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Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, blamed top Democrat lawmakers and donors, in particular actor George Clooney, for undermining his father during an exclusive interview with Andrew Callaghan on his Channel 5 YouTube channel.
“What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his f**king life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out, basically, a full-page ad in the f**king New York Times to undermine the president,” Hunter Biden said, referring to the Clooney's July 2024 op-ed calling for the then-president to end his re-election campaign.
Hunter also downplayed the extent of other Democrats revolting against his father leading up to the decision to end his campaign.
“The people who came out against him were nobody, except … Speaker emeritus [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] did not give a full-throated endorsement,” he said.
“The entirety of the progressive side of the Democratic Party said Joe Biden has got more of our agenda accomplished in four years than any president in history.”
Clooney, 64, had previously revealed that the elder Biden, 82, lost his support during a Los Angeles fundraiser in June 2024, claiming the media failed to cover Biden's fitness and ability to serve, during an interview with the New York Times' Maureen Dowd published on February 20.
"I saw him for hours a year earlier at the Kennedy Center, and I saw someone much less sharp," Clooney told Dowd, who wrote that the actor was "gobsmacked" by the experience.
“I’ve always liked Joe Biden, and I like him still,” he added.
Clooney, a longtime Democratic donor, publicly called for Biden to drop out of the presidential race on July 10, which was 11 days before the president ultimately announced his decision to end his re-election campaign.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F**king deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney wrote in a guest essay for the New York Times, referencing the Los Angeles fundraiser at the time.
Hunter Biden also claimed that his father was taking Ambien at the time of his disastrous debate with President Donald Trump during the exclusive Channel 5 interview.
“I know exactly what happened in that debate,” Hunter said on the anniversary of his father ending his re-election campaign. “He flew around the world. He’s 81 years old. He’s tired. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep and he gets up on the stage and looks like a deer in the headlights.”
Former President Biden pardoned his son on December 1, despite previously claiming he wouldn't take action to help Hunter during the G7 summit in June. Hunter was scheduled to be sentenced on separate federal gun and tax evasion cases later this month after pleading guilty in September to nine counts of evading the government of $1.4 million in taxes and being convicted of three federal gun charges for possessing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine in June.