In a pair of podcast appearances over the past several days, Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., appears to be trying to settle scores with Democrats he sees as having contributed to his father’s political undoing.
Mr. Biden delivered a broad critique of the party last week on the debut episode of a podcast hosted by Jaime Harrison, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, arguing that Democrats lost the 2024 election because they did not remain loyal to his father.
In a separate, three-hour-plus podcast released on Monday, the younger Mr. Biden named names, unleashing a profane tirade against a host of perceived enemies, including the senior Biden aide Anita Dunn; the Democratic éminences grises David Axelrod and James Carville; the Obama administration alumni who built Crooked Media, a booming liberal podcast network; the CNN host Jake Tapper; and the actor George Clooney.
In a single minute-long clip, he used a version of the same expletive 13 times.
His interviewer this time was Andrew Callaghan, a YouTuber previously known for crisscrossing America in an R.V.
In the videotaped conversation, Mr. Biden dismissed Mr. Clooney as “a brand” and Mr. Carville as someone who “hasn’t run a race in 40 years.” Mr. Axelrod, he said, “had one success in his political life, and that was Barack Obama, and that was because of Barack Obama.”
The former Obama aides behind Crooked Media and its “Pod Save America” flagship, he said, were “four white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago.”
And he asserted that Ms. Dunn, who ran the White House press operation throughout most of Mr. Biden’s presidency, had made “$40 to $50 million” from the Democratic Party.
Mr. Biden also claimed that his father had been given the prescription sleep aid Ambien before his fateful debate to help him rest after two European trips and a political fund-raiser in Los Angeles in the preceding weeks. (The elder Mr. Biden had spent the most recent five days at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, preparing for the debate.)
“He’s 81 years old, he tired,” Mr. Biden said, adding yet another profanity. “They give him Ambien to be able to sleep and he gets up on the stage and he looks like he’s a deer in the headlights.”
A spokeswoman for the former president declined to comment.
Mr. Biden saved perhaps his strongest venom for Mr. Tapper, who co-wrote a best-selling book that asserted that there was a party-wide effort to cover up the decline of President Biden’s mental acuity.
“What influence does Jake Tapper have over anything? He has the smallest audience on cable news,” Mr. Biden said, before suggesting, in another profane aside, that Mr. Tapper’s CNN ratings had declined since the book was published in May.
Most of his targets resisted being drawn into a war of words with the former president’s son, who was convicted of three felonies last year before receiving a pardon from his father weeks before his presidency ended.
“Never have the words ‘no comment’ been more appropriate,” Mr. Axelrod said.
Mr. Carville said that the Bidens “got into this frenzy that they were these people who were disrespected and that’s their whole culture.”
He urged Democrats to move on.
An aide to Mr. Clooney declined to comment. Ms. Dunn did not respond to messages.
Tommy Vietor, a “Pod Save America” co-host, mocked Mr. Biden on social media. “It’s good to see that Hunter has taken some time to process the election, look inward, and hold himself accountable for how his family’s insular, dare I say arrogant at times, approach to politics led to this catastrophic outcome we’re all now living with,” he wrote.
Dylan Rose Geerlings, a CNN spokeswoman, took pains to defend Mr. Tapper’s reputation, calling him “one of the most influential political journalists of his time.”
Monday was one year to the day since then-President Biden ended his re-election campaign.
Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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