A Fox News contributor on Sunday night messed up his delivery of the breaking news that President Joe Biden was planning on pardoning his son, Hunter, days before he was set to be sentenced on federal gun and tax charges.
Charlie Hurt was tasked with reading the news shortly after it was first reported, though he mixed up Biden’s name with President-elect Donald Trump, prompting his co-hosts to jump in and correct the record.
“NBC News is reporting that President Trump has decided he will pardon his son Hunter,” Hurt said as a “Fox News Alert” graphic played across the screen.
“This comes ahead of… what did I say?” Hurt continued, looking across the desk to his co-hosts for help.
“You said President Trump, but it is Biden,” comedian Tom Shillue answered.
“Close enough,” Fox anchor Julie Banderas quipped.
“As you noted he is still the president,” Shillue added, flashing a grin to the camera.
The panel on Fox’s The Big Weekend Show continued by musing that “everyone” knew the move was coming—despite the president’s repeated insistence that he had no plans to issue a pardon for his son.
In a statement accompanying the pardon, President Biden wrote that his son was “treated differently” than other defendants charged with similar offenses—and laid the blame for the “unfair” treatment squarely at the doorstep of his Republican rivals in Congress.
“From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,” Biden wrote.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he added.
The first son was previously scheduled for sentencing on gun charges on Dec. 12—a conviction that carries up to 25 years in prison. A second sentencing hearing on tax evasion charges in California was set to take place the following Monday, and carried with them a maximum of an additional 17 years.
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