After a Turkey Day weekend pardon of his son Hunter, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith had a message for President Joe Biden: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
In an interview on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show, Smith called upon Biden to pardon President-elect Donald Trump in the federal cases pending against him, saying it was “time to move forward.”
Asked by Cuomo whether he would advise Biden to pardon his 2020 electoral opponent, Smith said, “That’s exactly what I would do,” according to the Washington Times.
“Enough’s enough,” Smith said.
“You know what? You’re the Democrats. You lost the election. You got your butt whipped. You could’ve prevented him from going back to the White House. More than a dozen cases have been dropped against him. The cases that have been ruled against him, he’s going to appeal, and he’ll probably get off from having to deal with all of that. It’s time to move forward.”
Smith referenced Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon for Watergate, a move which he said was “for the good of the country.”
“A lot of times, these folks speak about this stuff, but they don’t do what they say they’re going to do and what they implore others to do,” he said.
The move came after Biden issued the pardon on Sunday night, saying it was “clear that Hunter was treated differently” by the justice system.
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room — with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases,” Biden said in a statement.
Will Joe Biden pardon Donald Trump?
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”
BREAKING: President Biden pardons his son Hunter pic.twitter.com/T1JT3BUIav
— Matt Viser (@mviser) December 2, 2024
Well, enough is enough, indeed — at least for Smith, who didn’t take issue with the pardon but the way it was done.
“Respectfully, to the president of the United States, specifically as it pertains to that statement, you’re full of it,” he said on his Monday ESPN show, according to Fox News. “I’m going to look right here, over the national airwaves, and look the president of the United States in the face and say, ‘You’re full of it.’”
“I said weeks ago, you’re damn right you should let him off. He’s your son, and he’s a recovering addict, and he’s battled those demons for years,” Smith said.
“And the fact that you let your son off, I totally understand. Donald Trump would have let his son off. Anybody would have, or at least most people. I understand that. That’s not the issue, sir.
“The issue, and why I say you’re full of it, is because of the excuse you gave. A simple statement, ‘That’s my son. I have the power to pardon him, to grant him clemency, whatever. That’s what I’m doing. You all kick rocks.’ That would have been good enough for me. That’s your son. That’s your son, that’s your flesh and blood. That’s your child. And as you pointed out, he’s battled a lot of demons. He’s going through a lot. I get it. But what’s all of that other stuff you said about him?”
He then referenced the statement Biden made about the pardon — and the fact he’d promised previously not to issue one.
“You didn’t talk about this then. As a matter of fact, you specifically said you wouldn’t pardon your son … before the election,” Smith said.
“You’re announcing it now that we know Donald Trump is coming in and about to be sworn in as the 47th president. You were intending to do this all along, which again is no problem. But it doesn’t make you any less full of it,” he added.
Needless to say, this won’t happen, because it would basically scuttle a whole lot of Democratic talking points. Yes, it would go a long way to creating goodwill — which is why it won’t happen.
Consider, for instance, what happened when Stephen A. Smith tried talking some sense into the Democrats during the so-called “hush money” trial in New York City. This was a former ESPN host, Keith Olbermann, clearly totally 100 percent sane and rational about these remarks:
ESPN MUST SILENCE OR FIRE @StephenASmith. Times have changed; you can no longer mix sportscasts and pimping Trump
AND TRUMP WANTS HIS MOBS ON THE STEPS OF COURTHOUSES. Judge’s ruling on his 13 gag order violations looms
GET TUESDAY’S COUNTDOWN PODCAST: https://t.co/oV7dWUqzuW pic.twitter.com/KmnT8Jvpdj
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) April 23, 2024
And this was because Smith merely pointed out that, for liberals, “You don’t seem to have the issues in your favor, you believe. So, because of that, you’re going to manipulate the system as best as you possibly can to avoid him possibly running for re-election again.”
He told the truth, and that’s the reaction it got from the left. Expect the same freak-out for the suggestion there be some form of conciliation between the White House and Trump if Hunter is going to get a pardon for crimes that he was very obviously guilty of. Pointing that out will make him nothing more than a misogynistic black man in the media’s eyes, because Kamala Harris lost, or something. It’s as inevitable as Hunter’s pardon was.
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