If you’ve ever wondered how low Fox News is willing to go, then look no further than Sean Hannity on Monday night. For some unknown reason, the host’s producers decided to share a phone call Joe Biden made to his son, Hunter Biden, in an effort to discredit the president.
Thankfully there is still some humanity left in the world, and social media was quick to clap back.
The audio clip was from Oct. 15, 2018, when Hunter was struggling with addiction. In the call, Biden says, “It’s Dad. I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world, pal. You gotta get some help. I don’t know what to do; I know you don’t either. But I’m here. No matter what you need. No matter what you need. I love you.”
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Hannity doubles down on the totally inappropriate and truly vile stunt, saying, “It’s actually sad [...] Now that voicemail reportedly came at the exact same time Hunter lied on a gun application to buy a handgun.”
“By the way, replace the name Biden with Trump and imagine how the mob and the media would be covering all of this,” Hannity fumes, adding, “Instead, they’d rather perpetuate one hoax after another, just like they did with the dirty Steele dossier.” Oh, brother.
The phone call was made just three days after Hunter Biden reportedly illegally purchased a handgun. The younger Biden lied on a form about being a “user of or addicted to” any form of a controlled substance.
Hunter Biden is currently under investigation and could face charges over the false statement on the gun form and tax crimes, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
The president’s son has detailed his struggles with alcohol and drugs following the death of his older brother Beau in 2015 to brain cancer. In his memoir Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote, “After Beau died, I never felt more alone. I lost hope.”
In the prologue to the book, Hunter Biden wrote::
“I’ve bought crack cocaine on the streets of Washington, D.C., and cooked up my own inside a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles. I’ve been so desperate for a drink that I couldn’t make the one-block walk between a liquor store and my apartment without uncapping the bottle to take a swig. In the last five years alone, my two-decades-long marriage has dissolved, guns have been put in my face, and at one point I dropped clean off the grid, living in $59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself.”
According to reporting from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses are at an all-time high. See below:
The number of drug overdose deaths increased by nearly 30% from 2019 to 2020 and has quintupled since 1999. Nearly 75% of the 91,799 drug overdose deaths in 2020 involved an opioid. From 2019 to 2020, there were significant changes in opioid-involved death rates:
The bottom line is parents across the nation, Democrats and Republicans, are doing the best they can to take care of and love their kids with addictions.
How is it helpful to indict the president for loving his son, who was struggling at the time? A few folks on social media took issue with Fox’s ridiculous attempt to discredit the president.
Christine Pelosi wrote on Twitter,
“FOX ‘news’ spent #WorldMentalHealthDay gleefully playing audio of Joe Biden comforting Hunter in the darkest hours of addiction, As Trump did in 2020, they grossly underestimate the MILLIONS of Americans who struggle with addiction and need family love.”
Matthew Abraham-Michael wrote:
“I can’t believe Sean Hannity thought releasing an audio of Joe Biden being a concerned, loving father was some sort of gotcha moment. It really feels like being a decent human being is such a foreign concept to conservatives that they assume it causes embarrassment.”
Catherine Daley wrote:
“The fact that FOX aired this personal audio to somehow demonize Biden is one of the most disgusting things they’ve done. And they’ve done some really disgusting things. What the hell has happened to our decency?”
Rex Chapman wrote:
If only every addict were so lucky…”
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