What is going on with Nikki Haley?
This week, in a joint interview with NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns and Brianne Pfannenstiel, chief politics reporter at the Des Moines Register, she botched what should have been an easy question.
"But what about Hunter Biden—the president's kid—if he were convicted? Would you pardon him?” asked Dasha Burns.
“I mean, I'm not even going to think about that. I don't even know what they've found him guilty on yet,” Haley replied.
Now, it was a stupid question to begin, but it should have been a simple, unequivocal "no." But, for whatever reason, Haley gave an absurdly equivocal response.
And then she kept going, trying to make it better: "I know that they've, you know, what we've seen in the Department of Justice system, if anything, is they're not treating everybody fairly. You look at how the Bidens and the Clintons have been treated; it's very different than how the Trumps have been treated. Everybody should be treated the same. If you do a crime, you should pay the price. Period. You should have transparency, everybody should see what's happening. We should make sure that taxpayers know that everything is above board. That's what this is. Doesn't matter what party, doesn't matter what person; but treat everybody exactly the same. That's where we should go."
This would have been a better answer on its own.
And then she ruined it.
Related: Can Nikki Haley Afford To Keep Making Such Dumb Mistakes?
"I'm not going to get into whether we pardoned Hunter Biden or not. Let's wait and see what the charges are," she continued. "But at this point, you have to go and look at every case individually, and I don't think it's responsible just to throw out whether you would do something like that on someone's son when we don't know all the details of that issue."
BREAKING: Nikki Haley reveals she’s open to pardoning Hunter Biden.
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) January 5, 2024
“Let’s wait and see what the charges are.” pic.twitter.com/r7UIf0R01V
Let's wait and see what the charges are? We know what the charges are. We know that Hunter Biden nearly got away with his crimes. Why would anyone, particularly a Republican, even leave open the possibility that Hunter Biden might deserve a pardon? Heck, even Joe Biden claims he wouldn't pardon Hunter Biden. No one actually believes it, but at least he said he wouldn't. We know from whistleblowers coming forward that the Justice Department has been protecting him for years. So, we can't even say that his prosecution is the result of department abuse that a pardon is needed to correct.
Now, let's compare Haley's response to that of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was asked the same stupid question
"But what about Hunter Biden — would you pardon him?" Dasha Burns.
"Why? No,” he responded, absolutely flabbergasted by the question.
"I mean, in the spirit of healing the country, of moving forward."
“Those are not the same things,” DeSantis explained. "You have a current administration that is prosecuting the former president. That is not the same thing as a Hunter Biden prosecution. Hunter Biden was was not one of the leaders of the opposition political party. So when you have that, that is not healthy for this country to be doing that."
“Neither is division, as you said,” Burns interjected.
“Well, Hunter Biden is not creating division. Hunter Biden, if he had been not-connected to the DC ruling class, he would have been prosecuted a long time ago. But those are not equivalent things in terms of like a Ford and Nixon, and then versus some of the things that we're seeing with Donald Trump."
Reporter: “What about Hunter Biden — would you pardon him?”
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) January 5, 2024
DeSantis, in shock at the stupidity of the question: “Why? No.” pic.twitter.com/nybt5kJAuR
See? That's a good answer. DeSantis saw immediately that it was a dumb question, treated it as such, and disputed the premise for it.
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