On Sunday President Trump questioned the press at the White House about why they have not been widely reporting on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Russia, Ukraine and China during his father’s time in high office.
“If we had a media that was fair — even just reasonable — this would be the biggest story for years and years,” Trump said frankly. “Then you’d be entitled to real Pulitzer Prizes, not the fake committee that gives away these fake awards.”
The president’s remark followed a New York Times report claiming he avoided paying taxes for ten of the past 15 years. Trump called the Times piece one more case in point of fake news.
“It’s fake news, it’s totally made up,” Trump told the media on Sunday at a press briefing less than an hour after the story was published. “Everything was wrong, they are so bad.”
“I’ve paid a lot and I’ve paid a lot of state income taxes too,” he pointed out.
Trump has mentioned Biden’s son in the past. Last week two Senate committees helmed by Republican legislators released a report claiming that the work Hunter Biden did in Ukraine amounted to a conflict of interest for the Obama White House. His father, the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, was said to have been steering the ship on a proposal dealing with Kiev.
The Senate report never connected Joe Biden to unlawful activity, centering on Hunter instead, who it alleges “cashed in” on his father’s status in the United States government by sitting on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
In a tweet posted Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. brought attention to a wire transfer to Hunter Biden to the tune of $3.5 million from the billionaire widow of the former mayor of Moscow. He also put the heavily anti-Trump media on blast.
“Hunter Biden received $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the billionaire widow of Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow a known associate of Vladimir Putin. Where are our fearless ‘journalists’ now that there’s a real Russia connection?” the president’s son wrote
Trump Jr. included a piece from the New York Post in his tweet that cited the accusations made in an 87-page report from Senate Republicans last week.
On Sunday President Trump continued to grill the press, “Why did he get $3.5 million? I’ll tell you why: Because Joe Biden was in on it. Joe was in on it. There’s no way that he wasn’t.”
The wealthiest woman in Russia, Elena Baturina, “became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor,” according to the GOP report.
The Biden campaign has yet to respond to requests for comment from media. When questioned on the same topic in 2019 Biden became emotional and called an Iowa voter “a damn liar.”
According to Mediaite, President Trump is setting up an offensive on Biden’s son during the debates for voters to see on a grand stage. The online publisher referred to a new report in the Washington Post that claims Trump “has told associates he wants to talk specifically about his opponent’s son Hunter Biden and mused that the debates are when ‘people will finally realize Biden is just not there.”
“It’s like training for a knife fight and somebody is getting an Uzi,” a Democratic congressional aide recently said of debating Trump.