Moment Donald Trump stormed out of interview as Biden bombshell emerges
More footage has emerged of Donald Trump’s abrupt exit from a TV interview, while a former business partner of Hunter Biden has shed more light on Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings. WATCH VIDEO
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Donald Trump followed through after tweeting that he will publish an “unedited preview” of his 60 Minutes sit-down to show viewers that the interview was a “vicious attempted ‘takeout’” by correspondent Lesley Stahl when he posted a portion of the interview on Facebook on Thursday (local time).
A few hours later, Mr Trump’s Facebook page released the footage, reports Fox News.
In a preview released by CBS network in the US, Mr Trump and Stahl disagreed over the state of the economy prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” the president said before Stahl chimed in, “You know that’s not true.”
Mr Trump was also shown saying China is America’s biggest foreign adversary.
“They’re a competitor. They’re a foe in many ways, but they’re an adversary, I think what happened was disgraceful, should never have happened. They should never have allowed this plague to get out of China and go throughout the world,” Mr Trump said.
60 Minutes noted in its tweet that the show “has a history of asking tough questions of presidential candidates during the run-up to the election,” and Sunday’s episode will also feature an interview with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Sources told Fox News that Stahl was “extremely hostile” and that she began the interview along the lines of “get ready for some tough questions.”
Earlier this week, Trump lashed out at Stahl for not wearing a mask at the White House following the interview.
“Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interview with me. Much more to come,” the president teased.
The tweet was presumed to be a reference to the ongoing criticism the Trump administration receives from members of the media for not strictly following CDC guidelines that urge mask-wearing and social-distancing.
TRUMP’S TWITTER ‘HACKED’
It comes as reports emerged that Mr Trump’s Twitter account was allegedly hacked last week, after a Dutch researcher correctly guessed the president’s password: “maga2020!”, according to Dutch media.
Security expert Victor Gevers claimed he had access to Mr Trump’s direct messages, could post tweets in his name and change his profile, De Volkskrant newspaper reported.
Mr Gevers, who said he previously managed to log into Mr Trump’s account in 2016 claimed he gained access by guessing Mr Trump’s password. He tried “maga2020!” on his fifth attempt and said it worked.
“I expected to be blocked after four failed attempts. Or at least would be asked to provide additional information,” Mr Gevers told De Volkskrant.
Twitter, however, denied the report. “We’ve seen no evidence to corroborate this claim, including from the article published in the Netherlands today. We proactively implemented account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the United States, including federal branches of government,” a Twitter spokesman said in a statement.
MORE BOMBSHELL BIDEN CLAIMS EMERGE
Meanwhile, a former business partner of Joe Biden’s son Hunter says the Democratic presidential candidate has leveraged his political position to make millions of dollars.
Tony Bobulinski, whose name was on the email chain in an email published last week by the New York Post detailing business dealings between members of the Biden family and a Chinese company, told Fox News that Mr Biden was the “big guy” referred to in the messages.
Mr Biden was further implicated in his son’s business dealings in a text message shared by Bobulinski, which warned him “don’t mention Joe”.
It was one of several messages obtained by Fox News that apparently show Mr Bobulinski being instructed by another man involved in the scheme to not refer in written correspondence to the former Vice President in a 2017 business deal with China.
“Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u (sic) are face-to-face, I know u (sic) know that but they are paranoid,” the text message, shared on Twitter by Fox News chief congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel.
May 20, 2017 text exchange obtained by #FoxNews - Tony Bobulinski is warned by business partner James Gilliar "Don't mention Joe being involved, it's only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid", which I'm told is a reference to Joe Biden. pic.twitter.com/TB0UlEfOg0
— Mike Emanuel 🇺🇸 (@MikeEmanuelFox) October 22, 2020
Mr Biden said this week the reports had no merit and were part of a “smear campaign” but the Biden campaign and Hunter Biden have not denied Biden Jr owned the laptop which contained the emails and was handed to authorities and eventually the New York Post.
The astonishing claims in a statement to Fox News came on the eve of the final presidential debate and was expected to feature heavily in attacks from Donald Trump on his rival.
Mr Bobulunksi said in his statement that he was a Democrat and former navy lieutenant who had no “political axe to grind”, was reluctant to come forward and confirm the contents of the controversial emails but that he did so because he “saw behind the Biden curtain and I grew concerned with what I saw”.
“The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China,” he said.
”I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen first-hand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”
He also said the he believed the Chinese saw their dealings with Hunter Biden as “political or influence investment”.
“Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese,” Mr Bobulunksi said.
BOMBSHELL! Hunter Biden ex-business partner speaks. Tony Bobulinski says “Big Guy†Joe Biden helped solicit $millions from communist China: “I’ve seen VP Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not trueâ€. https://t.co/gbTqEZMpFD
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) October 22, 2020
Reporting on the Hunter Biden story has been censored by social media companies and this latest expose was not spared, with Twitter putting a warning on sharing of the article in the New York Post.
The email chain included a proposed equity split references “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?”.
“The reference to ‘the Big Guy’ in the much publicised May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden,” Mr Bobulinski said.
Bobulinski said he is the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, which he explained “was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family.”
The Biden campaign was yet to comment on the new revelations.
OBAMA’S BLISTERING ATTACK ON TRUMP
Barack Obama launched a blistering attack on his successor in his last minute campaign debut as details emerged of Iranian and Russian plotters trying to steal the presidential election.
In a dramatic day less than two weeks before poll day, Mr Obama hit out at Mr Trump over everything from his tweeting habit to his mishandling of the pandemic and “treating the presidency like a reality show he can use to get attention.
“Tweeting at the television doesn’t fix things. Making stuff up doesn’t make things better,” he said at a socially-distanced drive-in rally in Pennsylvania.
“We got thirteen days. That’s our lucky number right here.
“Thirteen days until the most important election of our lifetimes.
“What we do these next thirteen days will matter for decades to come.”
The fiery address stood in stark contrast to the rare and low-key appearances from Democrat candidate Joe Biden, who has absented himself from the campaign trail this week.
“The thing is, this is not a reality show. This is reality,” Mr Obama said.
“The rest of us have had to live with the consequences of him proving himself incapable of taking the job seriously.
“At least 220,000 Americans have died. More than 100,000 small businesses have closed. Millions of jobs are gone. Our proud reputation around the world is in tatters.”
He slammed recent revelations Mr Trump continues to hold a Chinese bank account.
“He’s got a secret Chinese bank account. How is that possible? Can you imagine if I had had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for re-election?” He said.
“You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would have called me Beijing Barry.”
Campaigning in North Carolina, Mr Trump continued his attacks on the Biden family, sparking chants of “lock him up” in reference to Mr Biden’s son Hunter.
Earlier, Mr Biden had finally addressed reports about Hunter’s business dealings, saying they didn’t have “any legitimacy”.
“None whatsoever,” he told Wisconsin TV station WISN.
The Democratic presidential candidate has been accused of “hiding in his basement” this week to avoid questions about a cache of emails uncovered by the New York Post that tie Mr Biden to his son Hunter’s questionable business dealings.
Mr Biden has previously refused to answer questions about the story, which ignited a firestorm of controversy in the US after social media companies censored the article, with Facebook limiting its reach and Twitter locking accounts that shared the exclusive story.
He earlier yelled at one reporter and laughed at another who asked his reaction to the reports.
But Mr Biden has notably not denied the laptop belonged to his youngest son and whether the emails were real.
The FBI is now investigating the laptop, according to Fox News.
Mr Biden said reports about the laptop, which was handed to the Post by Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were “garbage”.
“This is the same garbage, Rudy Giuliani and his henchman,” he said.
“It’s a last-ditch effort in his desperate campaign to smear me and my family.”
TRUMP’S LAWYER IN SHOCK BORAT FILM SCENE
It came as Mr Giuliani was enduring his own personal scandal, after being caught apparently fondling himself on the new Borat film from serial prankster Sacha Baron Cohen.
Widely shared imagery from the film, showed the former New York mayor lying on a bed with his hand down his pants in front of a young actress.
But he said the video was “a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment.”
“At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar,” he said.
In the clip, “Tutar” suggests that 76-year-old Giuliani join her for a drink in a hotel suite – but it’s rigged with hidden cameras.
The former mayor of New York City can be seen fiddling with his untucked shirt and reaching into his trousers as Bakalova removed his microphone.
They’re interrupted by the film’s protagonist Borat Sagdiyev, who barges in and declares that his 15-year-old daughter Tutar is “old for you.”
The Editorial Director of Motherjones, Ben Dreyfuss, said Mr Giuliani didn’t have his hands down his pants and was merely adjusting his shirt.
“I have now seen the scene with Rudy Giuliani and though it is creepy for other reasons it is being described on Twitter in a false way,” Dreyfuss said.
“He does not have his hand down his pants in a sexual way. He is tucking his shirt back in after she untucks it removing his mic.”
“The scene is confusingly edited for comedic purposes which makes sense since this is a comedy film and not a 60 Minutes expose,” he added.
“It would be good to keep that in mind in light of the flattening of media where everything can seem like everything else.”
In it, Mr Giuliani can be seen drinking scotch, coughing loudly, and failing to socially-distance from the person he thinks is a Russian reporter.
He can be heard praising the president’s COVID-19 response for saving American lives – before agreeing to eat a bat with his fake interviewer.
Dreyfuss noted that the “bat thing” was a joke which Mr Giuliani agreed to out of politeness.
In the footage, Giuliani appears to think he is being courted by Ms Bakalova, 24, who is posing as a right-wing journalist.
Mr Giuliani claims the footage is “a complete fabrication” and strongly denies any wrongdoing.
“I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment,” he continued. “At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar,” Mr Giuliani tweeted.
On July 7, Mr Giuliani said he called New York police to report a man wearing a “crazy” outfit.
“This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit,” Mr Giuliani said, according to the New York Post.
“It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.
“This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shakedown, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away.”
“I only later realised it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.”
At the time, US police found no crime was committed.
In the highly anticipated movie, Borat is on a mission from the Kazakh government to bribe an ally of Mr Trump in order to ingratiate his country with the White House.
Its description reads: “To be more specific, this is the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Chenqui!”
The premise of the hilarious flick is Borat gifting his teenage daughter to Vice President Mike Pence.
Before the Borat footage emerged, Mr Giuliani had obtained a hard drive from Hunter Biden’s MacBook Pro, which contained unverified emails relating to his Ukrainian dealings.
The leaked data also included a “compromising” video of Joe Biden’s son allegedly smoking crack while engaging in a sex act.
IRAN, RUSSIA ‘INLFUENCE’ ELECTION
Meanwhile, the FBI announced that Iranian spies were responsible for a series of emails sent to Democrat voters in Florida threatening them to vote for Mr Trump.
Purporting to be from the “proud boys” militant group, but FBI director Christopher Wray said they were directed by Tehran.
Russian hackers had also “taken specific actions to influence public opinion relating to our elections”, said director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe.
The countries had obtained publicly available voter registration information, Mr Ratcliffe said.
“This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion and sow chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy,” Mr Ratcliffe said.
Mr Biden and Mr Trump face off Friday at the second and final presidential debate in Nashville.
Earlier, Mr Trump narrowed his focus on key state Pennsylvania.
Casting the choice between a vote for him or Democrat Joe Biden as one that would “kill the American dream” he warned the crowd in rural Erie that the end of fracking would destroy their economy.
“He’s going to double, triple and now quadruple your taxes,” he said to cheers.
“I think I know the people of Erie pretty well. They don’t like that. It’s a choice between our plan to kill the virus and Biden‘s plan to kill the American dream,” Mr Trump said.
“That’s what he’ll be doing. Biden will delay therapies, postpone the vaccine, prolong the pandemic, close your schools, shut down our country, and by the way Pennsylvania’s been shut down long enough.”
The Biden campaign says it has no plan to abolish fossil fuels, but Mr Trump played video of Mr Biden and VP pick Kamala Harris previously saying they would ban fracking during the primary campaign.
“Joe Biden will ban fracking and abolish Pennsylvania energy,” he said.
TRUMP STORMS OUT OF INTERVIEW
It comes as reports emerged that Donald Trump had abruptly walked out of an interview with US 60 Minutes.
According to a CNN report, the commander-in-chief abruptly stormed out of the interview with 60 Minutes’ reporter Lesley Stahl after about 45 minutes of questioning.
The president was also meant to appear with Vice President Mike Pence but did not return to the room when his second in command arrived, the report said.
The crisis grew when White House assistant press secretary Karoline Leavitt publicly accused Stahl of criticising her for not wearing a mask in the West Wing.
“This is moments after she criticised me for not wearing a mask while working at my desk. Rules for thee but not for me, Lesley?” Leavitt wrote in a tweet sharing the video.
A New York Times report said the president cut the interview short when he became irritated with Stahl’s questioning, citing two people familiar with the situation.
Kayleigh McEnany presenting Lesley Stahl (@60Minutes) with some of the many things we’ve done for Healthcare. Lesley had no idea! pic.twitter.com/8bfIxkFiXt
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2020
In a subsequent missive, the commander-in-chief threatened to spoil the show’s big scoop by sharing the footage before it airs in the US on Sunday night, calling the sit-down “fake and biased.”
“Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interview with me. Much more to come,” the president tweeted to his 87 million followers.
He later tweeted: “I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME! This will be done so everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about … Everyone should compare this terrible Electoral Intrusion with the recent interviews of Sleepy Joe Biden!”
BIDEN SLAMS ‘SMEAR’ CAMPAIGN
Joe Biden has finally addressed reports about his son Hunter’s business dealings, saying they didn’t have “any legitimacy”.
“None whatsoever,” he told Wisconsin TV station WISN.
The Democratic presidential candidate has been accused of “hiding in his basement” this week to avoid questions about a cache of emails uncovered by the New York Post that tie Mr Biden to his son Hunter’s questionable business dealings.
Mr Biden has previously refused to answer questions about the story, ignited a firestorm of controversy in the US after social media companies censored the article, with Facebook limiting its reach and Twitter locking accounts that shared the exclusive story.
He earlier yelled at one reporter and laughed at another who asked his reaction to the reports.
But Mr Biden has notably not denied the laptop belonged to his youngest son and whether or the emails were real.
The FBI is now investigating the laptop, according to Fox News.
Mr Biden said reports about the laptop, which was handed to the Post by Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were “garbage”.
“This is the same garbage, Rudy Giuliani and his henchman,” he said.
“It’s a last-ditch effort in his desperate campaign to smear me and my family.”
MELANIA PULLS OUT OF RALLY
First Lady Melania Trump cancelled a rare joint appearance with her husband at a campaign rally due to a “lingering cough” following her coronavirus battle, a White House spokeswoman said.
“Mrs Trump continues to feel better every day following her recovery from COVID-19, but with a lingering cough, and out of an abundance of caution, she will not be travelling,” Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Mr Trump, his wife and their son, Barron Trump, all tested positive for the virus earlier this month and have since recovered.
In an essay published on the White House website, Mrs Trump said her battle with the virus had been “a roller coaster of symptoms” that hit her “all at once.”
“I experienced body aches, a cough and headaches, and felt extremely tired most of the time. I chose to go a more natural route in terms of medicine, opting more for vitamins and healthy food,” she wrote.
Mr Trump’s rally in Erie, Pennsylvania., was due to be the first lady’s first campaign event after a more than year-long absence from the campaign trail, reports the New York Post.
Aside from her Rose Garden speech at the Republican National Convention in August, the last time Mrs Trump appeared at a campaign event was at her husband’s re-election kick-off rally in Florida in June 2019.
Following his hospitalisation with the respiratory bug, Mr Trump has described feeling like “Superman” after doctors treated him with an experimental cocktail of antiviral drugs by Regeneron.
TRUMP SLAMS HUNTER BIDEN
Mr Trump made a fiery appearance on US TV on Tuesday morning (local time), lashing out at Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who is accused of dodgy business dealings in a bombshell New York Post report.
Mr Trump said Hunter Biden was acting like a “vacuum cleaner” as he followed his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on foreign trips to make business deals.
“I mean his son walked around like a vacuum cleaner … and look, this is the laptop from hell,” Mr Trump said on Fox News’ Fox & Friends in the US.
“They say right in the laptop that, you know, the big man has to get 10 per cent. And then in another case they say 50 per cent. This is 100 per cent. And even if he didn’t get any, and he lives like a king, even if he didn’t get all of this money — and everybody has known this in Washington for a long time — this isn’t surprising, nobody is surprised by this. But even if he didn’t. You can’t go to China and all of a sudden walk out with $1.5 billion to manage,” the Mr Trump said.
The New York Post reported last week that emails found on a laptop left at a computer repair shop in Delaware by Hunter Biden contained a cache of emails about his dealings with Ukraine and his efforts to create a business relationship with China.
“You can’t go to Ukraine and have him get $183,000 a month with a $3 million upfront payment. You can’t get $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow’s wife. $3.5 million — and you have no experience, you didn’t have a job until the father became vice president. It’s a disgrace. When he says ‘I don’t know anything about this,’ and the media can’t cover it,” Mr Trump said.
Emails found on the computer appear to show that the elder Biden stood to profit off his son’s relationship with a Chinese energy company.
Reference to the “big guy” was included in an email discussing remuneration packages for a deal Hunter Biden was forging with Chinese energy company CEFC.
The email outlined a “provisional agreement” under which 80 per cent of the “equity,” or shares in the new company, would be split equally among four people whose initials correspond to the sender and three recipients, with “H” apparently referring to Hunter Biden.
The deal also listed “10 Jim” and “10 held by H for the big guy?”
“The big guy” refers to the elder Biden, sources have told Fox News.
In another email sent to Hunter Biden, an adviser on the board of Burisma thanks the son for giving him the “opportunity” to meet his father.
The email was sent when Hunter Biden had a lucrative seat on the board and his father was the vice president and in charge of American policy in Ukraine.
PRESSURE MOUNTS AS BIDEN AVOIDS RALLIES
Democratic candidate Joe Biden has returned to his basement, with no campaign events until after the final presidential debate at the end of the week.
As Donald Trump pledged to hold as many as five rallies a day until the election in a fortnight, Mr Biden continued to avoid questions about his son’s business dealings.
That means the next time he is in public will be at the second debate and organisers announced they have cracked down with some new rules.
The candidates will each be given just two minutes of uninterrupted talking time before their microphones are turned off.
The 90-minute debate will be in six 15-minute parts and each candidate will be granted an uninterrupted two minutes to answer.
The moderator will not cut into the back and forth part of the debate, but the commission said any interruptions would count against the candidate’s total time.
The commission said it “had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules.”
When the pair met for the first and only other debate, they repeatedly cut off each other and moderator Chris Wallace.
It came as Mr Trump accused the Democrats of holding up a coronavirus vaccine for political purposes as the partisan stoush grew over navigating the pandemic.
Focusing heavily on the coronavirus during the first of two rallies being held on Monday in the key battleground state of Arizona, Mr Trump also criticised and mocked his infectious diseases chief Anthony Fauci.
A day after Dr Fauci told US 60 Minutes he was “absolutely not” surprised Mr Trump had fallen ill with COVID because of his cavalier approach to social distancing, Mr Trump tore into him during a campaign call.
Continuing to ramp up his anti-science language in his bid to restart America’s economy from state-mandated lockdowns, Mr Trump labelled Dr Fauci and other experts as “idiots”.
“People are tired of COVID,” Mr Trump said.
“People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots, all these idiots who got it wrong.
“Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. This guy’s a disaster.
“If I listened to him, we’d have 500,000 deaths.”
Later Mr Trump mimicked an awkward baseball pitch from the 79-year-old, drawing cheers and laughter from a large rally crowd gathered at an airport in Prescott, Arizona.
He said Mr Biden was co-ordinating plans to “lock down” the country if he wins in a fortnight.
“You know Biden wants to lock it down, he wants to listen to Dr Fauci,” Mr Trump said.
“He has a bad arm, but he’s a good guy.
“Look, our people don’t like him. I like him.”
Mr Trump’s criticism of Dr Fauci was slammed by Team Biden.
“Now, eight months into the pandemic — with nearly 220,000 American lives lost, more than 8 million infected, and millions out of work — Trump’s closing message in the final days of the 2020 race is to publicly mock Joe Biden for trusting science and to call Dr. Fauci, the leading public health official on COVID-19, a “disaster” and other public health officials “idiots”,” the campaign said in a statement.
Responding to a pledge by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that he would not use a vaccine released by a Trump administration, the president said the companies involved including Johnson and Johnson were “ready” to release their therapies but were waiting on approvals.
“They are willing to demean a vaccine for political purposes,” Mr Trump said of the Democrats.
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“It’s a shame when you try and demean something so important for politics.”
Trailing in national polls and neck and neck in several battlegrounds, there was some good news for Mr Trump, with the gap in key battleground state Pennsylvania narrowing over the past week to within the margin of error.
One of six states Mr Trump defied odds to win in 2016, the battle for Pennsylvania tightened to Biden at 49 per cent to Trump’s 45, compared to a 51 per cent to 44 per cent lead a week ago.
A buoyant Mr Trump said yesterday that he believed Republicans would retake the White House on November 3.
“We are going to win. I wouldn’t have told you that maybe two or three weeks ago,” Mr Trump told campaign staff in a call on Monday local time.
Originally published as Moment Donald Trump stormed out of interview as Biden bombshell emerges