Corruption: China Lavishes Hunter Biden with Cash, Diamonds

BUCK: Where is the interest in what Hunter Biden was up to when his dad was vice president with regard to China?

CLAY: Amen.

BUCK: Miranda Divine — who we should have on the show, by the way; we’ll invite her on the show this week or next week — from the New York Post, has a book out. Is it Laptop from Hell? Is that what it’s called?

CLAY: I think it’s something like that.

BUCK: Something like that. Laptop from Hell.

CLAY: Laptop from Hell. Sounds like a hell of a story.

BUCK: Yeah, exactly.

CLAY: We texted her.

BUCK: Yeah, we’ll go get her to come on and talk about it. But there’s no interest. Clay, you were on Hannity last night, right?

CLAY: Hannity tonight.

BUCK: Oh, Hannity tonight. You’re on Hannity tonight. I was on last night with our friend Pete Hegseth who was hosting at 7 o’clock. I just would repeat that if you had a Trump kid who was having meetings with senior Chinese Communist Party officials with getting off with tens of millions of dollars and a diamond —

CLAY: $80,000 diamond.

BUCK: — they would be covered it like the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I mean, it would be the most urgent national story, selling out our country to the Chinese come to a stop. But, “Oh, it’s just Hunter!” This is what they’ve done with Biden his whole career also, statements that he made, things that he said that would be a huge problem or other politicians. They build this defense of, “Oh, that’s just Joe being Joe.” Why is that the case? Why is that something that we should all concede?

CLAY: It is so infuriating to me, just the lack of basic standards of journalistic decency, right, when it comes to how you’re going to treat members of the president’s family. The idea that Hunter Biden can basically be engaging in what feels like every illegal act known to man, from drug use to prostitution to selling out American interests to China. Everything you can basically imagine if you were coming up with a series of things that you would not want the president’s son or daughter to be involved in.

And you pretend it doesn’t exist for Hunter Biden, while selling the idea that Donald Trump Jr. in particular was doing all of those things. Just think if there had actually been tangible evidence. He met a random Russian, and you would have thought that it was the most important meeting that had ever happened based on the way the media covered it. Imagine if a person from China had given Donald Trump Jr. an $80,000 diamond or offered him tens of millions of dollars to advance Chinese interests.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Some of these Hunter Biden stories you read about them, and you feel like if Led Zeppelin were asked, they’d say, “I think he went a little overboard. I think he went a bit too crazy” ’cause he’s done a lot of things. Hunter Biden has led kind of a wild life. That’s for sure. But he is also somebody who has access to a tremendous amount of influence and power because of who his daddy is. We all know this, right?

This is just the reality of Hunter Biden’s life in recent years. And now there is an effort at least at shedding some light on this one, led by — among otherS, but led by — Miranda divine of the New York Post. And she has this book. It is actually Laptop from Hell, by the way. I thought maybe. Laptop from Hell. So we’ll invite her on so she can tell us about the book.

But the media helped hide the real Joe Biden by censoring stories about this. Here are some of the details as it were about this whole situation. Hunter was having meetings. You gotta get really deep into this stuff. There’s a lot of names, a lot of different people and players. The short version, right — and, Clay, fill in if I’m missing anything here as we go.

But the short version of it is Hunter was having meetings with a very powerful and highly… You can’t be a powerful Chinese businessman without being effectively an arm of the Chinese Communist Party. And in fact, this guy in particular that Hunter was meeting with is accused of being — or, I should say, is allegedly — a part of Chairman Xi’s Belt and Road initiative and essentially the economic arm of the Chinese Communist Party working around the world to expand their influence.

But the story here is that this Chinese titan lavished a three-carat gem and a promise of $30 million on Hunter Biden so that he would give access. Ye Jianming is the name of this Chinese fellow he would grant access to — well, of course — Joe Biden. Now, here’s just part of this was that I wanted to get to for a second. I remember — and, Clay, you probably remember this — when the Washington Post was doing actual stories on the emoluments clause violations that maybe Trump was engaged in.

First of all, who the heck knew what who emoluments clause was before Trump? I’m just saying. I’m not saying ignorance is bliss on this stuff but the emoluments clause, all of a sudden was a phrase we’re all hearing because of drinks and cheeseburgers that foreign diplomats in the aggregate were buying at the Trump hotel. I’m not kidding, folks. They acted like that was buying influence. Foreign diplomats going to a restaurant that Trump owned an interest in as if they’re like, “I am ordering the cheeseburger and I want you to sign the treaty,” and Trump is like, “Sir, yes, sir! Absolutely.”

CLAY: That extra $2 in my pocket has won the day.

BUCK: “Wait a second. You’re getting the bearnaise sauce on the side? Of course I will take you off the banned list for international trade!” Anyway, it was crazy, right? They would run those stories, and they constantly talked about Trump corruption, all these different probes. Hunter Biden is running around basically offering up to our biggest adversary, access to the top-policymaker circles. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars allegedly in the balance here possibly changing hands, and, Clay, in the media has no interest. None. None at all.

CLAY: And the way that I would approach is this is, first of all, Hunter Biden has no tangible skills, other than being potentially really good —

BUCK: I think he could pack a bowl, for sure.

CLAY: (laughing) I was gonna say: Potentially being really good at purchasing drugs and hookers, all right? Other than that, I’ve not seen anything that Hunter Biden does particularly well. So this the idea that the Trump children who were under attack — Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric Trump, the in-laws… The entire Trump family was under a microscope over every single move that they made from a business perspective.

Despite the fact that the Trumps had a successful business operation long before Donald Trump ever got involved in politics! They had created and built and were running a successful business predicated on his brand and a variety of different real estate properties. So the biggest flaw — and, by the way, whether you loved or hated him, Jared Kushner was doing the same thing.

In other words, the people who were successful in the Trump White House on a high level from a business perspective were successful long before Donald Trump Jr. or Donald Trump Sr. or anybody in the White House ever got involved in politics at all, right? So if the Trumps… I just want you to think about this. How would the media have covered it?

Let’s use Donald Trump Jr. Good dude. How would the media have covered it if Donald Trump Jr., there were emails and photos and documents that proved with zero doubt, irreconcilable proof that he had been meeting with top Chinese advocates, and what was going on here is significant, that he was going to act to advance Chinese interests in exchange for tens of millions of dollars.

And there had been a three-carat jewel worth $80,000 given to him? This would be covered in excruciating detail. Not only that, there would be congressional hearings, there would be congressional investigations. I predict that the Trumps would have ended up being charged with crimes. Right now, nothing has happened to Hunter Biden at all. Everything that the media told you about the Trumps, the Bidens actually did.

BUCK: Democrats are expected now — they expect — to get rich in politics.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Not before, and not even after. They expect that their political access will effectively make them rich. The promise of future political access will make them rich. The best example of this, other than Hunter Biden which we’re talking about, is the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation. What happened? Did you ever even hear about the Clinton Foundation anymore?

I thought they wanted to address, you know, women’s rights issues and climate change and global warming, these very sort of vague, amorphous concepts. It was basically a money-laundering operation for paying Bill $800,000 a speech which, by the way, he did get from a Russian bank at one point. Eight hundcred grand for a speech? Better be hell of a speech.

CLAY: By the way, I’ll doing that.

BUCK: What’s that?

CLAY: I’ll do that for a lot cheaper.

BUCK: Anyone out there, for your local Rotary Club or whatever, I’ll do a big discount on the 800K speech. I promise you that.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But the media all acted like they were so… This is when I was actually at CNN, believe it or not, and I would go on and trash the Clintons which was fun. This is when CNN started to hate me. As soon as I got away from terrorism analysis and started doing politics, right? But I would say, “Does anyone really think that these donations, especially from the foreign countries, to the Clinton Foundation, are going to continue if she loses?

“And doesn’t that prove that this isn’t really about charity?” And they’re all going, “Well, I don’t know. It’s charity! Why do you hate charity?” And I’m like, “No, no, no. Let’s look at this for a second.” Of course, Clay, they had to shut down the Clinton Global Initiative, the CGI, within like six months or something of Hillary losing. It was a money-laundering-for-access scheme. That was the whole point, and they didn’t care. And they don’t care with Hunter Biden, either, because it’s their team, folks. That’s all that matters to them.

CLAY: Well, and I will say this. One of the reasons that I think Donald Trump’s political campaign had such appeal in 2016 and carried forward into 2020 was the idea that he was already rich. We’ve seen so many people — to be fair, Democrats and Republicans — who came in to office with no assets somehow get fabulously wealthy by the time they left. We all know on some level that they were selling access to their positions of power. That was why a lot of people liked the idea of Trump. This is a guy who’s already independently wealthy. He’s not trying to get into political office to make money. He’s already there.