Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

MSNBC Host Comes Forward 19 Months Later To Admit Biden Team Tried To Shut Down Interview Over Hunter Question

[Screenshot/YouTube/Lukas Thimm]

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle publicly revealed for the first time Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s team attempted to shut down an interview over her question about his son, Hunter Biden, in May 2023.

Over a year-and-a-half later, Ruhle told interviewer Lukas Thimm that Biden’s team immediately attempted to stop a May 5, 2023, interview between the MSNBC host and the president after she asked how a possible indictment of Hunter Biden would impact his presidency. She said the Biden team immediately panicked over a “completely reasonable question.”

“In the way of traditional media, the White House runs the show. When I interviewed President Biden, they gave me 10 minutes, okay? A politician can knock out one answer in 15 minutes,” Ruhle said. “And, 20 minutes before we went in, Savannah Guthrie and I were on the phone, of course she interviewed President Trump, and her advice to me was ‘the person you’re interviewing isn’t the person you’re up against, it’s the clock.’ You’re getting three questions in, tops … At minute nine-and-a-half, I asked the president ‘your son Hunter might be indicted by the Department of Justice, how will this impact your presidency?'”

“A completely reasonable question. As soon as I said those words, President Biden’s team waved in front of the camera, started screaming and yelling to stop the interview. Now, that immediately, that’s public record, that was in the transcript, that became its own story, and then they punished us. We ended up going 14 minutes, and then NBC was in the box and in trouble forever.”

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A transcript of the interview indicated that Ruhle had to repeat the question about Hunter twice due to an error with the audio, according to Mediaite. Her first question and the president’s initial answer had been omitted from the aired version.

At the end of the aired interview, Biden is heard telling Ruhle that an indictment against his son would not impact his administration because Hunter “did nothing wrong” and that he is “proud of him.” MSNBC did not air the president’s team’s alleged attempts to end the interview after she asked about Hunter.

The legacy media neglected to report on Biden’s mental decline, including MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle, who slammed a Wall Street Journal editorial in June that detailed the president’s deteriorating mental capacity behind closed doors. Following the president’s disastrous debate performance on June 27, NBC News and Politico rushed to cite two Biden aides who claimed he had suffered from a cold.

Hunter was charged and later convicted of three felony counts over his purchase of a Colt Cobra in October 2018 while under the influence of drugs and for putting false information on the purchase form. He faced nine charges in California related to his alleged failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019.

Ruhle stated that American audiences are tired of the traditional media landscape where they never receive “a human moment” from a politician, adding that President-elect Donald Trump breaks this rule.

“In those completely structured environments, you never have a human moment,” Ruhle continued. “And this is the thing about Donald Trump, love him or hate him, and when I say he keeps it real but he’s lying, people know what they’re getting and they’re tired of polished politicians giving them soundbites. You can see it in the way that they’re tired of consuming media. They don’t want to consume media in a nightly news way where for 90 seconds they’re hearing this, this and this. They want an actual human connection and lawmakers need to go there.”

The MSNBC host, who interviewed Vice President Kamala Harris in September, said the vice president lacked those moments while she attended interviews throughout her 15-week campaign.

Ruhle said during the Tuesday interview that she had an easier time getting into contact with Trump in comparison to Biden or Harris, stating that she simply got the president-elect’s attention by calling him on the phone.