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Hunter Biden lashes out at George Clooney, other democrats, over Joe Biden's 2024 campaign
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.
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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:
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.
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'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.
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.
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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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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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.
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.'
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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.
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Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
What happens when politicians meddle with economic data: Argentina's example
Government statistician Graciela Bevacqua arrived at the office on a Monday to bad news from her boss: There was no easy way to say this, but the president wanted her head. It was January 2007, and Bevacqua oversaw the consumer-price index at Argentina's national statistics agency, Indec. Rising inflation threatened the electoral hopes of leftist President Néstor Kirchner's wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was running to succeed him. Bevacqua was unwilling to fudge the numbers, so Kirchner replaced her with a loyalist who did it. Echoes of the Argentine saga have reverberated in the U.S. since President Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on Aug. 1 after big downward revisions to jobs data. He accused the bureau of rigging the data to make Republicans look bad but provided no evidence, and independent economists dismissed the allegation. 'This is the sort of thing only the worst populists do in the worst emerging economies," economist Phil Suttle said of McEntarfer's dismissal in a note to clients. Although Argentina is an emerging economy, its statistics agency was regarded as professional and independent, and governed by a solid legal framework. That makes its experience a useful lesson in what awaits the U.S. if new leadership politicizes economic data. Following Bevacqua's removal, Argentina's officially reported inflation rate fell to 8.5% in 2007 from 9.8% in 2006. Fernández de Kirchner easily won the election, and the government initially saved billions of dollars in interest on inflation-linked bonds which could be spent on social programs and subsidies. In reality, inflation had accelerated to around 25%, private economists estimated. The government faced lawsuits from unions and pensioners whose social-security checks were indexed to inflation. Some of the government's savings on inflation-linked bonds were offset by higher payments on debt tied to gross domestic product, which came in artificially high. 'It started to become a huge mess," said Alberto Cavallo, an Argentine economist teaching at Harvard University who created a website that tracked inflation based on publicly available prices to fill the void left by Indec. Users bombarded him with all sorts of questions over email, like how much to adjust settlement payments to an ex after a divorce. 'The examples add up, and you end up realizing how important some of these statistics are," he said. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became Argentina's president in 2007, succeeding her husband, Néstor Kirchner. In the U.S., trustworthy economic data are central to determining how much people pay in taxes, receive in retirement benefits and earn on some investments. 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'You can't hide the fact that people are out of work and prices are changing, but without direct measurement of those things that are officially collected and that everyone has equal access to, it really would be sort of a Dark Ages situation," said Brent Moulton, a former associate director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, which calculates GDP, personal income and several other data series. Institutional checks exist to guard against outright manipulation. Mishandling economic statistics or improperly accessing the confidential information used to compile them is a felony. In addition, dozens of career staff work on major releases like the monthly jobs report, inflation data and GDP who would likely blow the whistle if data were mishandled, former officials said. But Argentina had similar legal protections around Indec, which survived a military dictatorship, hyperinflation and economic meltdowns and was considered a model statistics agency in Latin America. More than 100 staffers worked on the inflation index, Bevacqua said. 'The index had so many safeguards, it seemed impossible to me that someone could manage to change the numbers," Bevacqua said. 'Not only did that happen, but they stayed for many years, and part of the institution is still recovering." After Bevacqua was removed, political appointees changed the methodology for items that had jumped in price from December 2006 to January 2007. These included lettuce, health insurance and hotels, Argentine prosecutors said in an investigation report. Argentina's economic woes were the result of more than data manipulation. Price controls, capital controls and exchange-rate controls distorted economic incentives and led to even more interventions. The central bank lacked de facto independence and kept interest rates too low to bring inflation under control. Argentina stopped manipulating the data in 2015 after Fernández de Kirchner left office, and started a new inflation series that began in June 2016. It is now regarded as credible. The minister who spearheaded the politicization of Indec in 2007, Guillermo Moreno, was recently sentenced for manipulating the inflation data to three years of 'conditional" prison—akin to probation—and banned from public office for six years. Inflation continued to climb, dooming the Kirchners' political movement. Argentines elected libertarian Javier Milei president in 2023 on a platform of radical economic liberalization. Inflation, which peaked at 289% last year, was down to 39% as of June. Bevacqua said it is too soon to compare the situation at BLS to Indec. A key difference: Political appointees in the Kirchner administration had been making unusually detailed information requests about the inflation data for at least a year before they fired her, she said. 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Time of India
an hour ago
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ALSO READ: Powerball jackpot rises to $479 million: Who won lottery jackpot last night? Lotto results, drawing time He adds that he wishes America would bring back those laws, which made sex between people of the same sex illegal. The Supreme Court invalidated bans on gay sex in its 2003 ruling, Lawrence v Texas. Live Events At other points in the video, Wilson says that some American slave owners were 'decent human beings' and suggests that women should focus on having and raising children. 'Women are the kind of people that people come out of,' Wilson says. Pete Hegseth under fire again Hegseth sparked a stern backlash after reposting the video of preachers from the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), claiming women ought to "submit" to their husbands. When he shared the highly controversial video, the ex-Fox News anchor captioned it with, "All of Christ for All of Life. " — PeteHegseth (@PeteHegseth) ALSO READ: Last planet parade of 2025 happening today? How to watch the rare planetary alignment in the US One user's response to the repost garnered over 12,000 likes, commented: 'Not sure about you, but drunken hack Pete Hegseth endorsing Christian nationalist pastors claiming women should no longer be allowed to vote - doesn't sit well with me.' Another responded to Hegseth's repost, saying, 'But what happens when your husband is a cheating drunk who left his first wife for his second wife but then got his mistress pregnant and then divorced the second wife to marry the third wife? Like at what point are you no longer qualified to lead the head of the household?' 'When the US Secretary of Defense calls for stripping women of the right to vote, you know this country is in great danger,' replied somebody else. Meanwhile, New Mexico representative Melanie Stanley expressed disbelief at Hegseth's repost of the disturbing segment. ALSO READ: Perseids 2025: How to watch the year's best meteor shower despite full moon? 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The Print
2 hours ago
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ThePrint Exclusive: Asim Munir's India nuke threat from US ballroom—‘will take half the world down'
'The Indus river is not the Indians' family property. Humein missilon ki kami nahin hai, al-Hamdulillah [we have no shortage of missiles, Praise be to God] ,' Munir concluded. The Field Marshal followed up his nuclear threat, sources present at the dinner told ThePrint, with comments on the Indus Waters Treaty , saying India's decision to place it in abeyance could put 250 million at risk of starvation. 'We will wait for India to build a dam, and when it does so, phir 10 missile sey faarigh kar dengey [we will destroy it with 10 missiles].' Tampa: Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan's military chief, threatened to plunge the region into nuclear war should his country face an existential threat in a future war with India, saying 'we are a nuclear nation, if we think we are going down, we'll take half the world down with us.' The extraordinary remarks—the first nuclear threats known to have ever been delivered from the soil of the United States against a third country—were made at a black-tie dinner hosted for Munir by businessman Adnan Asad, who serves as honorary consul for his homeland in Tampa. Guests invited to the function were not allowed to carry cellphones or other digital device, and no text of the speech was circulated. ThePrint reconstructed the contents of the speech from the memory of several participants who were present. Field Marshal Munir was in Florida to attend a retirement function for General Michael Kurilla, the outgoing commander of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM). A representative of the defence forces of Israel—a country with which Pakistan does not have diplomatic relations—was also present at the function. Earlier, Munir had controversially been invited to meet with US President Donald Trump. This interaction caused disquiet among pro-democracy forces in Pakistan since no invitation has yet been extended to its Prime Minister or President. Also Read: ThePrint Exclusive: Government ID cards, family testimony nail Pakistan links of Pahalgam killers Salad, soup and bombs An estimated 120 Florida-based members of the Pakistani diaspora were served a western-style dinner at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Florida's Tampa, beginning with Caesar salad, and followed by tomato bisque, a choice of chicken and salmon braised with herbs—all clearly marked to indicate the food was Halal. The function began with a recitation of As-Saf verse 4 from the Quran, which asserts that 'Allah loves those who fight in his cause in a row as though they are a [single] structure joined firmly.' Pakistan named its operations during the Four-Day war of May Bunyaanum Marsoos, after the verse. Following the Quranic recitation, Pakistan's national anthem was played, the sources said. Field Marshal Munir mocked India's refusal to provide specific details of its losses during the Four-Day war. 'The Indians should accept their losses,' Munir said, adding, 'Sportsman spirit is a virtue.' He also said that he had offered for an inventory of Pakistan's losses to be made public, as long as India also conducted a similar exercise. The Pakistan army chief devoted a substantial part of his prepared speech, read from notes, to the war and its fallout.'Ek tweet karwaya tha with Surah Fil and a picture of [the industrialist] Mukesh Ambani to show them what we will do the next time,' he said. The verse Surah Fil describes how Allah dispatched birds to drop stones on an enemy's battle elephants, reducing them 'to chewed-up straw'. 'We'll start from India's East, where they have located their most valuable resources, and then move westwards,' Field Marshal Munir said. Field Marshal Munir, a religious conservative who is the first chief of the Pakistan army to have a seminary education, has frequently used theological points to support his arguments. However, he also resorted to simpler metaphors for the benefit of his diaspora audience. 'I am going to use a crude analogy to explain the situation,' Field Marshal Munir went on. 'India is shining Mercedes coming on a highway like Ferrari [sic], but we are a dump truck full of gravel. If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?' Field Marshal Munir took the opportunity to make the case for military involvement in Pakistani politics and strategic decision-making, directing many of his comments personally to Pakistan's former ports and shipping minister Babar Khan Ghauri, who served under Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. 'They say war is too serious to be left to the Generals, but politics is also too serious to be left to the politicians.' The Field Marshal urged the diaspora to do more to support Pakistan. 'Kisi ki maa kaali ho sakti hai, aur kisi ki dharti-maa kaali ho sakti hai, par maa maa hoti hai [someone's mother might be dark-skinned, and the earth of someone's motherland might be dark, but a mother is a mother],' he said, in a passage inflected with Hindi-film tropes. Allah, he went on, would bless Pakistan with his bounty, because it is one of only two states founded on the basis of the Kalimah, the Islamic profession of faith. The first, Munir argued, was the city-state of Medina founded by the Prophet Muhammad. He—incorrectly—asserted that Medina was renamed Tayyiba, or blessed. The second such state, the Field Marshal said, was Pakistan, and God would reward it with energy and natural resources, just as the earth under Medina had been. He described finds of rare earth metals, minerals and hydrocarbons that are purported to have recently been made in Pakistan. 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