“I Make Choices”: Chuck Todd Slams Hunter Biden Interviews as Bad for Democrats and Biden

This month, the public has witnessed the mainstream media at its very worst in circling the wagons to deflect or dismiss the new evidence on how government officials, including President Barack Obama, laid the foundations for the Russian collusion hoax. However, the most telling admission may have come from Chuck Todd on the mentality of many in the media. In denouncing the decision to interview Hunter Biden, Todd lamented how the coverage was bad for the Democrats and the Bidens. He then declared, “I make choices,” which is precisely why he was widely criticized for bias as a former Sunday show host. His “choices” often seemed to run in favor of only one party.

I have been a long-time critic of Todd’s for his slanted questioning, open bias, and misleading coverage (here, here, here, here, here, and here).  He used his position to denounce investigations into the Bidens while giving false accounts of conservative court rulings.

Now, he is irate over the Hunter Biden interviews last week. What is telling, however, is that he is not lashing out at the content but the fact that the media interviewed a figure who proved so damaging for the Democrats and President Biden.

Let’s take a step back for a second. Hunter Biden is news.  He was at the center of a massive influence peddling scandal, the subject of a controversial presidential pardon from his father, and recently accused of exercising inappropriate control over his father as president. He was also a key witness on his father’s alleged mental and physical decline in office.

By any measure, he is news.

Yet, Todd is irate that he was given a platform after it backfired on Democrats, including suggesting that his father was on Ambien. The profanity-laced interviews made headlines around the world, but Todd felt that the media should have prevented the public from seeing them.

On his podcast, Todd declared:

“I will never book Hunter Biden. Number one, he’s not the candidate. He wasn’t on the ballot. Anything he says in defense of his father, I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but it doesn’t matter. He’s a son defending his father…I have a real problem with the folks that are booking him. If you’ve chosen to book Hunter Biden, you’ve chosen to book spectacle. You’re not interested in – and you know, the two interviews that have gone viral were both designed to get attention, not to surface new facts, not to give you a better understanding of what may have happened. It was just, ‘Let’s give him a platform to settle some scores that maybe he wants to settle.’…I don’t think this does Hunter Biden any good. I don’t think this does Joe Biden any good. It certainly doesn’t do the Democratic Party any good. That’s why it’s surprising to see the former DNC chair start a podcast and decide that the best way to market it is Hunter Biden.

…It’s a choice who you book. I make choices. Everybody makes choices. It’s a choice who you book. If you’re putting Hunter Biden on, you know what you’re doing. Look, I think there’s a lot of things going on there.”

Todd could argue that he was merely noting that one of these interviews was conducted by a former head of the DNC, who should have known it could backfire on the party. However, the two interviews produced real news from an insider in the White House. Nonetheless, Todd felt that the two interviews should have scuttled.

That was the signature of Todd’s journalism. He routinely chose to conduct interviews with a heavy slant in favor of Democratic talking points or slamming Republicans. He is still advancing that type of advocacy journalism in slamming interviews that were newsworthy but bad for the party and the Bidens.

In these interviews, Hunter Biden gave his own account of his father’s mental and physical conditions while suggesting a previously unstated cause for the former president’s disastrous debate performance. Todd would have prevented the public from hearing that account because he “makes choices” for them.

When Todd was called to account for misleading clips, the network shrugged and blamed it on editing that was “inadvertently and inaccurately” performed.  His choices included running clips that were widely denounced as misleading. Conversely, he would conduct interviews with figures like Hillary Clinton without asking about breaking news on her campaign, secretly funding the Steele dossier despite earlier denials.

During my two contracts with NBC, I had the honor of working with Todd’s predecessor Tim Russert. Tim was the ultimate professional and honest journalist. He would ask probing questions of all sides and pursued the news regardless of its potential political impact for either party. I respected him greatly for his integrity and his intelligence.

NBC’s former political director, Todd brought a different approach to the chair. He would often use questions to make statements like asking whether Trump supporters “just want to be lied to?”  However, when it comes to Democrats, Todd would prefer to make choices for them in refusing to air news that was bad for the party, as he did as host on Meet the Press.

It is all part of Chuck Todd “making choices.”