Joe Biden is not accustomed to receiving anything but softball questions from reporters on the campaign trail, or anywhere, really. As he was about to board a private jet after a campaign stop in Michigan Friday night, a CBS reporter asked about his son’s business dealings and Biden lost his temper.
Bo Erickson, a 2020 campaign reporter covering Joe Biden’s campaign for CBS, dared to do what no other reporter has done. He asked Biden about a story that is dominating the news – N.Y. Post’s story about his son Hunter’s business dealings. Biden snapped at Erickson in response. He calls the story a “smear campaign”, which is a standard political response from a candidate but he also made it a personal attack on Erickson. Biden said he expected that kind of question from him. “Those are the questions you always ask.”
I asked Joe Biden: What is your response to the NYPost story about your son, sir?
He called it a “smear campaign” and then went after me. “I know you’d ask it. I have no response, it’s another smear campaign, right up your alley, those are the questions you always ask.” pic.twitter.com/Eo6VD4TqxD
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) October 17, 2020
The personal attack on a CBS reporter is how Biden normally treats FNC’s reporter Peter Doocy. Biden regularly snarls at Doocy’s questions. Status Quo Joe just doesn’t like to be held accountable for his actions, especially if the story brings in a member of his family. His son Hunter’s allegedly corrupt business practices of making big money off of his father’s name and career are the focus of an October surprise story. This story, if it proves to be true, is particularly damning because it involves Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine. We all remember that Ukraine figured into the impeachment circus conducted by House Democrats earlier this year.
The Biden 2020 presidential campaign previously responded to the Post story on Wednesday, saying the former vice president “carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” and that “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”
The Post obtained a 2015 email indicating that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, thanked Hunter Biden for “giving an opportunity” to meet his father, who was then serving as vice president under Barack Obama.
The question to Biden was a legitimate one and a necessary one. If Biden’s son is selling access to his father, American voters have a right to know. Hunter’s involvement in Ukraine (and China) began during his father’s time in the White House and he traveled on Air Force Two with his father to both countries.
For two solid days, no reporter asked Joe Biden about the story. Social media acted quickly to stop users from sharing the story as it broke. George Stephanopoulos didn’t bother to ask about it during a town hall broadcast during prime time hours on Thursday night. No one in the audience asked about it. NewsBusters took a look at broadcast television coverage of the story and found that less than 10 minutes of coverage was given to the story in the first 92 hours.
For Wednesday, October 14 and Thursday, October 15 MRC analysts looked at the ABC, CBS, NBC evening and morning shows, plus ABC’s and NBC’s townhall events with Joe Biden and President Trump, as well as CNN and MSNBC’s coverage (6am through midnight ET). Out of a total of 92 hours of news programming, there was less than 10 minutes (9 minutes, 47 seconds) spent on the latest scandal involving Joe Biden’s son, or less than 0.2% of the available airtime.
ABC and CNN spent ZERO seconds on Hunter Biden.
NBC spent just 45 seconds on Hunter’s emails. CBS led the broadcast networks with still a meager four minutes, 28 seconds.
MSNBC spent the most amount of time on the latest Biden family scandal coming in with a still insignificant four minutes, 34 seconds of coverage during a 36-hour period.
Fair and balanced, right? When Trump’s tax returns were illegally gotten and reported on, the story made all the news shows and continues to be a topic of questioning for Trump, including during his own town hall Thursday with Savannah Guthrie on NBC. There was not a bit of concern from the social media giants about the tax return story. Trump’s treatment is the opposite of the treatment given to Joe Biden. Biden is protected at all costs because everyone on the left assumes he will win the election. No one in the media (Biden’s base supporters) wants to do anything to stop him from being the next president. Our overlords in social media went too far this time in stacking the deck against Trump, though. Now they find themselves on the wrong side of Congress.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want to be clear that this story is eligible to be fact-checked by Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone tweeted Wednesday. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
Twitter claimed in a statement that it had taken action against the article in keeping with the company’s “Hacked Materials Policy” and prevented users from sharing the report. The company rolled back its overzealous crackdown amid backlash, which included a mea culpa from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Biden is an arrogant swamp creature who is offended when he is expected to answer for his (alleged) corrupt behavior. He’s gotten away with it for almost 50 years so why change now? He’s been allowed to campaign and fundraise from his basement without any probing questions from the press. He rarely takes questions during press conferences or when he delivers speeches. He is being allowed to just cruise into winning back the White House if he wins in November without any reporter laying a glove on him.
After Bo Erickson posted his exchange with Biden on Twitter, it was notable that other members of the press remained silent. None of them came forward to support Erickson literally doing his job. Two CBS colleagues did tweet support, though.
Biden adopts Trump playbook – attacking pool reporter @BoKnowsNews for asking about Hunter Biden story which has been a focus of President Trump’s campaign over past few days. Fine to attack the story, but why personally insult Bo? https://t.co/PgOsLgu2DT
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) October 17, 2020
It’s our job as journalists to ask questions of people in power or who want to be in power — whether they like the questions or not.
Bo did his job tonight. And Bo did his job well. https://t.co/VJBXavcqc0
— Ed O’Keefe (@edokeefe) October 17, 2020
Biden doesn’t like the story coming out but his campaign refuses to deny Biden’s likelihood of having “informal interaction” with Pozharskyi. Does anyone think an official meeting would be on Biden’s calendar to discuss enriching his family? I would think that kind of deal is done during “informal interaction”.
Although the Biden campaign has denied that the former VP ever met Pozharskyi officially, it has not denied ever meeting the man.
“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement, Politico reported Wednesday.
“Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule,” Politico added.
Senior Biden advisers, including Michael Carpenter and Amos Hochstein, who served the former VP at the time of the meeting, also said that Biden might have met the Burisma executive in an unofficial capacity.
Millions of Americans have already voted. Biden needs to be held accountable sooner rather than later.