Hunter Biden in an interview published Monday suggested former President Biden had been taking Ambien leading up to the June 2024 presidential debate and that the drug was partly to blame for his poor performance in the debate.
“I know exactly what happened in that debate,” Hunter Biden told YouTube personality Andrew Callaghan.
“He flew around the world basically the mileage he could have flown around the world three times. He’s 81 years old. He’s tired as sh–,” Hunter Biden said. “They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like a deer in the headlights.”
The interview was posted online on the anniversary of the former president’s announcement that he would not seek reelection.
A spokesperson for the former president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden’s debate performance was a turning point in the 2024 campaign. The former president spoke haltingly, mixed up words and struggled to complete his thoughts. Biden aides that nit attributed it to a cold and Biden later asserted in the days after the debate that he had been sick.
Some Biden allies have in the year since the debate offered up other explanations, including that the then-president was overworked and exhausted by a taxing trip to Europe before the debate. But Biden had spent roughly a week holed up at Camp David preparing for his debate with President Trump before taking the stage.
Hunter Biden took aim at several critics of his father during his interview with Callaghan, including actor George Clooney, who penned a New York Times op-ed urging the former president to drop out, and former Obama White House staffers like David Axelrod.
“David Axelrod, who had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama, not because of fuck— David Axelrod,” Hunter Biden said.
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