Kate Bedingfield, Joe Biden’s communications director, scolded CNN host Alisyn Camerota for asking about the former vice president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his business dealings in Ukraine.
“The White House said in 2014 that there was no issue with Hunter having that job,” Bedingfield said Monday on CNN after Camerota asked if Biden “had any regret” about his son working for a business in Ukraine. “I think that asking this question is exactly, Alisyn, what Donald Trump wants, right? There’s no evidence as you stipulated at the top, which is important. There’s no evidence that he did anything wrong, and yet, he still hopes that you guys will ask questions like that, that you will try to insinuate there was an optical issue, that there was some kind of, you know, some kind of issue there that wasn’t there.”
She added, “This is exactly the playbook he ran in 2016, we’re not going to let him do it this time.”
The Biden campaign has been aggressive in targeting the media in recent weeks in hopes to keep outlets in line with the campaign’s narrative on Ukraine. Last week, Bedingfield scolded MSNBC host Katy Tur for asking whether she thought the president’s 2016 “I’m rubber and you’re glue strategy” would work in 2020 on Biden.
On Sunday, Bedingfield and Biden adviser Anita Dunn sent a letter to ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC begging them to stop booking Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in order to stop him from talking about Ukraine.
“While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your airtime, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded, and desperate lies into the national conversation,” the letter stated.
Republicans and some Democrats have said it was unethical for the child of a sitting vice president to be on the board of a company doing international business.
