August 27, 2022

Hoo, Boy. Breitbart’s New Hunter Biden Movie Trailer Is Out and WTF?!

A “My Son Hunter” preview just dropped on—where else—Truth Social.

British actor Laurence Fox as Hunter Biden, in the new Breitbart-produced movie, "My Son Hunter", a preview for which posted to Truth Social on Friday night.My Son Hunter/Twitter

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About a year ago, my colleague Dan Friedman reported that Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s ne’re-do-well lawyer and chaos agent, was having a rough time catching a break… in the movie business.

The project, Dan wrote, was “a documentary advancing discredited allegations about Joe and Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine during the Obama administration.” As MoJo reported in 2020, Giuliani had been trying to drum up a cool $10 million for a film that could act as a campaign “kill shot” on Biden, according to one source.

But it’s a tough biz. Nothing ultimately came of the project, aside from some bad footage. But it did attract the interest of investigators at the FBI, who wanted to know if the former New York City mayor had violated foreign lobbying rules. The creatives eventually fled the project after squabbling over money and vision. “The thing I took away from it was, ‘Jesus, these guys are morons,’” one of them explained.

Oh, Hollywood.

But fear not, movie buffs. Rudy couldn’t get his Hunter venture off the ground, but another group of filmmakers appears to have finally pulled it off. On Friday night, a trailer for My Son Hunter, a Breitbart-produced film directed by Die Hard actor and CPAC stalwart Robert Davi, dropped on Trump’s financially embattled media platform, Truth Social.

As incredulous as I was, I’m sorry to confirm it’s real: As Breitbart itself explains, the film represents the company’s “expansion into film distribution” (shudder) and is “a crowdfunded project inspired by the investigative reporting of Peter Schweizer and Breitbart News.” (Full-body shudder).

The film, a febrile fictionalization of the many Hunter Biden conspiracy theories, stars British actor Laurence Fox as Hunter. Fox was a noted anti-lockdown activist and ivermectin-enthusiast back home, and also ran a failed bid to become the mayor of London. Schweizer is the conservative author of Clinton Cash, who has worked with Steve Bannon for years. His less successful follow-up book included reporting on Hunter Biden.

As for the trailer: I suppose it’s trying to give me Succession or House of Cards, but with palpably strong “this has got to be a parody, right?” vibes. I guess this is the sinister underbelly that far-right types have feverishly imagined for years? Gangster boss Joe and his partying son, doing deals with a syndicate of international criminals—Chinese, Ukrainian, others. The film appears to have some arty fantasy sequences showing the Biden gang throwing around actual cash. (Unsurprisingly, it’s also deeply cruel in its mocking depiction of addiction.)

Just when you thought that was dispiriting enough: Some of the actors break the fourth wall to address the audience to inform us about how bad all this is. “What’s happening in there?” a campy agent-type, played by The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano, says directly into the camera. “Joe’s in on it.”

Pass the popcorn, and then the vomit bag.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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