During Tuesday night’s fourth Democratic presidential debate, virtually all of the candidates shared a fervent belief that President Donald Trump should be impeached by Congress — while former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the frontrunners, found himself standing up for his son, Hunter Biden, and defending his business practices with Ukraine.
There was the question in many people’s minds about whether or not this issue would come up on Tuesday night — and it did, pretty early on.
The 12 candidates in Ohio represented the largest lineup together on one debate stage, topping the 11 GOP candidates who assembled in 2016, as Fox News pointed out.
“Sometimes there are issues that are bigger than politics, and I think that’s the case with this impeachment inquiry,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said when asked why Congress should go forward with the impeachment process against Trump even with a presidential election up ahead next year.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — back on the campaign trail after his recent heart attack — agreed with that point: “This is a president who is enriching himself while using the Oval Office to do that, and that is outrageous.”
Biden, as with the other two frontrunners, also talked about kicking Trump out of office.
But he himself has come under the white-hot media spotlight lately as well as gotten attention from the White House for his son’s business dealings and his own connections to Ukraine.
Hunter Biden was paid $50,000 a month, reportedly, for sitting on the board of Burisma Holdings, a job he got almost certainly because of his last name.
Related: ‘Joe Biden, What Are You Hiding?’
CNN anchor and one of the debate moderators, Anderson Cooper, raised this issue by stating, without evidence, that President Trump’s accusations of misconduct by the Bidens were “false,” as Fox News pointed out.
But Cooper pushed hard against the former vice president about Hunter Biden’s own admission on Tuesday morning in a televised interview — on ABC’s “Good Morning America” — that he erred by obtaining a well-paid role on the board of the Ukraine company, “with no relevant expertise,” while his own father was the vice president and handled Ukraine policy.
“I know I did nothing wrong at all. Was it poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is a swamp in many ways? Yeah,” the younger Biden said early on Tuesday morning in the interview.
Joe Biden recently promised that no family members of his would take part in foreign deals if he were to be elected president next year — a straightforward admission, Republicans declared, of previous poor judgment or even of wrongdoing.
Read more on this issue here from Fox News.
See the tweets below — and share your own thoughts:
Joe Biden lied just now during the debate.
FLASHBACK to this morning, after claiming no discussion, Hunter Biden admits conversation with Joe Biden about Ukraine business. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/Mziy8sM7in
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 16, 2019
At the #DemocraticDebate tonight, Joe Biden again claimed that he never spoke to his son about any of his business dealings.
Weird how the debate moderators didn't follow up by asking him to explain the picture of him golfing with his son and a fellow Burisma executive.?? pic.twitter.com/pQS2gMYc4p
— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) October 16, 2019
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