GOP Sen. Blunt: Trump Was Baiting the Press with Requests for Biden Probes

On Sunday’s broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said President Donald Trump was not serious when he called on the Chinese government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s business ties in Ukraine.

Partial transcript as follows:

BRENNAN: Are you comfortable with what the president has said here in this call for foreign governments Ukraine and China to investigate his political opponent?

BLUNT: Well I- I doubt if the China comment was serious to tell you the truth. The president–

BRENNAN: You don’t take the president–

BLUNT: The president–

BRENNAN: -at his word?

BLUNT: No the president loves to go out on the- on the White House driveway. I haven’t talked to him about this. I don’t know what the president was thinking. But I do know he loves to bait the press and he does that almost every day to see what you’ll talk about and maybe what he was hoping was–

BRENNAN: So you don’t believe–

BLUNT: –somebody in the press will say–

BRENNAN: –the president, but is that appropriate to ask for a foreign government to interfere in the election?

BLUNT: I- I don’t imagine that’s what he was doing certainly —

BRENNAN: –but is it appropriate?

BLUNT: –We shouldn’t expect the Chinese, the Russians, or any of our other national security adversaries to be helpful in any way and if they do come forward with the information, I think you’d have to seriously question whether there was any veracity to that information or not.

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