Fox News host Chris Wallace grilled Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Sunday over the controversy surrounding Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and a laptop that allegedly belongs to his son that contains messages about foreign business dealings.
“New information is coming out about the Biden family’s business dealings with China. Really, two questions,” Wallace said to Whitmer, who serves as Biden’s national co-chair. “One, does Biden owe more of an explanation to the American people? And was it a mistake for the vice president to allow all of this to go on, some of it while he was vice president?”
“Well, Chris, you just asked Ronna Romney if there was any – a scintilla of evidence that there was wrongdoing by Joe Biden, and she was able to produce none because none exists,” Whitmer replied. She then redirected to the pandemic. “The fact of the matter is, right now, we need to be talking about what isn’t happening in this country, and that is we’re not combating COVID,” she said. “We’ve got COVID numbers increasing all across the country.”
The deflection led Wallace to press her again on the matter.
“Governor respectfully, I do need to ask – Governor, I do need to ask you this though. There is evidence – maybe that Biden didn’t take money, but, clearly, his brother, his son, were involved in business dealings. There was talk about the Biden name,” Wallace said. “One, wasn’t that inappropriate for that to be going on while he was vice president? Sure sounds like influence peddling. And doesn’t he owe a fuller accounting?”
“You know what, Chris? I think that Joe has sat for questions, he has answered these questions,” Whitmer claimed.
Biden has recently snapped at multiple reporters who have brought up the controversy and asked him questions about it.
Whitmer went on to dismiss the issue as a distraction. “The American people aren’t going to be distracted from the fact that this election is about the dinner table issues and the dinner table issue of 2020 is a Trump administration that has never been able to have a national strategy on COVID,” she said.
WATCH:
Chris Wallace grills Biden co-chair Gretchen Whitmer over the Hunter Biden scandal involving influence peddling
Whitmer struggles to respond, falsely claims that Biden has sat and answered the media's questions about the scandal pic.twitter.com/FBWSKer0Ou
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 26, 2020
TRANSCRIPT:
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: I want to talk to you about another issue. The president in the debate, in the campaign, also went about — went after Joe Biden for his family’s business dealings with foreign countries, foreign companies. Again, take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: The horrible e-mails of the kind of money that you were raking in, you and your family, and, Joe, you were vice president when some of this was happening, and it should have never happened. And I think you owe an explanation to the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: New information is coming out about the Biden family’s business dealings with China. Really,
two questions.One, does Biden owe more of an explanation to the American people? And was it a mistake for the vice president to allow all of this to go on, some of it while he was vice president?
GRETCHEN WHITMER, MICHIGAN GOVERNOR (D): Well, Chris, you just asked Ronna Romney if there was any — a scintilla of evidence that there was wrongdoing by Joe Biden, and she was able to produce none because none exists.
The fact of the matter is, right now, we need to be talking about what isn’t happening in this country,
and that is we’re not combating COVID. We’ve got COVID numbers increasing all across the country —WALLACE: Governor —
WHITMER: And I think that’s —
WALLACE: — respectfully, I do need to ask — Governor, I do need to ask you this though. There is evidence– maybe that Biden didn’t take money, but, clearly, his brother, his son, were involved in business dealings. There was talk about the Biden name.
One, wasn’t that inappropriate for that to be going on while he was vice president? Sure sounds like influence peddling. And doesn’t he owe a fuller accounting?
WHITMER: You know what, Chris? I think that Joe has sat for questions, he has answered these questions.
The American people aren’t going to be distracted from the fact that this election is about the dinner table issues and the dinner table issue of 2020 is a Trump administration that has never been able to have a national strategy on COVID.
The dinner table issue is the tens of millions who are unemployed because of the lack of a national strategy around COVID. The dinner table issue is the fact that so many people are in line at food pantries across this country because of a lack of national strategy around COVID.
That’s what we need to be focusing on.
