Joe Biden’s son Hunter sat down for a three-hour-plus interview with Channel 5’s Andrew Callaghan that touches on all of the scandals — both real and conspiracy — he has faced since being in the public eye.
Biden said that he chose to appear on the online show because he has enjoyed Callaghan’s interview style and projects in the past, saying that they met through a mutual friend. Very quickly, the interview turns to Biden’s well-documented substance abuse, with the president’s son speaking freely about his past struggles with crack and alcohol.
“I was drinking so much alcohol, almost a handle of vodka a day,” he said. “And alcohol is the most destructive drug, not just to your body, but it puts you in more danger than any other drug that I’ve ever experienced. And then you add on top of that the amount of crack that I was using at the time. And crack cocaine, in terms of your physical health, is not as dangerous as the situation that you put yourself in to be able to obtain it.”
Biden also spoke at length about his so-called laptop scandal, in which right-wing media claimed he stored scores of state secrets and illegal happenings.
“What does my laptop prove about criminality or anything?” Biden said. “Other than what I have already readily admitted and been completely transparent about is my drug addiction?”
When Callaghan mentions there is concern on the right about international business dealings, Biden outlines his various work as a board member at organizations like Amtrak and the US-UN World Food Program.
Biden saves his boldest comments for refuting a George Clooney op-ed about his father, which ended up calling into question his age and mental health in order to run for a second term.
“Here’s what [Clooney] said. He said that the president needed to be introduced to him at a fundraiser that he was ostensibly the host of,” Biden said. “There’s this gigantic fundraiser in which George Clooney wasn’t really the host. He was the entertainment. God bless him. I appreciate when entertainers and movie stars are on our side, want to raise money and stuff like that. If you’re with the president at any given time, you probably have been at a rope line. What happens is people come to take pictures, usually before or after an event. The president will line up, people will come up and they’ll take a picture with them and he’ll say ‘Hello.’
“There’s a person that stands next to the president, and they say, ‘Mr. President, George Clooney and Julia Roberts.’ ‘Hey, George, Julia, how you doing?’ And you may have been filming him all day, and he may know George for the last 30 years, and he may have met him 15 times, but the guy on his shoulder, who’s usually a military officer, has one job to say the name of the person that’s walking up,” he continued. “That’s it. And George Clooney is now going to rationalize why he he attempted to cut the knees out from a sitting president, the most successful president in the history of his party in his life in terms of the legislative policies that he wanted to see passed, had to justify somehow him going above and beyond to write an op-ed in The New York Times to try to force the sitting president of the United States out of the out of the race. And so he makes up this story about how the president had to be
introduced to him.”
Biden also says he remembers further angst on Clooney’s part that day.
“By the way, I remember that George Clooney wasn’t going to show up to that fundraiser,” he said. “He was bitching to the White House staff, the senior staff that he was so angry that the president would criticize the arrest warrant that was executed for Netanyahu, and the president, when asked if they would arrest Netanyahu if he came to the United States, said he would not have the authority, nor would he do that. I guess George Clooney’s wife was the principal architect of that arrest, of that warrant for Netanyahu. And I don’t judge that in one way or another if it was the right thing or not. He was very, very angry that my dad did not pay homage to her or something. And I understand defending your wife or something, but I saw the text messages that he wrote, reams of text messages like, ‘How dare he do that.’ And he kept promising that he was going to embarrass the president and pull out of the fundraiser.”
After Callaghan brought up another story of Clooney using his star power to influence Jack Black on a political decision, Biden didn’t hold back his criticism.
“Fuck him!” Biden exclaimed. “Fuck him and everybody around him. I don’t have to be fucking nice. No. 1, I agree with Quentin Tarantino. Fucking George Clooney is not a fucking actor. He is fucking like… I don’t know what he is. He’s a brand. And by the way, God bless him. You know what? He supposedly treats his friends really well. You know what I mean? Buys them things, and he’s got a really great place in Lake Como, and he’s great friends with Barack Obama. Fuck you. What do you have to do with fucking anything? Why do I have to fucking listen to you? What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his fucking 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 fucking New York Times to undermine the president at a time in which, by the way, what do people care about the most? Why do you think that the Republicans have an advantage over us? Because they’re unified.”
Variety has reached out to Clooney’s representative for comment on Biden’s words.
Watch the whole interview below.
variety.com
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