversation then turned to the summer, when a jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden on three felony counts of lying on paperwork for a revolver and owning the firearm while being a drug addict in 2018. Todd mentioned Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Biden. After Beau’s death, she started a romantic relationship with Hunter. Her public disposal of Hunter’s gun led to the firearm case against him.
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“I followed the Hunter Biden trial very closely. I read every transcript, all the testimony, because all that was made public. … You want to get angry? Just as somebody in — just all these mixed emotions,” Todd said.
“You read the Hallie Biden transcript, and that’s Beau’s widow. And essentially, [Hunter] turned her into a crack addict. And this was all happening in 2017 and 2018. And Joe and Jill Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided to run for president,” Todd continued. “When you talk about the word selfish … their decision to run for president put the entire Democratic Party and the United States of America in the position it’s in now.”
Cillizza, a former CNN editor at large who now has a newsletter called “So What?” on Substack, posted a clip of the discussion to X on Monday. Some of those who commented on the post noted how Todd appeared to be more defensive of the Bidens in the past.
Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Chuck Ross pointed out an interview with Sen. Ron Johnson (R‑WI) on NBC’s “Meet The Press” early last year in which Todd “went to the mat” for Hunter Biden when the first son was under investigation but had not yet been charged with any crimes.
“Senator, do you have a crime that you think Hunter Biden committed because I’ve yet to see anybody explain. It is not a crime to make money off of your last name,” Todd said at one point. At another, he said, “Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it’s part of your identity.”