Years before Jake Tapper decided to write a buzzy tell-all about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, the CNN anchor had a long-simmering feud with the former president’s son Hunter that featured a heated confrontation at a Super Bowl and threats of violence.
Amid Tapper’s non-stop promotional tour for Original Sin, the explosive behind-the-scenes exposé he co-wrote with Axios correspondent Alex Thompson, Biden-world has had the knives out for the veteran journalist – especially over damning accusations of a “cover-up” to hide the ex-president’s fading mental acuity.
At the same time, though, there appears to be another reason the Biden family is none too pleased with the CNN star.
Last week, Puck’s Dylan Byers reported that there had been a tense face-to-face between Tapper and Hunter Biden at Super Bowl LII. Sources told Byers that the incident stemmed from Tapper repeatedly calling Hunter when his brother Beau was dying from brain cancer in hopes of getting the scoop on the time of death.
Tapper, meanwhile, told Byers that it was a “patently false lie” and that he never tried to contact Hunter during that time. “At no point in my life have I ever called Hunter Biden—I’ve never even had his phone number—and I would never have contacted a person’s immediate family during such a challenging and personal time,” he told Puck.
Well, Hunter decided to go on the record this week to refute Tapper’s account, telling media newsletter Breaker that the author did indeed try to source him up during his brother’s final days. He also confirmed that this was the reason he confronted Tapper at the Big Game.
“It would be impossible to forget or misremember something that upsetting and out of line during one of the toughest moments of my life,” Hunter said. “It happened. I was furious. And I told him so the next time I saw him, which was at the Super Bowl.”
Breaker further reported that while the Biden family was at Walter Reed National Medical Center in May 2015, Tapper continually called Hunter on his cellphone as Beau lay on his deathbed.
“Those calls went unanswered,” Breaker added. “But then Hunter received a call from a blocked number. So he did pick up. It was Tapper, who allegedly asked Hunter to call him when Beau died. ‘Go F*** yourself Jake,” is what those who were present at the time recall Hunter telling Tapper.”
When Hunter saw Tapper at the Super Bowl two years later, the incident was still fresh on his mind – and he gave the anchor a tongue-lashing over it.
“At that game Tapper approached Hunter to shake his hand,” Breaker reported. “But Hunter responded that he was still so enraged about what had happened at Walter Reed that he would knock him out if they were not in a public setting. We are told Tapper would later demand an apology from Biden for his son’s behavior.”
In response to Breaker’s story, Tapper doubled down on comments he gave to Puck last week. “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.”
Though Tapper claims he never reported on allegations of drug use by Hunter Biden, a quick search through the Internet Archive shows that he actually did discuss those claims during an October 2014 CNN segment.
Meanwhile, others who spoke with Hunter directly after Tapper allegedly tried to call him at Walter Reed recounted that the presidential scion was livid over the situation.
“It was obviously transparent niceties and then right to business as if the one thing Hunter is thinking about as Beau is dying is let me give Jake Tapper an exclusive,” one source said. “He was furious about it.”
A spokesperson for Tapper brushed off the claims made by Hunter and others, however. “The idea that Jake could do something so heartless—and yet the Bidens would subsequently offer him multiple sit down interviews as well as agree to him moderating the debate, all without anyone hearing about it until now—completely defies logic,” the spokesperson stated.
The fact is that Tapper only ever actually interviewed the former president once. This was also a sore spot for Tapper, according to Breaker, which claimed that “Tapper had long been frustrated with the Bidens over a lack of access” and even had a “meltdown” when another anchor was given an off-the-record briefing with Biden before the 2024 State of the Union.
In a recent interview with Katie Couric to promote his book, Tapper tore into Hunter and claimed he acted as the “chief of staff of the family” while blasting him on a personal level.
“It’s bizarre because I think he is provably, demonstrably unethical, sleazy and prone to horrible decisions,” Tapper declared. “After his brother died, he cheated on his wife with his brother’s widow and then got her addicted to crack. That’s just one thing I could say. I don’t have a lot of personal regard for him.”
