In just the sort of exchange to cause fury online, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre changed her tune dramatically from past times when she said that Hunter would not be pardoned by President Joe Biden. This time, she said that no reasonable person could have done otherwise in Biden’s position.
The question about the matter was, “Topic of the day: You — you have said repeatedly yourself since the election, the president has said for months no pardon was coming. I just — you know, I wanted to ask you: Could those statements now be seen as lies from the American people? Is there really a credibility issue here, given now this announcement?”
Responding, KJP said that President Biden “believes” in being “truthful” to the American people, which many don’t believe given the numerous lies out the administration, including Biden’s pledge not to pardon Hunter. She said, “First of all, one of the things that the president always believes is to be truthful to the American people. That is something that he always truly believes.”
Continuing, and stumbling over her words as painfully as usual, KJP said, “And if you see the end of his — I’m — I assume that you’ve read his — his statement — and you look at the end of that statement, and he actually says that in the first line in the last paragraph and — and respects the thinking and how the American people will actually see this in his decision-making.”
She added, on that same point, that Biden’s “thought process” is present in the statement about the pardon, saying, “And I would encourage everyone to read in full the president’s statement. I think he lays out his thought process. He lays out how he came to this decision. He came to this decision this weekend. So, let’s be very clear about that.”
Still not done, she then added, “He says it himself. It’s in his voice. He said he came to this decision this weekend, and he said he wrestled with this and — because he believes in the justice system, but he also believes that the…politics infected the process and led to a — a miscarriage of justice. This is his words. I’m just repeating what the president said.”
Getting to the line about “no reasonable person” doing otherwise, she said, “He also said that no reasonable person, if you are looking at this in a good-faith way, if you are looking at the facts of Hunter’s cases and can reach — you can’t reach any other conclusion, right? And what we have seen — and not just us; there’s other people who have commented on the president’s actions in the last 24 hours — I’ve lost track of time — and could see that Hunter was si- — singled out and — because he — his last name was Biden, because he was the president’s son. That’s what we saw.”
Concluding, she said, “And so, the president believed enough is enough, and the president took action. And he also believes that they tried to break his son in order to break him. That’s what we saw. And this — again, I am just repeating what the president said. I think the statement in full really lays out his thought process. He said that he came to this decision this weekend, and — and he wrestled with it. It was not — it wasn’t an easy decision to make.”
Watch and listen to her here:
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