WATCH: Biden answers Colbert’s softball questions and says the US will be ‘close to normal’ by next Christmas

"Do you think this time next year, when you're both in the White House, we will have what you could call a normal Christmas? Will the country be back to normal?" Colbert asked toward the end of the interview.

December 18, 2020

"I believe we'll be awfully close to that, if not there," Biden said, "I do believe that because the combination, in the first hundred days I'm going to ask everybody to wear a mask for the first hundred days, and where I can dictate that on federal property, I've been on with 45 governors asking them to think about it.

"Just 100 days, we're going to get those 100 million vaccinations out there, and we're going to get to the place where we can open schools. So I think we can really, it's not going to be quick, but I think by next Christmas we'll be close to normal."

It was only after questions about Dr. Jill Biden's pride in her doctorate, plans for the coming inauguration, and Dr. Biden's career plans while in office, more than half way into the interview, that Colbert broached the topic of Hunter Biden.

But it wasn't to ask about the allegations of influence peddling and shady foreign business dealings, but instead how Biden feels about those who want answers.

December 18, 2020

Colbert asked "You know that the people who want to make hay in Washington are going to try to use your adult son as a cudgel against you. How do you feel about that and what do you have to say to those people?"

"Well look, I have, we have great confidence in our son," Biden said. "I am not concerned about any accusations been made against him. It's used to get to me. I think it's kind of foul play. But look, it is what it is, he's a grown man. He is the smartest man I know, I mean in pure intellectual capacity, and as long as he's good, we're good."

Colbert asked "Can you reach across the aisle to people who will use this as an attack on you when it is such a personal attack because it's about family?"

"We know who we are," Biden said. Before saying that if he were "back in high school" he might go beat people up for talking about his son that way.

"You have to take the high road," Dr. Biden said.

"I think the American people, I think they can smell the phoniness, smell what's true and what's not true," he said, before going on to say that he "feels badly" for those who he thought were his friends who believe the allegations leveled at his son.

Of working with people who want answers as to what he knew about Hunter Biden's overseas business activities and when, he said "I'll swallow hard, and I'll do it."

Colbert started the interview by reminding Biden of both of their job descriptions. "You are about to be the most powerful person in the world. And my job is to talk about what's going on in the world. What is President Biden going to put into the world?"

Biden answered with rhetoric and platitudes. "Hopefully we're going to uh, when I ran, I said, Stephen, really early on, that the next president was going to inherit two things. A world divided and a nation in disarray. And in the world at large we've got to say 'America's back.'

"America's back. We keep our commitments to our allies, we know the difference between our adversaries and our friends, and the Americans, I've been already, I've had calls from 25, 26 world-leaders, and uh America's back, number 1.

"Number 2, y'know, I think the nation, and I don't think I'm kidding myself, I got criticized from the beginning for saying this, I think the nation is looking for us to be united, much more united. We don't have to have this kind of, this, politics have become so sort of dirty and viscous personal and mean and a clenched fist instead of an open hand, and I think people are looking for us to come together."

Biden's answer to "what is President Biden going to put into the world" was, in essence, "to be nice." That's the whole answer.

Biden blamed President Trump for the divisions in the country, without noting that the opposition against him was perpetual throughout his presidency. He came into office to cries of "resist" from Democrats and from mainstream media, and that call to oppose everything and anything Trump proposed, did, or said, did not let up for four years.

Biden's calls for unity sounds hollow to many on the right who have only heard Biden and his Democrats call for division, impeachment, and resistance since Trump won in 2016 through the present.

"The country we've been for the last four years is not who we are," he said, "we are a Democracy. We are a Democracy that has shown respect and decency and a beacon to the rest of the world, and we're losing that." He didn't actually give any examples to substantiate the inference that the US has not been a democracy over the past four years.

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