Joe Biden
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden arrives for a campaign event, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2020, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
A couple of weeks ago, “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie did the unthinkable for an NBC anchor by asking a pointed question to Joe Biden in which she noted the “irony” about how the impeachment process against Trump that Biden pushed for “has ensured that everyone knows about Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine.”
A visibly agitated Biden responded by saying that “it’s a good thing that no one’s found anything wrong with his dealing with Ukraine except they say it sets a bad image.” It was a weak answer, followed up with the struggling 2020 Democratic presidential candidate acknowledging that both he and his son have admitted it was not a good look.
Unfortunately for Biden, even his allies in the mainstream media have caught on to the fact as to how his call for Trump’s impeachment back in October likely helped set the stage for his eventual losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, in part thanks to the fact that the impeachment inquiry kept the issue of Joe and Hunter Biden’s Ukraine dealings front and center in the eyes of Democratic primary voters.
It was this thought that fellow NBC anchor Chuck Todd likely had in mind when he questioned Biden on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” about the very same issue.
Before Todd asked him about it, though, he did a hefty amount of buttering up the former veep, trying empathize with Biden over what Todd described as “the hits on your family” from President Trump and Republicans in Congress. Todd shook his head as Biden answered as though he agreed with what he was saying.
An emotional Todd then stated with fist raised that he “can only imagine the anger” Biden feels towards Trump “individually”, asserting what Trump was doing was a “cruelty … to a father and son like this.” It was as though Todd believed that Hunter Biden sitting on the Burisma Holdings board of directors, making hundreds of thousands of dollars for five years as his father the vice president had a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating alleged corruption at Burisma at the same time should be off limits from political discussions.
But a few minutes after noting he was “impressed” that Biden had not lost his temper over the issue (even though he has), Todd went for the jugular:
CHUCK TODD:Have you thought about the fact that the president’s campaign against you and your son might have been effective? I mean, that it might have cost you Iowa? Might have cost you New Hampshire? Has that crossed your mind?
JOE BIDEN:It has, but you know, I can’t, I can’t focus on that, Chuck. I’ve got to focus on the future. I’ve got to focus on how do we, how do we end this era of — I mean how do we literally, I wrote about it, restore the soul of this country?
I’ve set the video to start where Todd asks the question about the effectiveness of Trump’s attacks on Joe and Hunter Biden, which you can watch below:
The problem for Biden is that it’s a legitimate question. The issue Biden pushed for Trump’s impeachment on was kept in the spotlight for months. In addition to that, Biden didn’t count on Trump campaigning on impeachment and turning the Ukraine issue to his advantage.
There are many issues that have caused Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to falter. Burisma happens to be one of them. He has only himself to blame for how it backfired on him.
