Scandal-plagued First Family member Hunter Biden continued his book tour late Thursday with a softball-laden interview with ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who assisted him in not only dismissing the infamous laptop as “a red herring” because it came from Rudy Giuliani, but declare that he was eminently qualified to served on the board of Burisma.
Unsurprisingly, Kimmel and Biden did not address the breaking news from hours earlier when the Daily Mail published more of what they said were contents of Biden’s laptop, including naked photos of Biden with prostitutes.
And because Biden needs to be treated like he’s half his age, Kimmel painted Biden as a victim to political toxicity when he was attacked by Republicans, including supposed former friend and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Kimmel painted Biden as a sympathetic figure, saying it had been worsened by people like Graham “being television and attacking you and that he’s a — somebody that you considered to be a family friend,” which led Biden to say it was a “sad” example of how “politics has become so toxic.”
This gave way to a section on Burisma, which strangely devolved into the pair touting Biden’s credentials as both sterling and worthy of a position on the Ukrainian gas company’s board and attacking Donald Trump Jr. for arguing it was nepotism. Instead, they implied it’s Trump who has the silver spoon (click “expand”)
KIMMEL: You wrote in the book. I do want to talk about this, you know, the Ukraine and — or Ukraine and how it became some issue. It became something —
BIDEN: Yeah.
KIMMEL: — it gave Donald Trump something to grab onto.
BIDEN: Yeah.
KIMMEL: He almost got — well, he did get impeached —
BIDEN: Yeah.
KIMMEL: — as a result of it.
BIDEN: Yeah.
KIMMEL: But you wrote, “did I make a mistake by taking a seat on the board of the Ukrainian gas company? No. Did I display a lack of judgment? No? Would I do it again? No.”
BIDEN: Yeah, I meant what I said and what I wrote — is that, you know — go to the beginning — is that, you know, I went to Yale Law School. I served on at least a dozen boards before Burisma, I was a vice chairman of the board in Amtrak. I was the chairman of the board at the World Food Program U.S., largest — supporting the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I had an expertise in corporate governance. I was asked to serve on the board for corporate governance and I was a lawyer at Boies Schiller Flexner, which was how I was first approached. However, what I didn’t take into account was the way in which they would use the perception against my dad and for that, I have, I wouldn’t do it again for that reason.
KIMMEL: Yeah.
BIDEN: Yeah.
KIMMEL: Does it make you crazy when you hear had somebody like Donald Trump, Jr., saying the only reason he is — is because he is a Biden and cause of his last name —
BIDEN: Yeah.
KIMMEL: — and how just, wildly comical that is? I mean does it?
BIDEN: I mean, it is wildly comical. That is putting it lightly. I think. But — but you know, I really, what I have learned is this — is that I don’t spend too much time thinking about it.
KIMMEL: I do, I think about it all the time. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] I will think about it for you.
BIDEN: Well, maybe that’s why. I have other people to think about it for me. I have other people to think about it for me.
KIMMEL: Do you know Donald Trump, Jr.?
BIDEN: No.
KIMMEL: You’ve never met him?
BIDEN: Not that I know of. Not that I know of.
KIMMEL: You say not that I know of.
BIDEN: I have been in some pretty rough places.
Kimmel moved to the laptop issue and promptly dismissed it because, after having seen Biden state in other interviews that he’s unsure if it’s his, he’s surprised Hunter would have even had “shoes on” let alone a laptop while in the throes of addiction.
Biden replied with a quip of his own: “Yeah, I made it. I made it today. Pants were the problem. Pants were the problem.”
After Kimmel added that “pants are always the problem,” Biden reiterated that he honestly doesn’t know, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter because “[i]t is absolutely a red herring” and he’s “within my rights to question anything that comes…from the desk of Rudy Giuliani.”
This led Kimmel to close out that portion with another joke:
KIMMEL: Do you ever wish you had Apple Care?
BIDEN: Yeah, that would have been a good thing. Yeah.
Fast-forward to the start of the interview and after introducing him as “the most famous board member of a Ukrainian energy company of all time” and that he was “impressed that you’re alive,” Kimmel spent the next few minutes joking that Hunter’s book was a “how-to manual” for using cocaine.
Kimmel added that, thanks to the book, he “learned a lot about crack and I know he that sounds weird, but you hear about it and you see it on TV shows and you know, the news every once in a while, but I learned how to get — I really think I could get it now thanks to your book.”
Only after he made Biden talk about some of the places (like the Roosevelt Hotel) did a clearly-unnerved Biden shift focus to his insistence that he wrote the book “to humanize people suffering from addiction” and pen “a love letter to the people that are loving someone that is struggling with addiction because it’s so hard for them to understand why it is that their love just can’t get through.”
Seeing as how Kimmel opened his monologue by joking about crack and the proximity of Biden’s benders to his studio, viewers had to have had a sense this was coming.
While the interview started on a bizarre note before going to the softball portion, Kimmel ended with a retelling of how quickly Biden married his current wife less than a week after they met.
Of course, there was nothing about how Biden dated his late brother Beau’s widow for a period of time.
This stop on Hunter Biden’s rehabilitation tour and mockery of legitimate questions was made possible thanks to supportive advertisers such as Allstate, Subaru, and Target. Follow the links to see their contact information at the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the relevant transcript from ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live on April 8 (including a strange bit with a fake Mike Lindell mocking Burisma as a person), click here.