Hunter Biden gave a profanity-laced interview to podcaster Andrew Callaghan in which he claimed his father, former President Joe Biden, could have beaten Donald Trump in the 2024 election if he hadn’t been forced to drop out after his disastrous debate performance that – for what it’s worth – he blamed on the adverse effects of sleeping pills.
The troubled former first son made that claim while slamming former Obama administration advisors like David Axelrod and the man he called “Rahm F-cking Emanuel” for not recognizing that his then-81-year-old dad was the best person to appeal to “those f-cking white voters” who ultimately supported Trump.
Emanuel just so happened to be making his first appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show on Monday, and he reacted to Hunter’s criticism and explained why he believes the former president never stood a chance in 2024.
Hunter’s Tirade
Hunter unloaded on everyone from Trump to George Clooney to, yes, Emanuel during the three-hour sitdown that served as his first public comments since former Vice President Kamala Harris lost in November and he was granted a sweeping pardon by his father on his way out of Washington.
He was speaking about President Trump’s framing and handling of the immigration crisis his father’s administration created when he brought up Emanuel. “[Trump has] somehow convinced all of us that these people are the f-cking criminals. White men in America are 45 more times likely to commit a fucking violent crime than an immigrant,” Hunter claimed. “And the media says, ‘Well, you got David Axelrod, and, you know, Rahm f-cking Emanuel – so f-cking smart, Rahm Emanuel. He said, ‘Well, you got to understand that these people are really mad and we got to appeal to these white voters.'”
“Rahm, the only people that f-cking appealed to those f-cking white voters was Joe Biden at 81 years old, and he got 81 million votes [in 2020]. And he did not because he appeased their f-cking Trumpian sense, but because he challenged it and he said, ‘You can be an 81-year-old Catholic from f-cking Scranton that doesn’t understand it but still has empathy for transgender people and immigrants,'” he continued. “And nobody said, ‘Oh, Joe Biden’s going to turn us into a socialist state.’ No matter how much they said it, but these guys think that we need to run away from all values in order for us to lead. I say: F-ck you. How are we getting those people back from f-cking El Salvador?”
Emanuel said he was inclined to feel a “little empathetic” for “a son who is blinded by his own love, and affect, and loyalty for his father,” but he quipped that Hunter is “not the first phone call I’m going to make for strategery.”
Biden’s Downfall
With Hunter’s claims in mind, Megyn asked Emanuel how he felt about reporting in Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper’s bombshell book Original Sin that his brother, Hollywood heavyweight Ari Emanuel, expressed real concern behind-the-scenes about Biden’s ability to run for reelection.
Emanuel said the former president’s campaign was doomed from the start because of how the American people felt about his ability to do the job. “Everybody said, ‘Oh, there was a cover up or whatever.’ 83 percent of the American people issued a judgment,” he said. “If it was a cover up, the American people were in on that because they had their own opinion.”
Even so, he acknowledged Biden and his team may have been blinded by power. “Oval Offices are very seductive. I’ve been in and out of them with two presidents for eight years,” Emanuel admitted. “White Houses, one of the challenges they have, is not to be as insular as they become. It is pretty clear that both of those qualities played a role here.”
Missed Opportunity?
So while he said Biden was not a winning candidate, he believes the Dems could have won the 2024 election. “I slightly disagree with other Democrats. I actually think this was a winnable race,” Emanuel noted. “It was not going to be a blowout race, but… the data was there, the capacity was there to win, and the Democrats fumbled it.”
It was going to be an uphill battle, he said, because “70 percent of the country thought it was heading in the wrong direction,” but there were early signs of hope in from the Harris-Walz campaign. “The day Kamala Harris takes over… Biden-Harris are down eight. By the time you get to the her debate with Donald Trump, she’s up three,” he noted. “That’s not a statistical error.”
She turned things around, in his view, by focusing on the issues voters cared about. “She was running on the economy; running on what, I think, is the most important issue, that the American Dream is unaffordable [and] inaccessible to the American people,” he explained. “When Kamala Harris spoke to it, she goes up plus-three. After the debate, she wanders off into this democracy thing… [and] she goes down.”
Emanuel pointed to Harris’ appearance on The View when she said she wouldn’t have done anything differently than Biden as a point of no return. “When she [made] a break with Joe Biden and [said], ‘I’m going to be the future. I’m going to be change,’ [her numbers went up],” he said. “When she basically said, ‘I’m going to be continuity,’ she [went] down. So, to me, it tells you that – no disrespect to Hunter Biden’s analysis – this was winnable.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Emanuel by tuning in to episode 1,112 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.