On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, host Kristen Welker stuck to the Democrat line that there’s no “direct link” between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s indictments. Welker told Sen. Mitt Romney: “House Republicans have signaled that they may vote as early as this week on an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, despite the fact that they haven’t shown, yet, a direct link between Hunter Biden’s business dealings and President Biden.”
Romney replied Hunter “has obviously been a very unsavory person and has had some extremely damaged personal foibles, including a drug habit and so forth. That’s not President Biden. And we’re not going to impeach someone because of the sins of their kids.”
Welker turned to her pundit roundtable and repeated: “Republicans are moving to open an impeachment inquiry into President Biden despite there not being a link yet.” Then she ran the clip where the president lied preposterously about it’s all “lies” that he had “interactions” with Hunter’s clients. Welker didn’t correct the lie, just gave it an A for effort:
WELKER: Kelly, fired up there. We should note those comments were made before Hunter Biden was indicted. What is the strategy to deal with this inside the White House?
KELLY O’DONNELL: It’s painful. It’s personal. They want to put it in that category. They also say that in 2020 Hunter Biden was a fixture of the Republican campaign. And I think they want to talk about voters able to separate the candidate’s son from the candidate. And they think Republicans are trying to use this to diffuse the legal troubles of Donald Trump.
JONATHAN MARTIN: No, find me the Biden White House adviser who’s going to go to the boss and say, “We need a new strategy about your son.”
O’DONNELL: There isn’t one.
MARTIN: They’re not going to have that conversation.
Reporters can be pretty bossy, telling politicians what their strategy should be. But these people are all going to go along with the notion there’s no “direct link” between Joe and Hunter. He can claim there are no “interactions,” and get a “wow, he’s fired up” answer.
Welker first asked Romney about Hunter by throwing the defense-lawyer comments at him: “His lawyer said that if his name was anything other than Biden, the charges would not have been brought. What’s your reaction to that?”
Romney had a tougher answer for that: “Well, if his name were anything other than Biden, he wouldn’t have been able to bilk millions of dollars from foreign entities, so let’s start there. And not only did he take all this money from foreign entities, trading on his father’s name, which is ugly and unsavory, he then didn’t pay taxes on it, according to the prosecutors.”
Romney candidly told NBC he wouldn’t endorse a Republican in the presidential race, since it would be “the kiss of death.” He also openly wished Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) would get into the presidential race. “The Joe I would like to vote for is Joe Manchin,” he said. “There are a couple of Democrats I might think of that would be a better nominee, I think, than President Biden.”