Veteran journalist and former NBC News host Chuck Todd is publicly questioning one of the most enduring images of Joe Biden — that of the devoted family man — suggesting that the media and the public may have been misled for decades.
Speaking during the latest episode of his podcast, The Chuck Toddcast, in a conversation with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, Todd voiced growing skepticism about the carefully curated narrative of Biden as a man whose political identity has been deeply tied to personal loss, paternal devotion, and a fierce commitment to family.
“You and I covered, for most of our professional lives, the story of Joe Biden was: This guy cared about his family so much he commuted home every night from Washington,”
Todd recalled, referencing the long-touted anecdote of Biden taking the Amtrak home daily to Delaware to be with his children after the tragic death of his wife and daughter in 1972.
But now, with the benefit of hindsight — and in light of revelations from the Hunter Biden trial and the personal struggles that have plagued the Biden family — Todd is reconsidering the narrative.
“You know what else you could say?” Todd continued. “That this man was so ambitious that even after his family went through that tragedy, he still commuted every day to Washington — because his ambitions were that strong. It’s the same story, just with a different emphasis. I sit here and I think: Were we sold a 40-year bill of goods?”
The discussion, first reported by The Daily Caller, was centered around Tapper’s new book, Original Sin, which explores Biden’s controversial decision to run for re-election despite concerns about his cognitive decline and personal family crises — particularly those surrounding Hunter Biden, whose federal gun trial laid bare years of addiction, chaos, and dysfunction.
Todd, who said he had read “every transcript” and followed the Hunter Biden trial “soup to nuts,” did not mince words about the president’s decision to launch a campaign in 2020 — a time when his family, Todd argued, was already under immense strain.
“I cannot believe to this day, Jake, that Joe Biden did this to his kids. I just can’t believe that he did it. I can’t,” Todd said.
Tapper added to the criticism, citing a source close to the Biden family who bluntly told him that three widely held beliefs about Biden are simply untrue: “One, that Beau Biden was the reason he ran, two, that Hunter’s addiction was under control, and three, that Joe Biden cares more about his family than anything else.”
“That’s just not true, according to someone very close to the family,” Tapper said. “When he ran in 2020, he was clearly putting his ambition — or, if you want to be generous, his desire to save the country from Trumpism — above the very real struggles that his children were facing.”
This is not the first time Todd has voiced doubts about the president’s decision-making. In a separate appearance back in March on The Warning, a podcast hosted by Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, Todd delivered a harsh rebuke of Biden’s 2020 campaign, arguing that the president should never have entered the race in the first place.
“Joe Biden never should have been there in the first place,” Todd said. “He shouldn’t have run for president [in 2020].”
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