Hunter Biden says his father was on Ambien before 2024 debate disaster: ‘A deer in headlights'
'I know exactly what happened in that debate,' Hunter told YouTube personality Andrew Callaghan in an interview released on Monday.
'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.'
The veteran Democrat cut a frail figure when he took to the CNN debate stage in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27 last year to battle it out with Trump as he sought another four years in the White House.
Biden went on to give a series of mangled answers, failing to make the case for his record in the Oval Office or a second term and at one point declared incoherently: 'We finally beat Medicare.'
'I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence,' his Republican opponent said after one garbled answer. 'I don't think he knows what he said either.'
After more than three weeks of pressure from panicked Democrats for Biden to step aside, he finally did so on July 21, paving the way for then-vice president Kamala Harris to run in his stead, only for her to lose to Trump the following November.
While the use of Ambien is common for sleep disorders, there was no mention of it among the six medications prescribed to the Democrat that were referenced in his annual physical report published on February 28 2024, signed off by Biden's presidential physician Dr. Kevin O'Connor.
In the same interview, Hunter noted that there was little opposition to Biden running again prior to the televised head-to-head: 'The people who came out against him were nobody, except… Speaker Emeritus [Nancy] Pelosi did not give a full-throated endorsement.
'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.'
That changed in the aftermath of his father's very public humiliation, Hunter alleged. 'They said, 'We are going to blow up the party if you don't drop out. We're going to protest this all the way up for the next month, all the way up to the convention.''
Picking up his father's story, Hunter told Callaghan: 'He gets over the hump, he goes and does the [ABC News anchor George] Stephanopoulos [interview]. Everybody goes, 'OK, that's not enough, we got to see him give a press conference.''
What followed was another troubling public appearance on July 12 at which Biden appeared alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and accidentally referred to him as 'Vladimir,' apparently confusing him with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Five days after that, with the pressure campaign on him to step aside only intensifying, Biden was diagnosed with Covid-19.
'He woke up in the morning and he had a severe case of Covid, and the pictures of him getting on and off the plane were just devastating, and then the vultures descended,' Hunter remembered.
'So Joe Biden, I think, did the most selfless thing that I know of any politician in the history of this f***ing country. He stepped aside to save the party.'
In the same interview, Hunter lashed out at Hollywood actor George Clooney who wrote a New York Times editorial last year calling on the president to drop out of the race after becoming concerned by his appearance at a charity gala alongside Barack Obama.
'F*** you. What do you have to do with f***ing anything?' Hunter said angrily of Clooney.
While the president's son made his opinion clear on why the Democratic ticket failed at the polls last year, others have pointed to his own role in bringing down his father's presidency.
A lightning rod for MAGA conspiracy theories, Hunter's prosecution on tax and gun charges led to speculation that the president would pardon his son, which he denied – and then did anyway – leading some to feel he had received favorable treatment because of his privileged position.
The book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf argues that Biden was preoccupied with the prospect of his son going to prison at the height of election campaigning last summer, causing him to take his eye off the ball.
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