Hunter Biden, the former president’s embattled son, reportedly took direct aim at CNN anchor Jake Tapper this week, accusing him of “poor journalism” and “personal” attacks after Tapper’s book described Biden as a “scumbag.” The remarks came during a lengthy Substack interview, where the younger Biden appeared defensive and at times combative as he criticized what he saw as Tapper’s bias and obsession with his personal life.
Biden said he believes Tapper has abandoned traditional journalism in favor of “what-about-ism” and “both-sides journalism,” calling the anchor’s approach “really detrimental.” “He has spent far too long kind of doing a what-about-ism journalism, a both-sides journalism in a way that I think has been really detrimental,” Biden said. “I know that he has some really, really, really personal things to say about me. I don’t know Jake well enough to make a judgment about him as a human being the way that he makes a judgment about me.”
Tapper, one of CNN’s most prominent figures, recently co-authored Original Sin with journalist Alex Thompson.
The book, which focuses heavily on the Biden family and Hunter’s troubled past, has drawn widespread attention—and apparent outrage from its subject. “He says that I’m a scumbag and I my this and that and the other thing,” Hunter continued. “And you know what? You can read my book about all my scumbaggery. I wrote all about it.”
Hunter, who has spoken openly about his drug addiction and personal scandals, said he is trying to move past that chapter in his life. “Addiction is a really, really, really ugly thing. Divorces are really, really, really ugly things. I don’t live my life to impress Jake Tapper,” he said. “But I just think it’s really, really poor journalism.”
During the conversation, journalist Tommy Christopher, who conducted the interview, noted that Tapper’s book received extensive promotion on CNN. “What shocked me was the way—the non-stop way CNN just infomercialed that thing for an hour on his show every day,” Christopher said. Biden agreed, calling CNN’s coverage “an infomercial” for Tapper’s book. “I think Jake’s got to cool it on the chat GPT and maybe give it at least a four-month period of time before he gives us another book,” Hunter quipped.
Hunter also dismissed Tapper’s relevance in the modern media landscape. “When I say that he is irrelevant, I think that he is really relevant in a certain circle, in an echo chamber where he lives, in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “What if there’s 50 cable news shows for real? Jake’s new show ranks about 35 or 40 out of 50.” He added that, in his view, Tapper is unpopular among his peers. “I don’t know many people that like Jake, okay? I really don’t. And I lived in D.C. for a very long time,” he said.
Christopher, while sympathetic to Hunter’s frustrations, defended Tapper’s personal character. “He has always—it’s one of the things that surprised me so much about the way he went at your dad—is that I’ve known him… and he’s got a sense of decency that is much stronger than I’ve seen in others,” he said.
The full interview, running over three hours, offers one of Hunter Biden’s most unfiltered commentaries yet on his treatment by the media. His attacks on Tapper reflect ongoing tensions between the Biden family and the press—tensions that have deepened as Hunter faces federal investigations and his father continues to insist he had “no involvement” in his son’s business dealings.
The conversation will be published in full as part of the Tommy Christopher Substack interview series.
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