Full Episode: Washington Week full episode, June 23, 2023

William Brangham: China and Hunter Biden, just some of the subtexts behind the president's recent state visit.

Joe Biden, U.S. President: Two great friends, two great nations, and two great powers. Cheers.

William Brangham: President Biden hosts a controversial world leader, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with an eye towards countering China's global influence. But the pomp and glamour of the star-studded dinner masked underlying tensions among some of the attendees. 

The president's son, Hunter Biden, in attendance just days after reaching a plea deal with the Justice Department, a deal that set off a political firestorm.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO): We are investigating Hunter Biden, and more importantly, Joe Biden.

William Brangham: Outraged Republicans cry foul and vow to further investigate the president and his family, next.

Thank you. Good evening, and welcome to Washington week. I'm William Brangham.

President Biden welcomed to the Capitol the leader of the world's biggest democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. There were lavish ceremonies, a state dinner, and an address by Modi to the U.S. Congress. The visit was aimed at drawing the US. and India closer together strategically while also countering China's global influence.

Joe Biden:  Challenges and opportunities facing the world require that India and the United States work and lead together, and we are.

William Brangham: And this comes as tensions between the U.S. and China flared up again this week when President Biden referred to President Xi Jinping as a dictator at a California fundraiser. That was just a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken's delicate diplomatic visit to Beijing, which was the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state in five years.

On Thursday, Biden defended his comments.

Joe Biden:  I expect to be meeting with President Xi sometime in the future. I don't think it's had any real consequence.

William Brangham: Joining us tonight is Vivian Salama, she covers national security for The Wall Street Journal, and here with us in the studio, Mary Bruce is the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, and Weijia Jiang is the senior White House correspondent for CBS News. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.

Vivian, before we get to Modi and his visit, I want to talk about another breaking story that is happening tonight in Russia. We are hearing reports out of Moscow of armored columns in the streets. We are hearing reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, has been threatening a coup and there is an arrest out for him. What can you tell us about what is happening in Russia right now?

Vivian Salama, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: William there are pretty extraordinary images unfolding in Moscow as we speak. The city essentially going into lockdown after Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is the leader the Wagner Group, a very infamous mercenary group that has supported the Russian campaign in Ukraine, as well as other places like Syria and across Africa.

Gradually, we've seen a feud developing between Prigozhin and the Russian military as far as how the campaign in Ukraine has been going. And while he's considered widely to be a very close Putin ally, he has been critical of the way this military, this war has been going, saying that losses have been severe and that the management from the military has been awful. And he's called them out for months now.

And so today, he went on a video live and said that, essentially, he was targeted, his men were targeted by the Russian military. And he said he was essentially going to fight back. He's claimed now that he's making his way toward Moscow and so the military has come out and said that he is planning an armed rebellion, essentially a coup.

And so what is essentially happening here is that we are seeing cracks in the seemingly impenetrable facade that the Russian government has portrayed up until now with regard to support and the backing on its campaign in Ukraine, where you have this very influential figure coming out and calling them out on severe losses and severe mismanagement of this. And so, obviously, still unfolding, but something we have to watch very closely.

William Brangham: indeed. Vivian, thanks for that update.

Let's pivot back to the events here this week. Mary, Narendra Modi's visit, this was just the third official visit that President Biden has had. remind us of the importance of how this visit unfolded here this week.

Mary Bruce, Chief White House Correspondent, ABC News: It was pretty remarkable. It was only the third state visit and we did see the White House do the full pomp and circumstance. You had thousands of people on the south lawn, a full lavish state dinner. And, of course, it was not without controversy.

As you mentioned, Modi is someone who prides himself as being a leader of this huge democratic superpower. And yet it comes at a time when we, of course, have seen a lot of those basic democratic rights eroding in his country. You are seeing a backslide when it comes to freedom of the press, religious, political freedom. And so this White House took a lot of heat for meeting with Modi.

And yet it's a balancing act that we have certainly seen presidents do in the past where they want to shore up a relationship with a country, with a controversial leader. The president saying -- he said he was going to bring up human rights issues. He addressed a question about it during that press availability.

But what struck me sitting in the east room, watching them field questions was the history of the moment, because we actually saw Modi do something he has never done in his nine-year tenure, and that is to take a live question from a reporter, something that perhaps all of us take for granted. Even this conversation is something that would be remarkable to many.

And to see the look on the faces of the Indian reporters was pretty wild. And it also reminded me in the moment of the power of the White House to force essentially Modi into that situation. He didn't have to do that. And yet this president, this administration, felt that it was important that they put him into a situation where he would have to take a question. Whether he would actually answer it was another issue.

And because they knew it was going to be a question about this very issue about human rights, it certainly gave the Biden administration a chance to make it appear that they were tackling that issue. Am I of any assumption that Modi is going to change his ways because he fielded a question? Certainly not, but it showed the power of the White House to stand up for those very democratic values that here are at stake.

William Brangham: Weijia, the White House seemed eager to downplay these issues that Mary is talking about of Modi's human rights record, arguing that this is a strategic relationship that we care a great deal about, and the subtext being we care about India and their ability to help counter China.

Help us understand how that might actually work. What are the things that India could do to be a buffer against China for the U.S.?

Weijia Jiang, Senior White House Correspondent, CBS News: So, everything at the center of the president's foreign policy is China and continuing the effort to isolate China, especially when it comes to the economy and when it comes to U.S. dependence on China. And that is why this relationship is so important to the White House.

And even though the president reiterated himself that they talked about human rights and democratic values behind closed doors, it's incredibly important to set the stage, as Beijing is watching, to show that we are moving away from our need for you, for things when it comes to technology, when it comes to semiconductors. In fact, they just announced a massive deal today at the White House to invest millions and millions of dollars into India so that the U.S. wouldn't rely so much on China for this. And so that is one way.

They also have formed a quad relationship with not only India, but Australia as well, and the U.S. and being in the region. I think that everything strategically at this moment is to prepare for China's nonstop goal of trying to become the superpower with a capital T.

And so, despite all of these issues that Mary just brought up, this was incredibly important for the president to roll out the red carpet to show that the U.S. is invested in not only nurturing but building this relationship even more.

Carl Hulse, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New York Times: I would say there's some real domestic political considerations here, too. The Indian-American voting bloc is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing voting bloc in the country. And you see many more Indian-American politicians. You see it in the Republican primary, you see it in Congress, in the House, when you look out on the floor now. So, both parties are maneuvering here.

I think the general sense is that that bloc was more favorable to Democrats and to Biden in the last election. So, there's a lot going on domestically at the same time this international intrigue is. But I got to agree with Mary. Presidents have made their careers pushing these considerations into the background when there's a serious strategic advantage.

And I think in his speech to the House and to the joint meeting of Congress, he sort of cleared the bar that he had to clear, but it was minimal. I mean, there wasn't this enthusiasm that I've seen for other speakers, and they were filling seats with pages and other staff, although it was horribly scheduled on a Thursday afternoon, because most people leave Congress on Thursday.

Weijia Jiang: And to your point, today the White House was asked whether President Biden was satisfied with the prime minister's remarks and response to those questions about human rights and democracy, and the answer was, he was satisfied with the opportunity to talk to him about it. So, it was couched in the way you would expect.

William Brangham: Vivian, can I ask you about this, the other issue relating to China, which is President Biden being overheard calling Xi Jinping a dictator. I mean, on one level, that is a classic gaffe in that it is terribly timed. On the other hand, President Xi also does fit most traditional definitions of a dictator. President Biden seems to think that this is not that big of a deal and this will all blow over. Is that your sense? Do you think the Chinese will really take an affront to this?

Vivian Salama: Whether or not they take an affront to it, they know that they can't afford to make it into a big deal. And we saw that this week because President Biden's comments, remember, came just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leaving Beijing for this very high-stakes trip, which was postponed from February after the balloon incident, the spy balloon incident. And so they finally made it happen, and both sides emphasized how keen they were to get over their differences and try to find some common understanding because they knew the stakes were so high.

And so these unscripted remarks that came from President Biden just on the heels of that visit were worrisome, caught a lot of people in the administration off guard who had been working to kind of rebuild the ties and the communication between Beijing and Washington. But what they tried to do is downplay it on both sides.

The very interesting thing that happened immediately after President Biden made those comments is that there was a demarche, an official summoning of the ambassador, the U.S. ambassador, Nicholas Burns, to Beijing, and he was essentially reprimanded. They gave him a good finger wagging. But, usually, Chinese state media would advertise something like this. They would parade it around, and they would celebrate when there's a demarche.

And this time, there wasn't a single mention of it because they did not want, A, to draw attention to the fact that anyone, let alone the president of the United States was referring to their president as a dictator, but, B, also, they're very keen on just building from that momentum from Secretary Blinken's trip and having some productive outcome come out of it. And so that's where we stand right now. And so the White House, when they keep on saying there's no fallout, that's their hope. And so far, it seems that Beijing is on the same page.

William Brangham: All right. Vivian Salama, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your reporting.

And although Prime Minister Modi was the official guest of honor this Thursday night, it was President Biden's son, Hunter, who also turned heads. He mingled in the crowd just days after news of his plea agreement with the DOJ set off a political firestorm. He is expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and will admit to illegally owning a gun. If a judge accepts the terms, Biden will likely avoid prison time.

But outraged House Republicans blasted that agreement and vowed to continue investigating the president and his family.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): It continues to show the two-tier system in America. If you are the president's son, you get a sweetheart deal.

Now, this does nothing to our investigation. It actually should enhance our investigation.

William Brangham: But Attorney General Merrick Garland has rejected accusations that Biden received any special treatment.

Merrick Garland, Attorney General: Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department by claiming that we do not treat like cases alike. Nothing could be further from the truth.

William Brangham: This also comes as two IR⁠S whistleblowers have alleged that the investigation into Hunter Biden was repeatedly interfered with to favor the president's son. So, a lot of political intrigue going on here right now.

Weijia, were you surprised that Hunter Biden was brought to this state dinner the same week that he had this plea deal announced that they didn't hide him away, he was welcomed with full fanfare?

Weijia Jiang: No, I wasn't surprised. And, you know, the White House's response to this was that, you know, this is still the son of a president. And I don't think that the strategy right now is to run away from it. I think they want to show that he is a real person, that he is, unlike some of his Republican counterparts, who the Republicans have been trying to compare him to, he fesses up. He admits wrongdoing.

And there is a clear separation between the White House and the DOJ. At least that is what the Biden team is trying to portray. And so I think it made sense to me that they didn't want to hide him because they didn't want to have an appearance that he had done something even further wrong because they wanted to move on from this. They wanted to show that he is, in fact, trying to rebuild his life after years of addiction, which is also something that they are very willing to talk about.

Mary Bruce: And I think also Joe Biden is in this position of having to respond to this personally and politically. And I think Joe Biden, the father, is always going to take first bidding over Joe Biden, the politician. And when he looks back at this, this is incredibly painful for the president. And I think him showing to his son, to the world, come to dinner at the White House --

William Brangham: You still have my embrace.

Mary Bruce: Exactly. It's not just sending a message to the world, to his political opponents who are clearly going to do their best to try and keep this in the conversation. They think there's a lot here left to be investigated politically, even if criminally. The Republicans charges have not been substantiated at all by this agreement, right? They're not bringing any criminal charges linked to Hunter Biden's business dealings.

But the President, I think, is responding first and foremost as a devoted father who has stood by his son through struggles with addiction and has always said that he supports him. So, he's not distancing himself from Hunter Biden but he is distancing himself from this investigation so as not to fuel the political fire.

Carl Hulse: I thought if you had written a movie script that had that state dinner with the president, the president's son, who just admitted to wrongdoing the two House Republican leaders who are pursuing him, and the president, and the attorney general who is trying to avoid the whole mess all at the same dinner, somebody would say that could never happen.

But the Republicans, no matter what Hunter Biden agreed to and admitted to, the Republicans were always going to say that this is a two-tiered justice system, that Trump is being treated differently than Hunter Biden. And with these whistleblowers now, they've finally made a little headway. This is really sort of the first time that they've had seemed to have some credible -- we'll see how credible --

William Brangham: these are two whistleblowers who have come forward who have said that the investigation was hampered, that there were delays, they slow walked it, they gave Biden's lawyers heads-up when they shouldn't have.

Carl Hulse: And that they finally have a little something to grab onto, that there was some unequal treatment and that Hunter Biden wasn't treated the way a normal person being investigated for tax fraud was.

However, it's still about Hunter Biden. It's not Joe Biden. They're trying to drag Joe Biden in that, as you saw Lauren Boebert there say. So, there's this new transcript of -- I think it's a text message that he is supposedly have been talking about his father. Hunter Biden's lawyer came out today and said that Hunter Biden is speaking only for himself, no one else in the family.

So, we'll see where they can go with this but it's obviously not going away. They're going to continue this all the way through the election but they still haven't really made the direct link to the president, but they're going to try very hard to do that.

William Brangham: Mary, this text message that Carl is talking about is a text message where Hunter Biden is speaking to, we believe, a Chinese official. And he's basically saying, I'm sitting next to my father. This was when Biden was no longer vice president and was not president yet. But he's saying, I'm sitting next to my dad. And if you don't do this deal with me, in essence, there's going to be hell to pay. Do you think that that adds to the Republicans' case that there really is more here?

Mary Bruce: They certainly are trying to make that point right. This is this alleged WhatsApp message between Hunter Biden and someone that he was doing business dealings with in China, frustrated obviously that they weren't moving ahead with some energy deal that he was hoping that he would be able to close. And to Carl's point, Hunter Biden's lawyers, the White House have all said the president knows nothing about this. There was no connection to the president, then former vice president who wasn't in office at the time.

This also was a time when Hunter Biden was heavily addicted to drugs, through his own admission. But I do think Republicans are certainly going to try very hard to do whatever they can to keep this in the conversation.

What will be interesting to see is whether we learn any more from the Trump-appointed prosecutor, David Weiss, who I think there are many questions about. Obviously, he looked into all of these things. Did he know about this WhatsApp message? Was this something that he was looked at? Why didn't he bring any criminal charges linked to Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings? And the attorney general, Merrick Garland, was asked about this today and he said he would support David Weiss testifying at some point or commenting about this when it was appropriate.

So, I do wonder if at some point we may get more transparency that may answer some Republicans' questions, just clear things up in an attempt just to hear it out loud.

Carl Hulse: And he had written a letter to Jim Jordan in Congress saying, I had full discretion to make the decisions here. Now, there's some question whether that is true, but he put it in writing. So, there's a lot to disentangle here but I think the Republicans are going to keep at it and they move slightly towards impeaching the president.

Weijia Jiang: Well, trying to connect the dots between Hunter and his father is one thing, but I think the other thing you're seeing here from Republicans is just really trying to chip away at President Biden's credibility, because he has already said so adamantly that he knew nothing about his son's business dealings and this particular text message would show otherwise after the president said he didn't know and then the White House officially said that the President didn't know. And so they're trying to paint this picture of he actually did know and lied about it.

William Brangham: Right. And there's still no evidence that Joe Biden was sitting next to Hunter when that text was happening. We just don't know that. And maybe that's another line of investigation.

The other argument that the Republicans keep making, which is that this is the weaponization of the DOJ, and that this is President Biden directing Merrick Garland and his DOJ to target his rivals, Donald Trump principally. Although we saw in your own paper, Carl, that remarkable report showing how the DOJ under Merrick Garland was very reluctant to open an investigation about January 6th and then-President Trump and any of his colleagues were involved in all of that. So, do you think that that level, that argument will continue?

Carl Hulse: Yes, they will continue. But Merrick Garland is a very conservative person and a lot of people think he was way too reluctant to do several investigations and move too slowly. But both sides are speaking to their base. The Republicans are just trying -- they need to keep their folks focused on Merrick Garland, that Donald Trump is being treated unfairly no matter what's going on in the courts. And so they're going to stick with that.

William Brangham: Mary, do you have a sense of what the next step in the investigation for the Republicans is? Is it more of this pulling at these threads or are there other things you think they're going to pursue?

Mary Bruce: I think they're going to pull at all the threads they can pull at, right? So, whether there is more to what was released in these transcripts, from these whistleblowers, I think they're going to look through everything that they can just simply to keep it in the conversation.

Because to Weijia's point, just because something may be, you know, inappropriate or amoral even, doesn't mean that it's criminal, certainly any kind of behavior. It also doesn't necessarily link it to the president. And, of course, Hunter Biden was not in the administration. He's not running for president, he's not on any ballot. But it doesn't matter, I think, in a lot of ways when it comes to just the optics of it and trying to keep this alive in the conversation. Because as long as Donald Trump is having the legal challenges that he's having, if they can continue to talk about Hunter Biden and keep that conversation up, I think, politically, they feel that there is still a lot of opportunity here for them to keep up these political investigations certainly as we go towards November.

Carl Hulse: But remember that Kevin McCarthy got in trouble for talking about how Benghazi, the Benghazi investigation was a benefit because it served its goal of lowering Hillary Clinton's poll numbers. So, Kevin McCarthy has some experience in this area.

Mary Bruce: And on the flip side of that I think you're going to continue to see the White House just try to distance themselves as much as possible while also reiterating that the president has never discussed this investigation with Merrick Garland. They are doing everything they can to try and underscore the fact that they believe in the independence of the Justice Department.

But you have these two very different conversations going on where the president is doing everything he can to look presidential and just keep going on with the day job while all of this is playing out, to try and just make it look like the Republicans are being chaotic while he is governing and being presidential. That's their strategy in tackling this and their campaign strategy writ large.

William Brangham: Weijia do you have a sense of inside the White House with the Bidens themselves, how this plea deal that Hunter took sits with them? Is it an exhalation? Is it a moment of relief? How are they seeing it, just in a few seconds we have left?

Weijia Jiang: I think that there are certainly reports that the president was relieved. And I think that, overall, the bottom line these are federal charges. And it is remarkable that a president's son is pleading guilty to them. But they, to Mary's earlier point, are not what the Republicans had wanted or expected to come out of this investigation.

And so I do think that there is relief because it shows in their mind that there is no there, there. Of course, Republicans would say something very different and say that the DOJ is just covering there. But I think, to your question, yes, the White House can say there are no charges that --

William Brangham: Excuse me. I'm sorry, we've got to suddenly wrap. Thank you so much. I want to thank everybody here for joining us tonight. Thank you so much for being here.

And I'm William Brangham. Good night from WASHINGTON WEEK.