Hunter curses out Clooney for pushing dad out of race

John Bowden, The Independent

Scandal-plagued former first son Hunter Biden ripped into actor George Clooney in a foul-mouthed tirade aired Monday. The 55-year-old son of former President Joe Biden went on an expletive-filled rant against the Hollywood megastar in an interview with Andrew Callaghan, an independent journalist and former host of the podcast, All Gas No Brakes. He railed against the Goodnight, and Good Luck auteur's demand that Joe Biden drop out of the 2024 presidential race, which the younger Biden and others in the family's inner circle have made clear they believe is to blame for the Democratic Party's loss to Donald Trump.

But he also took aim at Clooney's acting chops, suggesting hurt feelings were at play. "What do you have to do with anything? Hunter Biden seethed about the ER star.

"Why do I have to listen to you? What right do you have to step on a man who's given 52 years of his 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 New York Times to undermine the president at a time in which, by the way, what do people care about the most?"

Biden claimed that the division within the Democratic Party led to Republicans having an insurmountable advantage ahead of November. He also claimed that the disastrous performance of his father at his one and only debate with Trump was due to his father taking Ambien in order to sleep on foreign trips.

"I know exactly what happened in that debate. He flew around the world, basically mileage that he could have flown around the world three times, he's 81 years old, he's tired as s---, they give him Ambien to be able to sleep, he's gets up on the stage and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights," Hunter told Callaghan, adding: "(I)t feeds into every story that anybody wants to tell." Of Clooney's acting, he said of the From Dusk Till Dawn star: "I agree with Quentin Tarantino. George Clooney is not a actor. He is like... I don't know what he is. He's a brand." Biden's rant was nearly duplicated in a second podcast appearance — this time, a conversation with Jaime Harrison, former chair of the Democratic Party. Even here, Biden told the At Our Table host he didn't give a "s***" about Clooney's political opinions.

"We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party," he said during that appearance.

"That's my position. We had the advantage of incumbency, we had the advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down."

His father's performance at a June presidential debate with Donald Trump alarmed voters on all sides of the political spectrum and drew immediate fears from Democrats that the party was preparing to hand the election over to Republicans.

Clooney was a prominent part of that avalanche, penning an op-ed for the New York Times titled, "I Love Joe Biden, But We Need a New Nominee".

Pod Save America co-host Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, said that internal polling conducted by the Biden campaign showed the former president losing by a landslide were he to remain in the race.

The elder Biden dropped out of the race a month later, after an agonizing few weeks of calls for him to step down by backbencher Democrats and the less-than-delicate hinting from the likes of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others seemingly urging the same.

Kamala Harris, his vice president and running mate, ascended to the top of the ticked after party officials shot down the idea of a last-minute primary election playing out at the Democratic National Convention. Democrats had already blown their own chance to hold a real primary earlier in the year. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, was drafted as her running mate after a short candidate search.