From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro.

This is the Daily.

Today, why President Biden went back on his word to pardon his own son

and where that decision leaves the U.S. system of justice.

Chief White House correspondent Peter Baker is our guest.

It's Tuesday, December 3rd.

Peter, we are reaching you in, of all places, Angola, where you are traveling with President Biden.

It's pretty late there for you.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes, Air Force One just landed here in Luanda, the capital, and he got off the plane for the start of a couple of day visit here. Didn't talk with the reporters on the plane or those

on the ground about anything going on back home, but obviously that's top of mind for a lot of people.

Right. It seems impossible to imagine that the subject of what he did before he left for Angola

is not very much chasing him there.

Yeah, exactly.

I think it's one of these foreign trips that will be shattered now

by a domestic issue that he dealt with literally just hours before getting on the plane,

his decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden.

Well, Peter, I wonder if you can describe your reaction to that announcement, because I think

for a lot of us, for me, at least, it was a real double-take moment. Like, I'm sorry, what?

What just happened? And I wonder what your reaction was as a close student of Joe Biden's for decades as

Chief White House reporter and is a really historically minded kind of thinker about the presidency.

Well, it's a big deal for a president to use his power of clemency to protect his own son from the justice system, right?

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