By In a profane and emotionally charged interview marking the anniversary of Joe Biden’s decision to exit the 2024 presidential race, Hunter Biden delivered a blistering account of what he believes sabotaged his father’s reelection bid: overwork, prescription sleep aids, and betrayal from within the Democratic Party’s own ranks.
The three-hour conversation, published Monday, July 21, 2025, by YouTube personality Andrew Callaghan, offers a rare glimpse into the Biden family’s inner frustrations following the president’s faltering debate performance against Donald Trump—a moment that, in Hunter’s telling, exposed not just age but a wellspring of elite abandonment, according to The Daily Caller.
“I know exactly what happened in that debate,” Hunter said in the Channel 5 interview. “He flew around the world, basically at the mileage that he could have flown around the world three times. He’s 81 years old. He’s tired as shit. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like he’s a deer in the headlights.”
Hunter’s reference to Ambien, a powerful sedative-hypnotic drug, touched a nerve. The FDA warns that the medication can trigger “abnormal thinking and behavioral changes,” including uncharacteristic aggressiveness or extroversion, and that elderly patients may be especially vulnerable to cognitive and motor impairment. The use of Ambien in White House circles is not unprecedented—a 2018 report identified then-White House physician Ronny Jackson as a routine distributor of the drug, earning him the nickname “candy man.”
At the time, Hunter said he was optimistic. “I thought that we had cleared all the hurdles that they had set up for us,” he recalled, citing his father’s 2020 victory over Trump, bipartisan legislative wins, and a “vibrant” State of the Union address. But the debate, he admitted, was a turning point. “My dad grew old in front of everybody’s eyes,” he said. “It scared the shit out of a lot of people because they were already concerned about his age.”
He then posed a rhetorical question to voters and the press alike. “Recognize that they may have lost a physical step, but that does not mean they don’t have the mental capacity to continue to do their job, and whether there still should be to be valued.” Hunter argued that calls for his father’s replacement—including those from George Clooney—amounted to a betrayal sanctioned by Democratic elites. “George Clooney and members of the Democratic Party led the movement to replace Joe with Former Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said, referencing the weeks following Biden’s poor debate and subsequent COVID diagnosis.
Hunter’s fury toward Clooney, who co-hosted a major June 2024 fundraiser for the Biden campaign, was unrelenting, wrote The New York Post. Days after the debate, Clooney published a New York Times op-ed urging Democrats to “step aside” from Biden due to age concerns.
“F—k him and everybody around him, I don’t have to be f—king nice,” Hunter said of the Hollywood actor. “Number one, I agree with [director] Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney is not a f—king actor … he is a brand. He’s great friends with [former President] Barack Obama. F—k you. What do you have to do with f—king anything? Why do I have to f—king listen to you?”
Hunter alleged that Clooney had been difficult even before the fundraiser, claiming he had threatened to pull out in protest over President Biden’s criticism of the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a move reportedly influenced by Clooney’s wife, Amal, who advised the court on war crimes prosecutions. “George Clooney wasn’t going to show up to that fundraiser and he was bitching to the White House staff,” Hunter claimed. “He was so angry that the president would criticize the arrest warrant that was executed for Netanyahu.” He added that Clooney sent “reams” of text messages warning he was “going to embarrass the president and pull out of the fundraiser.”
Adding to the controversy, CNN journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson wrote in their book Original Sin that President Biden failed to recognize Clooney at the fundraiser despite knowing him for decades. According to their account, an aide prompted Biden by saying, “you know George,” and clarified, “George Clooney,” to which Biden replied, “Oh, yeah … Hi, George!” Hunter dismissed the anecdote as a smear, insisting it was “standard practice for aides to formally identify supporters to the commander in chief.”
The book claims that the Biden White House was run by a “politburo” that included Hunter Biden.
Hunter also turned his ire toward other Democratic strategists and Obama-era figures whom he accused of conspiring against his father. “James Carville, who hasn’t run a race in 40 f—king years, and David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama — that was because of Barack Obama, not because of f—king David Axelrod,” he said. He added: “David Plouffe and all of these guys in the ‘Pod Save America,’ guys who were junior f—king speech writers on Barack Obama’s Senate staff who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars, the Anita Dunns of the world, who’s made $40, $50 million off the Democratic Party—they’re all going to insert their judgment.”
The interview served not only as a defense of the president’s faltering health and political future, but as a scorched-earth rebuke of a party apparatus Hunter Biden clearly views as faithless and opportunistic. As one person on social media bluntly put it: “Never underestimate a vengeful drug addict with a full blanket pardon.”
[Read More: Bannon Called Her A ‘Traitor’]
