FILE PHOTO: Solar panels at the background as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to Vernon Electric Cooperative in Westby, Wisconsin, U.S., September 5, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
A prominent White House reporter revealed what he called the "most striking" detail to come out of Hunter Biden's meltdown Monday at the media and Democrats.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper brought Axios' Alex Thompson, who co-wrote a damning book about President Joe Biden and an alleged cover-up over his mental fitness, onto his show, "The Lead," on Monday to discuss Hunter Biden's lash out.
"Hunter made headlines of his own in a more than three-hour-long interview on a podcast, touching on a number of issues, including the 2024 campaign. He vehemently defended his father while revealing a new detail about the debate," said Tapper.
In the clip, Hunter Biden said he knows "exactly what happened" in the disastrous debate between Joe Biden and then-candidate Donald Trump, in which a frail Joe Biden fumbled through answers and sent panicked Democrats into a frenzy.
"He flew around the world basically and the mileage, he could have flown around the world three times. He's 81 years old. He's tired as s---. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights," said Hunter Biden.
Tapper asked co-author Thompson what he made of the new detail about the Ambien being a part of the performance.
"Well, the fact that we didn’t know it beforehand, even though the doctor had been public about trying to say what Joe Biden was on, what he was taking, the fact that we did not know that the President of the United States was on Ambien, I would also imagine it is very difficult to do the proverbial '3 a.m. phone call' crisis when you are on Ambien in the middle of the night. I think it’s really striking," said Thompson.
Thompson acknowledged that while the public hasn't heard from a doctor that Joe Biden was on the sleeping medication, the fact that his son said Joe Biden was taking the drug in the weeks before the debate "is a telling new detail about the president’s abilities at the time."
Tapper later played a clip of Hunter Biden melting down at Democratic strategists James Varville and David Axelrod, in which Hunter Biden unleashed a profanity-laden rant aimed at the two.
"James Carville, who hasn’t run a race in 40 f---ing years. And 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 f---ing David Axelrod. And David Plouffe, and all of these guys — and the Pod Save America guys — who were junior f---ing speechwriters on Barack Obama’s Senate staff, who have been dining out on the relationship with him for years, making millions of dollars."
He then tore into what he called the "Anita Dunns of the world, who’s made $40, $50 million off the Democratic Party. They’re all going to insert their judgment over a man who has figured out, unlike anybody else, how to get elected to the United States Senate over seven times?"
Thompson flagged the eyebrow-raising statement.
"The most striking thing is that he attacked Anita Dunn, who, by the way, helped steer his father to the Democratic nomination in 2020. She was also in the White House for the majority of those four years, until, basically, she was driven out because of this rift with Hunter Biden. She is also set to be interviewed by the House Oversight Committee in the coming weeks."
Democratic strategist Karen Finney noted Dunn didn't want Joe Biden to drop out, either.
"100%. And — I write it in our book. It is striking: Hunter is clearly establishing himself as the carrier of the family’s grievances. And he is also, you know, completely obliterating the fiction from last summer that Joe Biden was doing sort of the honorable thing.
Joe Biden was driven out of this race by the elites of the Democratic Party. And Joe Biden — his entire family — deeply resent it.
Watch the clip below or at this link.