By MEG KINNARD and DARLENE SUPERVILLE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, seen by some as the problem child of the Democratic Party for legal and drug-related woes that brought negative attention to his father, is lashing out against Democratic “elites” and others over the way he says his father was treated during last year’s presidential campaign.
Hunter Biden spoke publicly in recent interviews about last year’s election, when Joe Biden ultimately dropped his bid and Donald Trump won the White House. In a three-hour, expletive-filled online interview with Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5, he directed ire toward actor and Democratic Party donor George Clooney for his decision to call on the elder Biden to abandon his 2024 reelection bid.
He also ranted against longtime Democratic advisers he accused of making money off the party and trading off previous electoral successes, but not helping candidates’ current efforts.
The lengthy screed made plain the younger Biden’s feelings that his father was mistreated by those around him in the waning days of his candidacy and administration. He also laid bare critiques of the party’s operation and operatives that, he says, aren’t well-serving its opposition to Trump and the Republican Party.
Here’s a look at some of the moments in Hunter Biden’s interview:
He blasted George Clooney
Hunter Biden spared no feelings in his assessment of the actor, questioning why anyone should listen to the “Ocean’s Eleven” star.
Clooney supported Joe Biden’s bid for a second term, even headlining a record-setting fundraiser for the then-president, but changed his stance after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in June 2024.
Clooney made his feelings known in an opinion piece in The New York Times, adding his voice to mounting calls for the then-81-year-old president to drop his presidential bid. Biden ended up leaving the race a few weeks later and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, who went on to lose to Trump.
“What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his f——— life to the services of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full page ad in the f——— New York Times to undermine the president,” Hunter Biden said before he trailed off to talk about how Republicans are more unified than Democrats.
Los Angeles-based representatives for Clooney did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Screed against longtime Democratic advisers
There were also weighty critiques of a number of longtime Democratic advisers.
Anita Dunn, a longtime Biden senior adviser, has made “$40 to $50 million” off of work for the Democratic Party, Hunter Biden said. James Carville, adviser to former President Bill Clinton, “hasn’t run a race in 40 f——— years.”
Former Obama strategist David Axelrod, Hunter Biden said, “had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama — and that was because of Barack Obama.” Other former Obama aides who now host “Pod Save America,” are “four white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago,” he said.
One of the four, Tommy Vietor, Monday on social media applauded Hunter Biden’s decision “to process the election, look inward, and hold himself accountable for how his family’s insular, dare I say arrogant at times, approach to politics led to this catastrophic outcome we’re all now living with.”
In a message Tuesday, Axelrod told The Associated Press, “Never have the words ‘no comment’ felt more appropriate.” Dunn did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Biden’s debate performance and Ambien effects
As for the debate performance, the fallout from which ultimately led to the calls for his father to step down from the 2024 presidential campaign, Hunter Biden said his father may have been recovering from Ambien, a medication that he had been given to help him sleep following trips in the weeks before the debate to Europe, as well as the Los Angeles fundraiser at which Clooney said his interactions with Biden made him feel the president wasn’t mentally capable.
“He’s 81 years old, he’s tired as shit,” Hunter Biden said. “They give him Ambien to be able to sleep, and he gets up on the stage and he looks like he’s a deer in the headlights.”
A spokesperson for Joe Biden declined to comment on the interview.
Another podcast with Jaime Harrison
Hunter Biden also appeared Monday in an episode of “At Our Table,” a new podcast hosted by former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison.
“Yeah, Joe Biden did get old. He got old before our eyes. … But you know what? A few changes does not mean that you do not have the mental capacity to be able to do your job.”
In that interview, Hunter Biden also talked about the calamitous presidential debate.
“And then they saw him at that debate. It was awful, and it was truly horrible,” he said, saying he was opposed to holding it, given Trump’s recent convictions on 34 felony charges in a New York hush money case.
To Harrison, Hunter Biden also addressed Clooney, saying, “I love George Clooney’s movies, but I don’t really give a s—- about what he thinks about who should be the nominee for the Democratic Party.”
Asked by Harrison about his father’s decision to quit the 2024 race, Hunter Biden said “I think that he could have won” but still made the right choice for Democrats broadly.”
“I know that it wasn’t a mistake in that moment,” Hunter Biden said, adding that his father “chose to save the party” over saving himself.
Why are these podcasts coming out now?
The podcast drops come just days ahead of the expected beginning of court proceedings in a Los Angeles federal court.
Hunter Biden is suing Patrick Byrne, alleging that the former CEO of Overstock.com falsely claimed that Hunter Biden was reaching out to the Iranian government in the fall of 2021 and offering to have his father Joe Biden “unfreeze” $8 billion in Iranian funds “in return for $800 million being funneled into a numbered account for us.”
In the waning days of his administration, Joe Biden pardoned his son, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family.
The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after convictions in the two cases in Delaware and California. The move came weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his punishment after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before Trump returned to the White House.
Kinnard reported from Chapin, S.C., and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.
Follow the AP’s coverage of Hunter Biden at https://apnews.com/hub/hunter-biden.
