WASHINGTON — He really was Sleepy Joe!
Hunter Biden claimed in a new interview that his father’s disastrous performance in last year’s debate with Donald Trump was due in part to Ambien.
“I know exactly what happened in that debate,” Hunter, 55, told YouTube personality Andrew Callaghan in an interview released Monday on the anniversary of Joe Biden ending his re-election bid.
“He flew around the world. He’s 81 years old. He’s tired. They give him Ambien to be able to sleep and he gets up on the stage and looks like a deer in the headlights.”
It’s unclear when exactly the elderly 46th president consumed the sleep aid, which has an increased risk of side effects like drowsiness among patients older than 70, whose bodies also process the drug more slowly, according to a FDA fact sheet.
Hunter also didn’t specify how long his father was on Ambien in the run-up to the debate.
The then-president arrived hours later than scheduled to inspect the CNN debate stage on the night of July 27, 2024 — after spending more than four hours out of sight at a hotel nearby.
The debate killed Biden’s quest for re-election, with the then-president’s mouth hanging agape for long stretches. In a stunning utterance viewed by tens of millions of voters, Biden nonsensically declared that he “finally beat Medicare.”
A Democratic Party rebellion ensued, forcing Biden to step aside on July 21, 2024, in favor of then-Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential nominee.
“They said, ‘We are going to blow up the party if you don’t drop out,’” the former first son narrated in the interview. “‘We’re going to protest this all the way up for the next month, all the way up to the convention.’”
Although the use of Ambien is very common, the drug was not disclosed on Biden’s annual physical report last year, which was issued to reassure the public about the commander in chief’s fitness.
A memo released by then-presidential physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor on Feb. 28, 2024, makes note of six medications the commander-in-chief was taking — but the popular sleeping aid is not one of them.
The Post also conducted a brief review of Joe Biden’s publicly available medical records and found no mention of an Ambien prescription.
O’Connor, who insisted that Biden’s mental and physical fitness was “excellent” following the debate, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination this month as he refused a House committee’s questions.
The doctor, a close Biden friend and longtime confidant, drew bipartisan scorn after Biden was diagnosed in May with stage 4 prostate cancer, which critics said should have been caught before it spread to the ex-president’s bones.
Joe Biden traveled to Italy to meet with G7 leaders from June 13-15, 2024 — days after stopping in France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
By June 20, 2024, the president had hunkered down at Camp David for debate prep ahead of the June 27 showdown.
The former first son also downplayed the extent of the Democratic revolt against his father that led to Joe Biden giving up the Democratic nomination.
“The people who came out against him were nobody, except … Speaker Emeritus [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] did not give a full-throated endorsement,” he said.
“The entirety of the progressive side of the Democratic Party said Joe Biden has got more of our agenda accomplished in four years than any president in history.”
Following the debate, Hunter Biden claimed, his father was left with the impossible task of proving to party leaders that he was up to carrying the Democratic standard against Trump.
“He gets over the hump, he goes and does the [ABC News anchor George] Stephanopoulos [interview]. Everybody goes, ‘OK, that’s not enough, we got to see him give a press conference,’” Hunter griped, referring to a media availability that July 12 at which Biden called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “Vladimir,” in apparent confusion with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Five days later, the White House announced that the president had tested positive for COVID-19, dealing a further blow to his attempt to get the campaign back on track.
“He woke up in the morning and he had a severe case of COVID, and the pictures of him getting on and off the plane were just devastating, and then the vultures descended,” Hunter recalled.
“So Joe Biden, I think, did the most selfless thing that I know of any politician in the history of this f—ing country,” he added. “He stepped aside to save the party.”
A rep for the former president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
