NBC’s Chuck Todd criticized President Joe Biden as “selfish” for running for president on Monday, seemingly contradicting his earlier assertion that the president’s 2020 candidacy was a selfless act for the nation.
After a jury convicted Biden’s son Hunter in June in his federal gun trial, Todd claimed on MSNBC that neither the trial nor the conviction would have occurred if Biden were not the president, suggesting his choice to run was a sacrifice made for the benefit of the United States. However, Todd told political analyst Chris Cillizza on Monday that Biden actually ran out of concern for his family rather than the country.
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“I followed the Hunter Biden trial very closely. I read every transcript, all the testimony … all that was made public … you want to get angry just as somebody, and just all these mixed emotions, you read the Hallie Biden transcript, and that’s Beau’s widow,” Todd said Monday. “And essentially, he turned her into a crack addict. And this was all happening in 2017, 2018.”
“And Joe and Jill Biden were so concerned about their family that they decided to run for president … So when you talk about the word selfish, it’s almost like the word doesn’t — I mean, their decision to run for president put the entire Democratic Party and the United States of America in the position that it’s in now,” he continued.
However, Todd said in June that Biden’s decision to run was a choice “to put the country before his family.”
“Many people may not like hearing the way I just framed that statement, but that’s a fact. When you choose to run for president, you do this,” he said at the time. “If he allows personal feelings and all that to get in the way, then he’s sort of compromising, I would argue, the pact he made with American voters by deciding to run for president, which is you’re putting the country, you’re putting the rule of law, no matter what. No matter what else is at stake here.”
Biden pardoned Hunter on Sunday after months of insisting that he would not intervene following his son’s conviction, sparking backlash from both Democrats and Republicans. The pardon is “full and unconditional” for Hunter regarding any crime he is charged with or “may have committed or taken part in” since 2014.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.