The tire fire inside a dumpster fire that is CNN NewsNight showed within minutes Monday of its nearly 20-minute opening block why it’s an insult to civil discourse as, led by the smarmy host Abby Phillip, conservatives Scott Jennings and former Congressman Scott Taylor (R-VA) were shouted down for calling out the lies and hypocrisy of President Biden for pardoning son Hunter.
Jennings drew the ire of the other panelists — Phillip, Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), and leftist commentator Leigh McGowan — for his usual crime of sharing facts (click “expand”):
JENNINGS: NBC News reported that the President and his top aides met this summer and decided two things, that they were going to keep this option open, that they were going to publicly maintain that they would not pardon Hunter Biden through statements from Joe Biden and statements from the White House press secretary. They had a meeting, they coordinated the lie, I guess for political purposes, and now that he’s leaving office, he is going back on what he told the American people. This isn’t simply changing your mind. This is just fulfilling what you always intended to do. No Republican is shocked that he is doing this. What I am shocked at is the duplicity of the president of the United States and his top aides to come together and form this lie and stick to it this entire time. We all knew it was ridiculous and now the American people are seeing what a disgrace he really is.
PHILLIP: Scott!
MCGOWAN: I think it’s incredibly rich to have you say that people got together and they were duplicitous —
JENNINGS: I didn’t say it!
MCGOWAN: — and they created a lie.
JENNINGS: NBC News said it. NBC News said it.
MCGOWAN: I’m saying they created a lie because —
JENNINGS: NBC News.
MCGOWAN: — honestly, what the other side has been saying for years, what — what you guys ran on for president is — was multiple lies. I mean, if — Eric Holder said it right, I think, he said if Hunter’s name was Joe Smith, this case would probably have never even gone to trial — right — that it was always a political witch hunt, and it was always a political witch hunt.
JENNINGS: Who’s Justice Department brought the case?
MCGOWAN: And it was always —
PHILLIP: But wasn’t it — to Scott’s point, I mean, wasn’t it a lie? I mean, you can defend it, but wasn’t it a lie that he was not going to pardon his son?
MCGOWAN: No. I believe the circumstances have changed.
FORMER CONGRESSMAN SCOTT TAYLOR (R-VA): What circumstances have changed?
McGowan then waged this cockamamie drivel that the President genuinely changed his mind about not pardoning his son because “we have now have a president coming into office who’s talking about firing squads, who’s talking about running people around the country and making sure that everyone who’s his enemy is going to be punished and Hunter Biden lied about his drug use on a government forum when he was buying a gun and he failed to file and pay taxes when he was a drug addict.”
Representing the sane part of America, this caused Jennings to role his eyes and throw his head back in disgust, triggering a lifetime of memes (and even led to Jennings changing the banner photo of his X profile).
Taylor was thrown through the fire for the transgression of pointing out Hunter received an 11-year “full and unconditional pardon” for all the things on his laptop, including drugs and sex and possibly “hundreds of crimes.”
Amid shouts from Bowman, McGowan, and Phillip, Taylor pointed to the fact that the pardon started in “January 2014, just when, of course, he joined the board of Burisma, so, in my opinion, I think you’ll see more pardons” of those “actually tied to some of the things that potentially showed that Joe Biden benefited from monies that were coming out of” his business dealings.
Phillip clutched her pearls in her pathetically shocked voice, declaring Taylor was “losing” her “because the Trump administration had an opportunity to investigate it. They could not verify the things that you’re alluding to.”
Jennings jumped in for an assist to help Taylor: “They tried to, and he got impeached over it. They impeached Donald Trump over the investigation that Hunter Biden has now gotten a pardon for.”
Bowman also clutched pearls as the failing congressman looks for a new job, claiming Hunter Biden was the victim of the “witch hunt” and only “charged because his name is Hunter Biden, not because his name is Hunter Smith or Hunter Jones.”
Jennings hilariously tried to ask him “who runs the Justice Department,” but Phillip put a squash to that smackdown.
What felt like an eternity later, Jennings stated the clear fact that “[t]he Department of Justice investigations, indictments into Hunter Biden, this has nothing to do with the Republican Party” seeing as how the Republicans aren’t even in charge of the executive branch.
Obama U.S. Attorney Elliot Williams tried to have it both ways, accusing Bowman and Jennings of equally “using hyped up rhetoric,” but largely sided with Bowman that Hunter Biden was unfairly prosecuted.
McGowan and Phillip tried to change the subject, using whataboutism to argue Trump’s pardons in his first term were far worse. Fortunately, Jennings stepped into lower the boom (click “expand”):
MCGOWAN: — into an example because he’s Hunter Biden. And Joe Biden is saying, you know what? That’s enough. We’ve done enough. You’re going to look 11 years back into his life. You’re going to look into his future. You’re going to make sure that you ruin the life of my last and only son —
BOWMAN: This is why —
MCGOWAN: — and we have to remember — can I just say, we have to remember that Trump’s pardon list from his last administration when he was leaving office included literal bank robbers, drug dealers, embezzlers, murderers. You can go to justice.gov and see all the people that Trump —
PHILLIP: Oh, Okay. Let me ask you this, Scott, because this is a fair point. Donald Trump pardoned Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn. Joe Biden’s also not the first person to pardon a family member, Hunter Biden, Charles Kushner, Donald Trump did that one too, Roger Clinton was pardoned, President Clinton’s half brother. Emily Todd Helm, Abraham Lincoln’s wife’s half sister was pardoned. So, are we — are we saying we have a problem with all of those things?
JENNINGS: How many — how many of — how many of the Trump children that we were told are corrupt —
PHILLIP: No, no. I know.
JENNINGS: — that got — needed pardons? Zero.
PHILLIP: Scot — Scott — okay —
MCGOWAN: [INAUDIBLE SHOUTING] — $2 billion from the Saudis.
PHILLIP: — to your point — to your point — to your point, Scott, the Trump children did not face federal charges, to your point. I’m going to give you that. But the person on here, Charles Kushner, who was convicted for a crime.
JENNINGS: Did he go to jail?
PHILLIP: Yes.
MCGOWAN: Yes.
PHILLIP: But he was given a pardon.
JENNINGS: Oh, he served —
PHILLIP: But he was pardoned.
MCGOWAN: He was living in an Alabama apartment.
JENNINGS: — he served time?
MCGOWAN: He was in prison. It’s completely different crimes.
JENNINGS: It strikes me — it strikes me that one of the arguments against this pardon —
MCGOWAN: He’s literally moved from a jail cell in Alabama.
PHILLIP: So, you didn’t answer the question. Are those things —
JENNINGS: — what? No, in my mind they’re not equivalent. They’re not equivalent in any way, shape, or form.
PHILLIP: — guys, hold on a second.
JENNINGS: — but — it strikes — and you’re bringing up an issue and you brought it up, so I want to address it, this idea that Hunter Biden is being selectively prosecuted. Now, one of the core criticisms of the Republicans and Trump specifically during the Biden years is that the Department of Justice is engaging in selective prosecution investigations of Republicans and today, what I hear Democrats saying is, you know what? You’re right. Joe Biden’s DOJ does engage in selective prosecutions, which is exactly why we need people to come in and clean it out now. There seems to be bipartisan consensus. Select — selective prosecutions!
McGowan tried to go down the sympathy route, lamenting Trump somehow rigged the justice system and “changed” “the rules of the game,” so the President was right to save his son.
Williams had a moment of sanity, conceding Joe shouldn’t have spent months saying he wouldn’t pardon his son since there was always a chance Trump would win in November. Jennings agreed and noted Joe had a “given such an oddly specific denial numerous times,” signaling the age-old issues in politics of “corruption, partisanship, [and] grifting.”
Once again, Phillip lost her noodle, arguing Jennings was disingenuous for saying the President should have been honest since “either way, you would have been up in arms.”
Amid even more cross-talk with Bowman trying to inject Trump’s criminal trials and — wait for it — January 6 into the equation, Taylor did some schooling of his own with the fact that those things have “nothing to do with” Hunter Biden.
He didn’t get very far as Phillip shouted from a proverbial fainting couch about the need for “context” disguised as punditry that Trump’s a very bad man (click “expand”):
TAYLOR: That’s a nice story, but it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Just today, the special prosecutor in Hunter Biden’s case came out and refuted the allegations in President Biden saying that it’s a political witch hunt. He said there’s no evidence whatsoever of that, of a political witch hunt. This is the special prosecutor in Hunter Biden’s case. He came out and said that today. In my opinion, like I said, I’m a father. I understand why he did it, but he absolutely lied numerous times. He had a lot of folks from your side of the aisle.
BOWMAN: No change of mind, man?
TAYLOR: Hold on a second.
BOWMAN: You don’t change your perspective based on new context?
TAYLOR: A lot of —
PHILLIP: Hold on. Hold on. Let’s let him finish his sentence.
BOWMAN: What are we talking about?
TAYLOR: There’s nothing new here. But one of the things that he did do — [BOWMAN LAUGHS] — to say, was he had folks from your side of the aisle come on this program, not this program, excuse me, on CNN, this network many, many times saying he’s not going to do it, he’s not going to do it and they look pretty bad today —
PHILLIP: Okay, yeah. Well, okay — let me give the context —
TYALOR: — of course and I think, let me just let me just finish that point. One of the biggest things that this does, the country is already — and you mentioned a little bit of this, the country’s already skeptical of the integrity of government and all this does is undermine it even more.
PHILLIP: — okay. I — I sort of take that point. I mean, here’s — here’s the thing. I think there’s a critique about how President Biden did this. I think the idea that suddenly he was the one to abuse the pardon power does not pass the smell test, but on this question of what has really changed, I mean, haven’t we known all along that Donald Trump was going to put in place people at the Justice Department if he won, which we always knew was a possibility, who would go after Trump’s political enemies, who would go after the so-called deep state? That was a known thing. So, I don’t see how that context has really changed. We’ve already known that.
TAYLOR: I think you’re conflating a little bit of retribution with accountability.
PHILLIP: Well — well —
JENNINGS: Accountability.
TAYLOR: That’s what you’re conflating here. That’s what continues to be conflated.
PHILLIP: I’m just saying, Scott, seeing it from, you know, Congressman Bowman’s perspective, if the concern is all these people are going to go after Hunter Biden, it was a known thing that that could happen if Donald Trump was elected. Nothing has changed.
Jennings made an attempt at turning the tables back towards some balance, asking McGowan and Bowman if, since they believe the Justice Department is corrupt, Attorney General Merrick Garland should be canned by President Biden.
Of course, neither lefty would answer him (click “expand”)
JENNINGS: Can I ask a question? Do you all think that Merrick Garland should be fired because of this corruption at the DOJ?
MCGOWAN: Again, I don’t think there’s corruption at the DOJ. I think the concern is the future DOJ is going to be corrupted.
JENNINGS: Because — You think there’s corruption there. You think this was a politicized witch hunt —
MCGOWAN: No.
JENNINGS: — but the attorney general should be held accountable. No?
[MCGOWAN SIGHS]
BOWMAN: These charges were trumped up because his name is Hunter Biden.
JENNINGS: But wouldn’t that — wouldn’t you — if you were the president, wouldn’t you relieve the attorney general?
MCGOWAN: He had congressional —
PHILLIP: Hold on.
MCGOWAN: — you were —
BOWMAN: Let’s consult — let’s consult our legal expert at the desk.
WILLIAMS: No, I just —
JENNINGS: If you thought there was —
BOWMAN: Please repeat what you said earlier.
JENNINGS: — you thought there was corruption —
WILLIAMS: I am not talking about corruption at the Justice Department. I don’t believe it’s fair.
BOWMAN: [INAUDIBLE]
JENNINGS: — no, I’m saying if — if someone —
WILLIAMS: Don’t pull me into your fight about [INAUDIBLE]
BOWMAN: Hundreds of thousands of people have misrepresented themselves on these applications, never charged. Hunter Biden does.
WILLIAMS: No. I think, I think that is an unassailable fact — well, pardon me — I know it is an unassailable fact that hundreds of thousands of people misrepresent information on gun applications and are not charged.
Click here to see the full transcript of the CNN debacle, including how the so-called conversation eventually ended.
