Hunter Biden claims he was so enraged watching Barack Obama lead his father, then-President Joe Biden, off the stage at a Hollywood fundraiser last year that he nearly cursed out the former president.
In an excerpt of journalist Jonathan Karl’s forthcoming book, “Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign that Changed America,” obtained by Axios Tuesday, the former first son recalled the anger he felt toward Obama, who grabbed Joe by the wrist and tugged him in the direction of the curtains after he froze for a full 10 seconds at the star-studded campaign fundraiser.
“I almost jumped up on the stage and said, ‘Don’t ever f–king do that to the president of the United States again — ever,” Hunter told Karl, during an interview months after the awkward moment.
“I knew that that was going to be a meme,” the former first son added. “That really, really, really, really pissed me off.”
Joe’s freeze-up at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles indeed went viral and took place as concerns over the octogenarian president’s age and mental acuity mounted, following a spate of public moments where the then-president appeared dazed or confused about where he was.
The Hollywood event raked in more than $30 million in contributions for the Biden campaign, about a week-and-a-half before Joe’s disastrous debate with President Trump, which forced the Democratic incumbent to end his re-election bid less than a month later.
Actor and Democratic mega-donor George Clooney was one of several Hollywood luminaries at the event, and later recounted in a New York Times op-ed that the president “was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010.”
“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney said of what the president was like at the fundraiser. “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Journalists Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper claim Clooney was “shaken to his core” by Joe’s decline.
“The president hadn’t recognized him. A man he had known for years,” Thompson and Tapper wrote in their book, “Original Sin.”
Hunter has previously ripped Clooney for writing about his experience with Joe, which led to even more calls for the president to drop out of the 2024 race.
“F‑-k him. F–k him. F–k him and everybody around him,” Hunter said of Clooney in July, during an interview on Andrew Callaghan’s YouTube show, “Channel 5.”
“Number one, I agree with [director] Quentin Tarantino, George Clooney is not a f—king actor … he is a brand,” he added. “He’s great friends with 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?”
