The television cameras and reporters were kept outside as a
House committee conducted a second closed door deposition with Hunter
Biden.
It appears so far that Hunter Biden is holding his
own.
He is answering questions. He has not,
we're told, invoked the 5th Amendment.
There is concrete proof through emails that
Joe was using Hunter Biden to make it rain,
but the media says there's nothing to see here.
It's political. This is from the most politically driven media
in the history.
Hunter Biden saying in his deposition,
my father was not sitting next to me.
My father had no awareness of the business that I
was doing.
I take full responsibility for being an absolute ass and
idiot when I sent that message.
If I did send this message,
I was drunk and probably high,
but the president's son ignored the media's questions as he
left the hearing.
Tommy, let's start with the transcript.
Hunter blamed the addiction for an incriminating text that he
says was sent to a different Chinese person with similar
name
to that of a Chinese energy executive.
He said If we put it up on the screen,
oh, I've already read that.
But let me just make the point.
He's talked a lot about his addiction,
his former addiction, and how do you think that comes
across as a story and how average people react to
it?
Listen, the media has been coddling this since the early
days of the whole Hunter Biden saga,
so unfortunately it's working. Unfortunately for Republicans that have been
working very hard to get this across the finish line
and have so much evidence piled on,
piled on, piled on evidence.
But unfortunately the way the media has been able to
frame this is that Joe Biden is just a great
father.
He loves his son. His son struggle with addiction issues.
And we saw that with this testimony because every time
that Hunter Biden was asked a pointed question,
he was able to get out of it by saying,
well, my addiction, maybe I was drunk,
maybe I was high. Now we don't want to poke
fun at anybody with addiction issues,
but this has been very easy for him to get
out of simply by using that as an excuse and
I expect to continue.
The media is eating it up.
Philippe.
The media are also covering the criminal indictment.
Hunter Biden when I my question to you is do
journalists and pundits have sympathy for Hunter Biden at this
point?
I don't think so. I mean I read everything across
the board and it's not like there's a dearth of
coverage on Hunter Biden.
I think because his name is Biden that supersedes anything
else with any media outlet.
Their their interest. But the setting of that tells you
everything.
The Republicans wanted him behind closed doors because they don't
want anyone to see Matt Gaetz saying crazy things like
were you on cocaine as you wrote this?
But then Hunter Biden wanted to be in public,
but Hunter Biden wanted a public hearing and now he's
going to get it.
Hopefully we'll see as Jim Cuomo,
Oversight chairman. They refuse now.
And the reason for that is because they don't want
the Republicans,
don't want for us, the voters to turn on our
television and to see the dynamic of beating up on
the
president's son. It's not going to look good.
And that's different. Different from looking into it,
right? Well, Tommy, both sides have been spinning this obviously,
and if this other televised hearing comes about,
I can just imagine the ratings.
But Jim Calmer says the deposition was successful.
They were able to prove several bits of our evidence.
That's a quote from the congressman.
The question to the mainstream media keep asking is,
where's the proof that Joe Biden got a dime?
Yeah, and that's going to be the difficult part for
Republicans.
And I got to say,
as somebody who does believe,
there's plenty of evidence here,
I think that this has failed optically for Republicans.
And they've done good work.
Obviously, Jim Jordan Comer done great work on this.
But optically, it does make it seem as though they're
beating up on someone with addiction issues.
That's exactly what the media wanted it to look like.
That's how they framed it.
And unfortunately, that's what's coming to fruition.
So I would encourage Republicans,
I know you want to get to the bottom of
this,
but let's focus on the election.
Let's focus on the failed
of Joe Biden. This impeachment inquiry unfortunately,
is falling flat with a lot of viewers and voters.
Tommy and I found common ground.
You were going to endorse everything she say.
Failed out things, Okay, So what?
Comer said after the news broke that
the star witness, the former FBI informant that the committee
was relying on,
told the that he was reliable,
had been indicted for lying about his Biden family corruption
allegations.
What Comer said was he might not even ask the
House to vote on impeachment.
Wants to wind this up.
Is this a sign that
this balloon is deflating? Absolutely.
The balloon was pretty empty to begin with because as
you said,
it's relying on a witness that that has been discredited,
arrested the whole 9 yards.
I think the Republicans are working backwards from assuming guilt,
wanting guilt the same way they did with Hillary Clinton
and Benghazi.
These these hearings and these investigations are not on the
up and up.
They work backwards from guilt.
And what they're doing with Hunter is they're just not
finding it.
They're finding a person that's had a terrible,
you know, couple of decades and a person who's had
person personal things that have bothered him,
that have taken him down,
that must tear his parents apart to no end.
But that's not what Congress does.
Congress has looked into something.
They're not finding it, but they won't let it go.
And Mike Johnson, back to the earlier point,
is not equipped and he's not authorized to let it
go.
Because you have people in that caucus that are not
going to stop the Republican conference,
are going to keep going until they find someone that
says something that lets them beat it to death.
Well, impeachment or not, there is still the Hunter Biden
criminal case.
So he will continue to be in the news.
Good discussion. Tommy Lahren, Philippe Reinus,
thanks so much. Up next.