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Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, urged Democrats to "turn the temperature up" and bashed CNN host Jake Tapper during an appearance on the Wide Awake Podcast with host Joshua Rubin earlier this month.
Rubin asked Biden if both the Democrats and Republicans needed to turn down the temperature regarding extremism, claiming it was only "escalating," to which the latter disagreed.
“I’m going to get myself in trouble for saying this. No, we need to turn the temperature up. We need to turn the temperature up, and we need people to see it for what it is. And what I mean by that is this: I do not believe that we are going to get to the bottom until we get to the bottom. And I want to get to the bottom faster rather than through this slow kind of process of just being picked apart — a death by a thousand cuts here,” Biden said, though clarifying that he "100%" didn't mean violence, adding “what I mean by turning the temperature up is we need to speak truth to power.”
“We need more people in my party, in the Democratic Party, more people in elected positions or in positions of power, or the talking heads that get paid to go on MSNBC [now MS NOW], they need to start talking about this as it is, not as a conjecture about whether or not the Supreme Court [sic] and this debate,” he added.
Biden also added to his longstanding feud with Tapper, specifically echoing criticism over CNN host's recently text interview with President Donald Trump.
“You have people like Jake Tapper who are having hardball discussions with Donald Trump over text. Like, what the f**k are you talking about, man? That’s not journalism. That’s a complete and utter abdication of responsibility as a journalist,” Biden claimed.
Tapper was previously bashed by MS NOW host Lawrence O'Donnell for the over the text interview, which O'Donnell claimed "they can't even prove was Donald Trump." In May, Biden confirmed his long speculated feud with Tapper, claiming he once told him to "go f**k" himself after the CNN host allegedly hounded him over the death of his brother Beau.
“It would be impossible to forget or misremember something that upsetting and out of line during one of the toughest moments of my life,” he told Breaker on May 21. “It happened. I was furious.”
Biden claimed that Tapper repeatedly called him while his brother was dying of brain cancer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2015, which included following up on a blocked number, to which he replied, "Go f**k yourself, Jake." The duo reportedly came face-to-face during a reported tense interaction at Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis, which led to long speculation of their feud.
Several sources with knowledge of the situation told Puck that they witnessed Hunter put his arm around Tapper's shoulders and tell him "I would knock you out" had they not been in a public setting, which was made in response to the incident involving the alleged barrage of calls made by Tapper years prior.
Tapper, who co-authored the upcoming book Original Sin with Axios' Alex Thompson on the alleged cover up of former President Biden's mental decline, has publicly denied calling Hunter about his brother's death, but confirmed the Super Bowl incident, which he claimed was made over negative headlines associated with Hunter's drug use and divorce.
“Hunter did once confront me at a Super Bowl party, but it was over an unrelated issue – coverage he wrongly believed I had done regarding divorce allegations of drug use and using prostitutes, which I actually had never done,” Tapper told Breaker.