Tucker Carlson talked about his former Washington neighbor, Hunter Biden during an appearance on “Watters’ World” on Saturday night — telling host Jesse Waters he feels a degree of “sympathy” for the son of former Vice President Joe Biden now that the son is facing scrutinty for past business dealings in Ukraine.
“I know him well. He was my neighbor. He’s a really nice guy,” Carlson said. “I’ve always liked him. He’s a really troubled guy who had a great family. And then it blew up.”
It wasn’t clear whether Carlson was referring to Hunter Biden’s Ukraine situation, family tragedies or other personal problems — or possibly all three. Biden lost older brother Beau to cancer in 2015, got divorced in 2017, was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock in 2018 — and has had reported struggles with alcohol and drugs.
“He’s like a lot of people I know in Washington,” 50-year-old Carlson said of Biden, who will turn 50 himself Feb. 4. “Totally good guy. I’d love to have dinner with them.”
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Hunter Biden and his 77-year-old father have been frequent subjects of conversation among Republicans amid the ongoing Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. The president is accused of abuse of power for allegedly using military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s efforts to remove a prosecutor — Viktor Shokin — who had been looking into Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden served on the board. Trump is also accused of obstruction of Congress for allegedly blocking efforts by House panels to investigate him.
Carlson, host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” also said Hunter Biden was a symptom of a bigger problem.
“I still like Hunter Biden, but he’s a beneficiary of a system that’s, like, completely corrupt. And it’s so corrupt and so ubiquitous here that nobody even notices,” Carslson said. “It’s, like, of course, he’s making, you know, whatever, a million a year from some Ukrainian energy company. Like he’s a symptom, not a cause.”
Watters then asked Carlson, who has spoken out about corruption, if he feels sympathy toward Biden.
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“I feel deep sympathy for him only because I could name, off the top of my head, twenty-five other people who are abusing our system more successfully. I just saw a bunch of them at lunch today,” Carlson said. “So, yes, that’s what this city is. It’s a place where people leverage their connections — in his case, his DNA — in order to make a pretty good living while the rest of the country declines.”
“I’m sympathetic because, like, if his dad wasn’t running for president, we wouldn’t have heard of all of this,” Carlson said.
Fox News’ Julia Musto contributed to this report.
