Conspiracy Theories, Desert Drama, Deadly Hijacking
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Voters 50 and over have the power to decide elections. So candidates who want to win need to talk about the issues they care about. Learn more from our latest polling in Pennsylvania at aarp.org slash PA polling. Overnight, Duncan's pumpkin spice coffee has sent folks into a cozy craze. I'm Lauren LaTulip reporting live from home in my hand-knit turtleneck that my Nana made me. Mmm, cinnamony. The home with Duncan is where you want to be.

It's Wednesday, June 12th, right now on CNN This Morning. Convicted, Hunter Biden, surrounded by family in Delaware as Republicans peddle conspiracy theories already about his guilty verdict. Drama in the desert, a MAGA Republican in Nevada snubbed by Donald Trump. Now he's trying to fight back. Police in Atlanta chasing a hijacked bus through rush hour traffic before making a deadly discovery on board. This is pretty wild.

Senate Democrats asking Republicans to join them as they prepare for a vote on protecting IVF. All right, 6 a.m. here in Washington, a live look at the White House on this Wednesday morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. For the first time in American history, the child of a sitting president has been convicted of a crime. A jury in Delaware finding Hunter Biden guilty on all three felony charges as members of the Biden family, including First Lady Jill Biden, sat in court to hear it read,

His father, President Biden, was not in court, but afterward, he headed straight to Delaware to be with Hunter. The president released this statement, quote, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal. That message does stand in contrast with how Republicans greeted the verdict that was recently handed down against former President Donald Trump. How did they take in the Hunter verdict? Let's watch.

Every case is different and clearly the evidence was overwhelming here. I don't think that's the case in the Trump trial. So I think the American people are smart enough to know that these are two separate cases. There are two tiers of justice. Well first in this case, it's existing law. In the case of Trump, they've made up something brand new that nobody's been prosecuted before.

- Okay, let's bring in our panel. Brandi Harden is managing partner at Harden and Pinckney PLLC. Zoe Encano-Youngs is White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal. We have former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield with us and Matt Gorman, former senior advisor to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here. Kate Bedingfield, I actually would like to start with you in terms of, I mean, look, this is obviously extraordinarily difficult for the Biden family.

Politically, I mean, you look at what the Republicans are saying there. I mean, had he been acquitted, I think he would have had a quite different storm from them. So, I mean, maybe it's a political break, as hard as it is.

Well, break may be tough just because I think it is so hard on the president and his family. But I absolutely agree this is not going to be a huge political winner for the Republicans for a couple reasons. First of all, we've actually seen them try to make Hunter Biden a line of attack that sticks to Joe Biden for five years now. Donald Trump tried to make it central to the 2020 campaign. It didn't work. And I'll tell you, we saw on the Biden campaign in 2020, not only did it not work, it actually wound up highlighting some of the things that people

most love and connect to about Joe Biden, his love for his family, his humanity. So this just hasn't been a winning line of attack for them. And then also, if you look at the reaction Republicans had yesterday, it was all over the board, to say the least. I mean, I think they recognize that the

The center of this conversation is really one about addiction, and that's a hard thing to seem like you're on the attack over. There's also kind of the gun politics here. I mean, this is sort of a weird, unnatural place for Republicans to be, arguing for less strict gun laws, essentially.

No, I do not think this is going to be a political winner for the Republicans by any stretch. I mean, I think, Matt, I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal. They write about the guilty verdict and they say the guilty verdict is likely to minimize any political impact. An acquittal by a Biden hometown jury would have fed Donald Trump's narrative of unequal justice, especially since the Justice Department tried to let Hunter off with a slap on the wrist plea deal. Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think this is going to move votes one way or another. I mean, look, it's

Hunter, at the end of the day, is a 50-year-old man or so. He's responsible for his actions. And when you're lying on a federal form, that is something that is apparently very easily prosecutable. It was fairly open and shut. And so, look, I don't think this is going to move votes one way or another. I mean, Kate, I think you remember, I remember 2020 in the debate, I think, when that became an issue. I wonder if it's going to become an issue this time. I think it's unlikely. I think if they try the convicted felon line, I think that could be an easy retort.

But yeah, I don't really think at the end of the day this is going to move votes one way or another. And, you know, he's responsible for his actions. And we have another case coming on the pike with tax charges in a few months. Well, he's also not the candidate, right? I mean, that's the other key difference here. I mean, if the response to Donald Trump being a convicted felon is like, well, your son is a convicted felon, okay, well. But that's been kind of the whole

the whole game all the way along right so on and when you look at the impeachment proceedings against President Biden that really fizzled what they were trying to do was muddy the waters and make it and this is why they use the phrase Biden crime family right they're trying to to tag the president with something that may be associated with his son but we haven't seen them actually come up with anything right without evidence right right at this point I think

I think what you saw yesterday in terms of the reactions from some Republicans was some reaching, right, as well as an inconsistent overall message on how to react to this. You had some, once again, going to unfounded sort of conspiracy theories, almost not mentioning the trial yesterday, not mentioning this result.

but trying to indicate that there are other charges, again, without evidence. You had other Republicans that seemed to be saying that, you know, once again, trying to frame the justice system still as launching a witch hunt against Republicans.

against trump which again just this would seem too muddy to undermine that argument when you have a justice department that did just deliver a guilty verdict to the president's son here so at this point you're not seeing really a consistent response from the gop on how to react to something that that is really complicated i mean just a couple days ago you also saw the former president

Talk about, you know, the issue that was clouding this trial. Which is that of addiction? One that I think many Republicans and Democrats know, many Americans throughout the country are dealing with or know somebody who is struggling with that issue. So it's not an easy one to tackle here. Brandy, I mean, one thing that we've gotten in this case is that we've actually started to hear from some of the jurors talking about this. And this, of course, something that...

when we have talked, obviously the former president's trial has become so political, but the jury itself, right? When you ask Republicans like, hey, like this was a jury of normal people. Yes, they'll say, well, they're from Manhattan, but you don't get the same kinds of attacks on the jury. And now we have jurors here in this case arguing that, hey, like our decision was not political. Let's watch a little bit of that. If anybody was in that courtroom or in the jury room,

they would know it was not motivated by politics. Politics played no part whatsoever in my mind. I can't speak for the other jurors. But nothing was ever said about this being an election year. That was never brought up.

Pretty interesting texture there. Yes, there is no better perspective than that from a juror. And so to hear from a juror that there was nothing in their minds that had to do with the political nature of the fact that it was President Biden's son, I think says a lot. I think

jury systems work. And I think to have our jurors talk about like, look, everybody knows it's Joe Biden's son, but at the end of the day, we're just looking at whether or not he lied on a form and whether or not he's guilty. And I think that says a lot about how intact our jury system is because obviously there's a lot of noise surrounding the fact that it's the president's son.

So we're also learning about what he's going to potentially use on appeal. And the lawyers have indicated that they might try to use a Supreme Court ruling that actually came down in favor of conservative gun rights advocates. The president has criticized it to try to appeal this conviction. Is that something that you see being potentially effective for him?

So I don't think it's necessarily effective. One of the things is that when you have an appeal, you have all kinds of different things that you can argue. And I think you never know. It depends on who's on the court of appeals, who's actually hearing the appeal to determine whether or not it will actually be successful. I don't know under these circumstances whether this will actually work, but I do think it's a good avenue to try to appeal the conviction. All right.

Brandi, thank you very much. Sure. Appreciate it. Coming up next here, the former House Speaker Paul Ryan rebuking Donald Trump publicly again. Ahead, we'll have the backlash to the former Republican leader's comments. Plus, the Senate preparing to vote on IVF protections. Democrats trying to urge Republicans to join them. And a bus hijacked in Atlanta leading to a wild police chase during rush hour. It is one of the five things you have to see this morning.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. What are some of the social service agencies that have supported you and your family growing up? That's Dr. Robert Waldinger. He's a psychiatrist, a professor, and a Zen master. What kind of relationships actually help us maintain happiness? And what should we do in those moments where we have setbacks and things that don't work out? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

What am I going to do when I vote for president? I'm going to write some conservative Republican in who's in office. I haven't selected the person yet. I hate the fact that I feel like I got to write in a Republican like I did the last time in 2020. I voted for him in 2016, hoping that there was going to be a different kind of person in office. That was former House Speaker Paul Ryan telling Fox News he will not vote for the presumptive Republican nominee in November. Ryan, again, framing Trump as unfit for office and pointing to his record to drive home that point. He's cost us...

a lot of seats. I could probably spend some time and come up with the numbers. He cost us the Senate twice. He cost us the House because he is nominated. He is pushing through the primaries, people who cannot win general elections, but who pledged fealty to him. That's not a good way to build and grow a party. Matt Gorman. Paul Ryan. Look, he's come under fire from the left for not being aggressive enough during the time that Trump was president, but he has actually maintained this...

this line in his refusal to vote for Donald Trump that some Republicans like Mitch McConnell is not doing that.

What is going on here with him and what does it tell you about the state of the party today? Look, I think it's easier for Ryan to do it. He's not in office and he's kind of has a nice kind of private sector job. God bless him. It's easier to have that when McConnell's still in office. Who knows if he's going to run again? Probably not. We'll see. But I think that is the kind of might be a difference there. And look, I think the party's changed in the last 10 years. I mean, we just came upon the 10 year anniversary of Eric Cantor losing a primary back in 2014.

And from that day to this day, who would have kind of thought? I will say, look, I respect what Paul Ryan is saying. He has obviously firsthand experience working with him as Speaker of the House. I also don't think it's going to change very many minds. And this is kind of what the other thing...

I talk a lot about the concept Democrats, but I'll say in the context of this I think people price in the fact that you know Trump says all this bad stuff Trump does this jump does that that's fine And I know we're gonna talk a little about abortion later in the show And I think that might be the more salient issue if you're a Democrat to push rather than look at what Trump said now But I respect what he's saying and I think you're right This is the former vice presidential nominee from what 12 years ago, but Paul Ryan's increasingly the the minority in

of the party, right? I mean, anytime we mention sort of this... Kind of an island. Right, right. A small island. Isolated. I mean, anytime we mention sort of these signs of dissent, I think it's also worth mentioning, like, the reason why it's news in a way is because it's becoming increasingly rare to hear a Republican kind of come out and criticize Trump. Love that mag tune. I mean, right? Yeah, but also he's not, I mean, to Matt's point, but he's not in office, right? To me, it's like such an indictment of the

the Republican Party as it stands right now. You have people for whom speaking up and saying Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States might impact their electoral chances. That is a position they should still take if that's what they believe, but they don't. And that tells you a lot about where the Republican Party is today. Well, let's look at how one elected officeholder, Congressman Troy Nels, talked about Paul Ryan with my CNN colleague up on the Hill yesterday. Watch.

A piece of garbage.

It's also like this message, it's like fealty to the great leader rather than making an argument that welcomes a lot of different voices into your party. It's such a bizarre electoral strategy. I understand Trump won in 2016 and since then essentially Republicans have said only Donald Trump is the way we can win despite the fact, as Paul Ryan pointed out, despite the fact that they've actually...

not won an election since. And yet the message you get from Republicans is like, how, you know, first of all, piece of garbage, you know, just coarse language. But also it's like, how dare he criticize the great leader? It's just a bizarre, I don't know. It's just a bizarre mindset. I will say this. I think Troy is a bit of an outlier in a few respects because he was the same guy. Didn't he also, he came to the courthouse and like said a bunch of stuff.

He knows what he has to say to get on TV. And so he knew that saying something saying like this would actually get him time on TV. So I think he might be an outlier in this. I think if you asked almost anybody in the conference, they would not agree with that. But he knows what he has to do to get on TV. But I think you're right in some respects. Look, it's easier when Paul Ryan is out of office as opposed to in office. I know Trump is coming down to D.C. today to have kind of a meeting. And look, he's the leader of the party. I will say this.

We had a primary, right? And he had a one-on-one race with Nikki Haley. He did. And he won. And I think that is, it makes it a lot easier for Republicans. It's not like 2016 where there was this clown car at the end where people were siphoning off votes. So I think it's easier for Trump to take the mantle if he goes down there today and say, look, you had a primary. I won fair and square. Like, we come together. Well, this is the other key. I mean, Paul Ryan also says that he's, he's not saying he's going to vote for Joe Biden.

He's criticizing Trump, but he's not saying he's going to vote for Joe Biden. And when I hear his comments basically expressing disappointment with both candidates, I also wonder, you were talking about the primary, what that means for other voters that may share similar views as Paul Ryan, such as maybe, you know, some of the Haley voters, other members of the Republican Party or voters that...

are disappointed with both of these candidates, what will they do in November? It makes you think about that when you hear those comments. - Yeah, okay, think of Paul Ryan as a Nikki Haley voter. Didn't vote for Trump in '20, not gonna vote for Trump in '24, didn't '16, so where do they go? - Right, exactly. - Yeah, no, it's a really interesting way to think about it. All right, coming up next here, Kevin McCarthy's revenge tour falling short as Congresswoman Nancy Mace wins her Republican primary. Plus, animal rights activists giving King Charles

a portrait, the Wallace and Gromit treatment, okay? And they may seem worlds apart, but this K-pop group has at least one thing in common with the Man in Black. We'll explain. ♪ I keep the ends out for the tie that binds ♪ ♪ Because you're mine, I walk the line ♪

All right, 24 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. A man is in custody after hijacking a commuter bus and leading authorities on a rush hour chase through Atlanta yesterday. Police say 17 people, including the driver, were on board during this, and one of the passengers died after being shot on the bus. Very scary.

Objects hurled once again at British right-wing leader Nigel Farage, who was campaigning from a bus on Tuesday. The man in the red hoodie was eventually caught and charged. Last week, a woman threw a milkshake at Farage. Plus...

Hmm, comedian George Lopez taking heat after cursing at the crowd and walking off stage this past weekend. The California casino where it happened says everyone will get their money back. An animal rights group vandalizing King Charles's portrait in a London gallery, his head covered with a sign reading "No cheese grommet." Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms.

Charles recently became a royal patron of the nonprofit and is reportedly a big fan of the Wallace and Gromit cartoon series, As Am I. If you don't know it, you should check it out. And a California homeowner finding a bear squatting in his crawl space, as in living there. The animal had been enjoying their trash and occasionally their yard for two weeks. How would you like that as a house guest?

No, thank you. All right, ahead here, how Republicans plan to block a vote by Senate Democrats to protect reproductive rights. Plus, can a tic-tac sensation propel President Biden to victory in November? That's a lot to ask of one person, but we'll dig into it.

All right, welcome back. Later this week, the Senate will be voting on legislation to try to ensure nationwide access to IVF treatments. It's a Democratic effort to not only enshrine federal protections for reproductive care, but also highlight Republican resistance ahead of the November election. The vote comes as the country is approaching the two-year anniversary of the downfall of Roe v. Wade.

and made way for a controversial Alabama ruling that threw into question the legality of increasingly used fertility treatments. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling on his Republican colleagues to pass this IVF bill. Protecting IVF should be one of the easiest votes the Senate has taken all year.

The vast majority of senators should agree that strengthening treatments that help people start a family is a good thing. But no way, shape or form is protecting IVF a show vote. It's a show us who you are vote.

All right, joining me now are New York Times reporters Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lair. They are the authors of the new book, The Fall of Roe and the Rise of a New America. Good morning to both of you. Thank you so much for being here. And we'll let Kate and Matt ask some questions as well, because this obviously is a conversation that the country is now having with itself. What

how is the nation going to look in the wake of the fall of Roe, and we are learning kind of every day the new implications that come out of it. Talk a little bit about how you came to write this because you really, I think, set out to answer the question, how was it that Roe fell? What did you learn in the course of reporting this that helps us understand what's going on now? Sure.

We felt it was really important to create a narrative of just what even happened, especially over the last 10 years, because there hadn't really been one, right? This is an issue that's pretty polemical, and instead of just looking

at that side of it. We needed to know what are the facts, because you can't understand where we're going. You know, we're talking about IVF, all kinds of issues that we had not talked about really publicly in campaigns before. I mean, when was the last time anyone talked about IVF as a presidential issue or in the Senate?

I mean, I never remember. Except when we were talking about embryos on the. Yes, there was a conversation, but it was a long time ago. So you can't understand the stakes about where we're going until you understand the pieces of where we've come from. So our book, The Fall of Roe, really takes a look at all the things that maybe people missed about how we ended up where we are.

Yeah, it really is the first narrative of how Roe fell. It's you know, we we did a lot of deep reporting on both sides of this fight. Talk to people who really just opened up about sort of the legal and political strategy in the anti-abortion movement and also how the abortion rights movement failed to see and can in some cases stop what was going on as much as they could.

And so it's really encompassing of the legal strategy and the political strategy of documenting this really historic period in time. And I do think it scrambled our politics massively. I can't think of an issue that scrambled our politics

so quickly and so dramatically as the end of Roe. And so to understand these new politics, and really in some ways to understand this election cycle where abortion has emerged as this determinative issue in a way that it really hadn't been at the presidential level, you have to understand how we got to this point. Yeah, fascinating. And of course, we got to this point in no small part because of...

Samuel Alito is a justice who has come under increasing criticism here. And we actually heard him on tape. This was a liberal activist who recorded him at a dinner where he talked about, and again, this was someone at a party who's approaching him with kind of her view. And he says he agrees, but the word godliness kind of comes up. And I think it really ties into this conversation. Let's just watch a little reminder here, I suppose that, and then we'll talk.

People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that to return our country to a place of godliness. Oh, I agree with you.

So Elizabeth, I mean, you really focus in on the connection between religion and our politics. When you hear that, I mean, how does it tie in with what Lisa does every day, which is cover campaigns? Right. Well, it's not a phrase you normally hear in legal decisions. Godliness, returning the idea of return America to a place of godliness.

But we're seeing more and more in American public life, like basically you name the area where this merging of conservative Christianity and the future, like what a certain segment of mostly right-wing evangelicals and Catholics want for the future of the country. It's a movement that prioritizes opposing abortion, often same-sex marriage, all kinds of these big hot-button cultural issues. And you hear echoes of this

all the way in the highest court, right, with Samuel Alito. It's why we're hearing references to, you know, the flags being flown at his home, right, Appeal to Heaven, which is another conservative Christian sort of, well, actually banner, basically, about what kind of country they want.

Yeah, I mean, I think part of what our book shows that there that, you know, the fall of Roe was accomplished by this web of conservative activists and lawyers and, you know, churches and other and politicians, of course, Republican politicians who are all pulling together. There's no one mastermind, but they were pulling together and, you know, in a way that took generations. And part of that effort was working conservative justices up through the courts and particularly to the Supreme Court.

And, you know, then they made their sort of they got into they made their a deal, a political deal with Donald Trump, helped get him election elected. Donald Trump got three justices on the court, which was pretty unprecedented. And they got these justices who had come up in their movement and were willing to strike at such a landmark legal precedent.

I'm curious, did you find, especially in the wake of kind of the immediate political backlash that I think it's fair to say Republicans are feeling after the fall of Roe, as you're talking to Republicans, do you hear them charting a course forward that is about leaning further into this? Did you hear them recalibrating? I'm just curious sort of—

what the political folks you were talking to, what they feel like the prognosis is. It's so interesting because it wasn't just that Democrats didn't believe Roe could actually fall and abortion, even some abortion rights activists didn't believe Roe could actually fall. Many Republicans

Republicans didn't believe Roe could actually fall. So the policy that was made, as we show in the book, in sort of what we call the Roe era, was built with this understanding that a lot of these things were political positioning, or even if Republicans believed they wanted to end abortion, they didn't actually think

these policies would necessarily be put in place. Then Roe fell and the country was plunged into this series of unprecedented debates and all of a sudden these politicians on both sides had to talk about things like IVF. I think I've heard the word miscarriage in uterus used more in political discourse over the past two years. I don't think I ever heard that in all my years, all our years covering campaigns, Casey, right? And so now everyone is plunged into this world where

abortion rights are not sort of this abstract concept on the national level. Like we're living in this real reality of like how sick does a woman have to be to get a medical exemption? What's sick enough? Like what do these things actually mean? And that's forced, as you're sort of saying, a scrambling of these politics. - I would ask, I would agree with you first of all. - Oh really? - In a lot of respects,

On our side, it was, oh, yeah, we have this kind of thing that's coming. And it really wasn't, for a lot of folks, a very tangible thing until we got very, very close. And I guess to that point, what is one kind of either event or decision that kind of led, that we might have missed within that five, ten-year span prior that you think this was kind of where it was set a little bit on the glide path? Was it the justices? Was it something more minute?

Yeah, and I'm not saying Republicans were not sincere in their desire to end abortion. I think they were. I just think nobody really thought through what it actually would mean in real life tangible impact. You know, it's interesting because our book starts in 2012 and right after the reelection of Barack Obama. And we start in that point because it's really the lowest point for the anti-abortion movement. And if you remember what the country was, it's the moment when conservative Christians

stopping a majority in American public life. It's the moment when Obama's reelected, when Democrats feel ascendant, when they have this abortion rights majority on the Supreme Court. And I think that moment, that Republican autopsy, which I'm sure we all remember. We all remember. Lisa and I covered that campaign together. Yes, we did. We did.

Yes, we sat next to each other on the plane for many, many, many, many days, weeks, where the Republican Party really said, we think abortion's a loser. It's a loser of an issue for us. And that moment, I think, is overlooked because that's the moment when the anti-abortion movement started to claw back. And they really sort of

these activists, I think, dug deep and figured out a new strategy. And their strategy was, we're not shying away from this. We're leaning into it more. And we think our voters and our politicians will support us. And they were right in some ways. And it would be really easy to just find one moment, right? If there was just one thing we all

understood, then we could unlock this mystery. But part of the major success of the anti-abortion movement was their ability not to create one plan, but dozens, hundreds of plans, right? It was this idea that they would leave no stone unturned, they would fell every crack. And eventually, they would build kind of a collective body of work that would

inevitably lead to the overturning of Roe. Yeah, and I think your book also kind of outlines how while these groups were able to do that and had sort of the passion, the dedication to do this for years and years, that was missing from the movement that supported abortion rights.

Oh, it did. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Lisa Lair, Elizabeth Dias, thank you both so much for being here. Again, the book is The Fall of Roe and the Rise of a New America. Highly recommend it. It's a fascinating read. All right, coming up next here, the emotional toll Hunter Biden's federal conviction is having on the president and his family. Plus, Joey Chestnut, remember him, removed from the Nathan's hot dog eating contest last

White organizers, I'm not reading this. They want me to say he was tossed out on his buns. I guess I said it anyway. That's a head. And it's the most famous military man slash musician since this guy. ♪ Everybody let it rock ♪ ♪ Everybody let it rock ♪

All right, 46 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Former Vice President Mike Pence telling Southern Baptists to stick to their principles in November. His comments coming just ahead of a historic vote by the church on whether to bar women from serving as pastors.

A Florida jury finding the Chiquita Banana Company liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group in the early 2000s. Chiquita has been ordered to pay more than $38 million to the families of that terrorist group's victims.

Pamela Smart, remember her, taking full responsibility for her husband's murder for the first time after 34 years in prison. Smart says members of a writing group that she joined encouraged her to seek out spaces she didn't want to be in. In those spaces is where I found myself responsible for something I desperately didn't want to be responsible for, my husband's murder.

Smart was a 22-year-old high school media coordinator when she began an affair with a 15-year-old boy who later fatally shot her husband. And this: The top dog is out at this year's Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. The 16-time champion, Joey Chestnut, was disqualified for striking an endorsement deal with a plant-based food company, Impossible Foods.

That violates major league eating regulations, apparently. Matt Gorman, this is kind of sad. - It's kind of sad. Ended in error, 16 time champion, took over for Takira Kobayashi. Watch Matt, Nematode, Stoney could be the next champion. This is one of the best events of the year. I swear to God, the guy in the gray, the straw hat, George Gray, is an electric host. At noon every July 4th, my dad and I, I have a t-shirt. I love it every single year. It's amazing.

You all should know out there, in the break I asked everyone, hey, like who wants to talk about the hot dog guy? Matt goes, yes, I have no idea what's deep. Yes, I have the t-shirt. I wear it every year. It's fantastic. This is what you live for. We'll bring you back after it happens. All right. Let's turn now to this. It's no secret how I feel about Trump's conviction. So ethically and morally, I have to be consistent and say that in light of this verdict, I don't believe Hunter Biden.

Should be president. Hunter Biden now awaiting sentencing after his felony gun conviction. Yesterday, a federal jury in Delaware found the president's son guilty on all three counts. Two for lying about his drug use on a federal background check, a third for possessing a gun while addicted to or using illegal drugs. The president embracing his newly convicted son on a tarmac in Wilmington shortly after the verdict.

Biden releasing this statement: And of course, this is the first time in American history the child of a sitting president

has been convicted of a crime. Matt, Kate, Zolan are back with us. We're also joined now by national political reporter for Axios, Alex Thompson, who has been covering this trial day in and day out. Welcome, Alex. You've been, I think, in your hotel. Many of our viewers may be familiar with your hotel room in Wilmington. So we're happy to have you here. Look, this has been for the Biden family just fascinating.

you know, the cliche would be airing dirty laundry, right? But he is the president of the United States. The events of this period of time in Hunter Biden's life and in the family's life are incredibly difficult. Now he faces prison time, probably unlikely he'll get it for this particular case.

but it's all out there in the public. I mean, take us inside the room and kind of what it was like to watch this family go through this. - Yeah, absolutely. It's simultaneously a family tragedy, but also sort of a love story too, in which, you know, in the room, the jury barely deliberated at all. It was like three hours and they came back with a guilty verdict. It was so short that actually much of the family wasn't even there for the actual reading of the guilty verdict. It was just Jimmy Biden, the president's brother,

and his wife, Jill Biden was not there, Val Biden was not there. She hurried in basically right after the guilty verdict had been read. And basically the first lady came up and then went straight to the witness holding room and then went to Hunter and then obviously exited with him holding his hand. Hunter Biden, when he heard the verdict, you know, he,

he basically didn't move. He was like just a still portrait. And then right afterward, he just nodded his head three times as if, okay, let's move forward. He hugged his lawyers, he kissed his wife, and then just said, let's get on with it, the next thing. And there's plenty of next things to go beyond appeals, which are definitely going to come potentially on Second Amendment grounds. You also have another trial that honestly, as messy as this one was, the next one might be messier because when you're dealing with a tax case, you're dealing with everything he was spending money on. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot there. Kate Bedingfield, I mean, you, when you were working in the White House, had to grapple with a lot of this as it was unfolding in real time. And one of the things, you know, I think I hadn't quite realized was the level of guilt that the president seems to feel

around what Hunter was going through then. It obviously coincided with a time when he was deciding that he was going to run for president of the United States. Can you kind of take us inside that a little bit? Yeah. So yes, there is an amount of guilt that President Biden feels. He obviously knows that if he were not president, if he were not kind of front and center in our political conversation, Hunter probably would not be dealing with these legal challenges.

But it's also important to understand about that period of time when President Biden was deciding whether or not to run in 2019 that Hunter really encouraged him to run. And Hunter didn't want to be a reason that he didn't run for president. So there was a lot of, you know, Alex called it a love story. There's, you know, there was a lot of mutual love there between the two of them, both of them kind of looking out for each other personally and wanting the other side.

wanting to do what was right for the other. So there are a lot of complicated feelings there, but at its core, a lot of love and a lot of respect. It is also incredibly difficult and challenging for the president, as it is for, I mean, I think any American who has a family member who struggled with addiction. It is a constant clamor

cloud that that can hang over you. And obviously, the president is enormously proud of how far Hunter has come and how he's fought to get to where he is today. And, you know, protecting and preserving that progress that Hunter's made is really important to the Biden family. And we know today in his story as well that the president does still fully believe that that Hunter can continue on this on his road for recovery. But at the same time, it

given all the events going on, he is concerned about what the future holds for his son as well. I think that it's interesting that also you're seeing, and that's evident also in just the movement of the president yesterday. You saw him change his schedule to go to Wilmington. You saw those images as well of him stepping off the plane, immediately embracing his son. I was in Delaware last weekend and thought it was interesting that there, I mean,

every public appearance you saw him basically attached to Hunter Biden, whether they were going to church together or cycling together as well. You've seen him really continue to embrace his son, and I think that will continue as well as the language we saw from President Biden's statement when describing this case, when reacting to it. You're going to see him continue to sort of affirm his love for his son and

you know, continue to express empathy, similar to that moment that we saw in the debate in 2020, when Trump was attacking, was going after Hunter Biden, and the president had one of his more memorable moments where he really stood there and said, look, I stand by my son and I do love him. Yeah. Oh, sorry. No, no, go ahead. Down that, you know, the president's greatest fear is Hunter relapsing. And

anyone knows that's been through family members with addiction, the biggest trigger for a relapse is shame, which is why you have Hunter always, or sorry, Joe Biden always saying, I'm proud of my son. I'm proud of my son. And trying to show that I'm not embarrassed by you. Yeah, what I was going to say was they, I mean, when you're the president, there are cameras for every movement, but

If they didn't want a picture of Joe Biden embracing Hunter Biden yesterday, they could have avoided it, right? Like they did that on purpose. Yeah. When sometimes, when I think sometimes like Joe Biden doesn't even really care about the optics. I mean, I don't think having, you know, Hunter Biden at some of these state dinners alongside Merrick Garland is like the best political optics, but Joe Biden doesn't care.

- Yes, he's always, sorry to interrupt, but yes, he is always gonna put Hunter first, he's always gonna put his family first, and yes, there are times when it's optics be damned. I love my son, and the most important thing to me is being a father. - I guess that's why, kind of considering everything that was said here, I am candidly skeptical. If win or lose, there's not a pardon in the future.

- You're not alone. There are people close to the president that even though he's said this, obviously very publicly, there are some people around him that think he could change his mind. - Yeah, I mean, can we, I think, do we have that, the interview with David Muir where President Biden said that he's not going to pardon his son? All right, we don't have that. But I mean, there is the looming question of this, Alex, and in this other trial as well, I mean,

if he gets off on prison time in this which many of our legal experts have said look like he's a first-time offender it's unlikely that this gun thing could lead even though there's a potential for 25 years it's likely not to hit that however we're talking to a lawyer earlier on this program who said one of the things they could consider if there's a guilty verdict in the next case is that there will also then have been this prior conviction which makes it much more likely I find it very hard

to believe that Joe Biden, the man, if he has the power to get his son out of prison, doesn't do it. Well, and as Kate was just saying, you know, Joe Biden feels responsible for some of this because you have to remember when Joe Biden declares for president,

Hunter Biden is still not in recovery yet. Like Joe Biden announces April of 2019, has his first rally in May of 2019. Hunter Biden does not get sober until June of 2019. And the thing is, if you're running for president in this vicious political environment with a son that has a crack cocaine,

crack cocaine addiction, you know that this is going to probably hurt his life potentially. And it really has. So that's why I think, you know, that's why I think people, as you sort of noted and insinuated, people close to the president think he might ultimately change his mind because he feels guilty.

Also, you referred to the ABC News interview. He did say that he would not pardon his son. There is still the follow-up question of commutation as well. There's multiple forms of clemency. Could there be a sentence, you know, shortened or any sort of relief that way? I would imagine that that question at some point the president will face it. Look, I will say he...

He loves his son unquestioningly. He also loves his country. And he also thinks that it is dangerous that we are in a moment where the rule of law is under attack, where our judicial system is under attack. And so I would say don't underestimate how significant it is to him that a president needs to send a message that

uh, the justice system works that he will not inappropriately put his thumb on the scale. So I think, you know, let's see how things play out. But I would say as somebody who knows Joe Biden very well, I would take him at his word that he believes that, uh, uh,

not sending a signal that he is going to interfere in the way the justice system plays out here is important and genuine. And it puts the hypocrisy of these Republicans on display. Absolutely. I just have to say. Absolutely. The hypocrisy, the way that they're handling this Hunter thing, they're basically saying, well, it's totally not the same. Well, I'm sorry, like,

Republican politicians are looking at, you know, when we've asked them and they've responded to this, you know, the Speaker of the House, for example, said every case is different. The evidence was overwhelming in the Hunter case, but that's not the case in the Trump trial. Yeah, I mean, look, I think at the end of the day, waiting if you're a Republican politician and the Hunter stuff is not going to win you any votes. Let the process play out.

But I am very keen to see. I do think if there's a pardon, I think that could change things. All right. Thank you guys for that conversation. I will leave you with this. The BTS ARMY is celebrating the return of one of their own this morning. BTS member Jin has completed his mandatory military service in South Korea. The K-pop star was seen leaving base today after 18 months in uniform.

He is far, I will say, from the first big pop star to spend time serving his country. Jailhouse rocker Elvis Presley reported to the army after he was drafted in 1958. The king was a soldier until the spring of 1960, and he earned his discharge from the army reserve in 1964.

And then there was this. The man in black, also a man in uniform. Johnny Cash wrote, I walk the line while stationed with the Air Force in Germany. And...

After Jimi Hendrix was caught stealing cars in the early 1960s, a judge gave him two choices, prison or the military. What would you do? He enlisted in the army. All right. Thanks to our panel for being with us. Thanks to you for joining us. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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