Hunter Biden hit back at Jake Tapper in a new interview, after the CNN anchor suggested earlier this year that former President Biden’s second son “was almost like a chief of staff.”
“You think Jake Tapper’s telling the truth when he says that I was the acting chief of staff of the president’s? I was in that White House 12 days over the course of the last two years of the administration. Clearly, because I had other things going on, OK?” Hunter Biden said in an excerpt from an upcoming interview on former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison’s new podcast, “At Our Table.”
“You ask one person to go on the record that would ever tell you that I was in any way making a single decision about anything, anything in that White House,” he continued. “I stayed as far away as I possibly could. Which, by the way, broke my heart.”
The remarks are a part of a broader interview Harrison did with the former president’s son for a new podcast launching Thursday. His debut episode includes Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). Biden will be featured in a forthcoming episode.
Hunter Biden was responding to an interview that Tapper and Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson did with Katie Couric in May while they were promoting their new book “Original Sin,” which explores Joe Biden’s initial pursuit of a second White House term and the alleged cover-up of his decline.
Former President Biden dropped out of the 2024 race against President Trump following a disastrous debate, later throwing his support behind former Vice President Harris, who lost to Trump in November.
“I think Hunter was driving the decision-making for the family in a way that people — he was almost like a chief of staff,” Tapper told Couric.
Tapper criticized the former president’s son after Couric asked if Hunter Biden’s involvement was “bizarre.”
“It’s bizarre because I think he is provably, demonstrably unethical, sleazy and prone to horrible decisions,” the CNN anchor said, noting that Hunter Biden had a relationship with the late Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie. He also alluded to Hunter Biden’s introduction of crack cocaine to her.
“Beau was great, upstanding guy,” Tapper said, adding later “a real loss for the country, too, not just for his family, for the country, but Hunter’s not that.”
Hunter Biden’s interview is particularly notable given he’s largely remained out of the public eye since the November election.
Democrats have struggled to reset since the election and are facing a reckoning over how to move forward; in the aftermath of the election, some members of the party have pointed the finger at Joe Biden as the reason why the party struggled in November.
