Fox News has faced massive backlash for airing an old and private voicemail from Joe Biden to his son Hunter Biden.
The conservative channel aired the voicemail on Monday, in which Mr Biden can be heard saying to his son: “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 know you don’t know what to do. I don’t either.”
“It’s actually sad. Now that voicemail reportedly came at the exact same time Hunter lied on a gun application to buy a handgun,” Fox News anchor Sean Hannity told his viewers.
The voicemail is from the time Hunter Biden was battling substance abuse and, according to reports, was sent by Mr Biden to his son on 15 October 2018 — three days after the alleged gun purchase.
“By the way, replace the name Biden with Trump and imagine how the mob and the media would be covering all of this. Instead, they’d rather perpetuate one hoax after another, just like they did with the dirt Steele dossier,” Mr Hannity added.
On social media, several commentators attacked Fox for airing the private voicemail between a father and a son.
New York-based comedian Chelsea Hart wrote on Instagram: “The recording that has surfaced of him [Joe Biden] pleading to his son offering him ‘anything he needs’ for his mental health problems is the kind of support that depressed and mentally ill people only dream of and very rarely succeed in finding.”
They continued: “The idea that Republicans used this recording to make him look ‘bad’ is the kind of pseudo-news malarkey that they’ve come to tell each other is grade-A ‘edgy’ discourse.”
Mr Biden’s son has discussed his lifelong struggle with addiction in a memoir. The president’s son said his “deep descent” into substance addiction followed the 2015 death of his older brother Beau Biden, who succumbed to brain cancer at age 46.
Others on social media blasted Fox and Mr Hannity for airing the private voicemail.
“What I want to know is how Sean Hannity got his dirty hands on a private voicemail between Joe Biden and his son??” one user asked.
“Sean Hannity trying to paint Joe Biden as a bad person by sharing this voicemail is absurd. Republicans piling on, so dumb,” said another user.
The user said that if more people with addiction got messages like this from their loved ones, “there’d be less suicide and overdose deaths”.
