Before Jake Tapper’s book tour hyping Original Sin, described by Naomi Biden as “political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class,” Tapper had a history of pissing off the Biden family, eventually prompting Hunter Biden to tell Tapper at a Super Bowl that he would “knock him out if they were not in a public setting.”
The feud goes back to 2015 when Tapper was repeatedly calling Hunter when his brother Beau was dying from brain cancer in hopes of getting the scoop on the time of death.
While Beau was lying on his deathbed at Walter Reed, Tapper was continually calling Hunter on his cellphone. When a call came in from a blocked number, Hunter answered. It was Tapper asking him to call him when Beau died. “Go F*** yourself Jake,” was the answer.
- Tapper denied the claim, calling it 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 reporter Dylan Byers.
- Tapper confirmed that Hunter confronted him at a Super Bowl, but instead reasoned that Hunter was pissed about Tapper allegedly reporting on his drug and prostitute use, which Tapper also denied.
- An internet archive search proves that Tapper actually did discuss those things in October 2014.
Hunter set the record straight this week.
“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.”
Adding to the feudal fire, Tapper was frustrated with his lack of access to President Biden, having a “meltdown” over an off-the-record event that was covered by colleague Erin Burnett before Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address.
According to two people familiar with the matter, Tapper had a “meltdown” and called numerous people in the White House to vent his anger at the decision. “He was raging ‘I’m Jake Tapper and this is my network,” according to a person on the receiving end of one of Tapper’s calls.
Tapper did not deny those claims, but he and the network continue their scorched-earth promotion of Tapper’s book. Tapper excoriated Hunter in a recent interview with Katie Couric.
