(LifeSiteNews) — NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd, in a recent viral interview clip that has more than 818,000 views, blamed President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden for the 2024 election results, saying the president should have never run given the political baggage their troubled son Hunter Biden carried.
While discussing Biden’s controversial decision to pardon Hunter during an interview with independent journalist Chris Cillizza, Todd called the Bidens’ decision to run in the 2020 presidential race while Hunter was dealing with a serious drug addiction “selfish.” This is a shift for Todd, who has largely praised Biden since the start of his presidency.
Todd told Cillizza during the interview that Biden “needs therapy” because he believes the president has not processed his other son, Beau Biden’s death, or Hunter’s drug addiction, and so was “emotionally incapable of being president of the United States,” and shouldn’t have run to begin with.
Todd then dived into Hunter’s trial.
“I followed the Hunter Biden trial very closely; I read every transcript, all the testimony, all that was made public. You want to get angry … you read the Hallie Biden transcript, and that’s Beau’s (Biden’s) widow. And, essentially, he turned her into a crack addict,” Todd told Cillizza.
The analyst then dug into the Bidens for “selfishly” being more concerned with entering the 2020 race than their son’s well-being.
“And this was all happening in 2017-2018, and Joe and Jill Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided to run for president. 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 that it’s in now,” Todd said.
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 White House announced earlier this week that Biden had granted Hunter a “full and unconditional” pardon for all crimes he has or may have committed from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024, after repeatedly promising not to intervene in his son’s legal battles.
Earlier this year, Hunter was convicted on multiple felony counts of tax evasion and illegally purchasing a gun while under the influence of drugs. The case was dismissed after the pardon just a week before sentencing was scheduled to take place.
In the final months before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post released a series of bombshell reports about a laptop belonging to Hunter that was delivered to and abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop and contained scores of emails and texts detailing the Biden family’s international business activities, which exploited Joe’s political office by offering access to the highest levels of the federal government and the various worldwide connections made through that office.
The story was initially maligned as “disinformation,” including by Todd’s NBC News, but eventually acknowledged as real long after Biden was safely elected.
Todd has been a staunch supporter of Biden, touting the outgoing president’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine War, defending his COVID vaccine push, and praising his “full-throated defense of democracy” after his speech commemorating the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6.
However, the reporter began to shift his tone on Biden earlier this year, questioning whether the Democratic Party was choosing “party over country” by initially standing with Biden after his disastrous debate performance and suggesting “it’s impossible for Biden to stay in (the race)” just days before Biden officially ended his re-election campaign.
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