Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top adviser pointed to his forceful dismissal of a question from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie as evidence that he’s willing to fight against accusations of corruption from the media and President Trump.
“What you saw it in that clip is Vice President Biden. Yeah, people say they want to see him fight. Well, he’s not going to back down, and he’s going to say the truth. And the truth is, no one said what Savannah Guthrie asserted in that interview,” said Symone Sanders, a senior official to Biden’s campaign.
During an interview that aired Monday morning on the Today show, Guthrie asked Biden if it is plausible that his son Hunter Biden was hired by an oil and gas company in Ukraine despite having no relevant experience because company leadership wanted access to President Barack Obama’s administration.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Biden shot back. “You’re saying things; you do not know what you’re talking about. No one said that. Who said that?”
President Trump, during a July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine, asked about Hunter Biden’s stint with Burisma and pressured the Ukrainian leader reportedly to order investigations into him and his father. That pressure campaign, waged by Trump and his associates, resulted in his impeachment by the House on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“And we’d also like to remind folks, and we’ve been aggressive about this, and we’re going to continue to be. That impeachment, Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, the fact that he has been impeached, the fact that his presidency seemingly hangs in the balance, is about his conduct and not Vice President Biden’s,” Sanders said.
The president’s defenders have circulated footage of Biden bragging about ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor who was seeking to end corruption in the country while his son was on the board of Burisma. In an interview last year, Hunter Biden, 49, said he regretted taking the job, which paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
“In retrospect, look, I think that it was poor judgment on my part,” he said “I did nothing wrong at all. However, was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is a swamp in many ways? Yeah. And, so, I take full responsibility for that.”
The Biden corruption narrative, the campaign argued, is a red herring to distract general election voters from Trump’s unfitness for office.
“The question actually out there right now is, did Donald Trump do his job as the United States president?” Sanders said. “Did he hold up his oath of office? And the United States House of Representatives has said he hasn’t. So, this again is about Donald Trump’s conduct, not about — this isn’t about Vice President Biden or Hunter Biden, or anyone else, this is about Donald Trump, and we are going to continue to make sure that whenever this comes up, that folks are asking the right questions and having the right conversation.”
