(AFP) – US politics already feels like a contact sport, but one of Washington’s most bitter political feuds may literally be headed to the mat after former president Joe Biden’s son challenged the two eldest Trump brothers to a cage fight. After years of verbal sparring, Hunter Biden said in a video posted online Thursday he would be “100 percent in” for a bout against President Donald Trump’s sons Don Jr and Eric, potentially turning the long-running grudge between the families into a pay-per-view spectacle.
Channel 5, run by left-wing social media influencer Andrew Callaghan, posted a video to its Instagram Thursday featuring the younger Biden explaining that he would be appearing in several venues on the media company’s upcoming US tour. “I think he’s trying to organize a cage match, me versus Eric and Don Jr. I told him I’d do it — 100 percent in, if he can pull it off,” Biden said.
Details of the proposed showdown remain hazy, including whether the elder Trump brothers would fight together or separately, and where such an event might take place. There has so far been no public response from Don Jr or Eric — who, at 48 and 42 respectively, have an age advantage over their 56-year-old putative opponent.
The rivalry between the current White House occupant and his predecessor — sharpened when Biden beat Trump in the 2020 election — has been marked by unusually personal attacks and escalating rhetoric. Trump has repeatedly derided his Democratic foe with nicknames such as “Sleepy Joe” and accused his administration — without evidence — of fixing the 2020 election and “weaponizing” federal agencies against Republicans. Biden, for his part, has cast Trump as a threat to democratic norms and once said he would have wanted to “beat the hell” out of the billionaire Republican over his crude comments about women if they’d been at high school together.
Any clash of the younger generation would echo a long history of personal feuds in US politics — from the 1804 duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton to the much-hyped but never-realized 2023 cage match between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
With mixed martial arts enjoying a surge in popularity — and even an Ultimate Fighting Championship event planned for the White House grounds later this year — the line between politics and spectacle in Washington appears blurrier than ever. Callaghan suggested the cage match may have been floated partly in jest, according to USA TODAY, but said he would be “more than happy” to arrange the contest if all sides were willing to step into the octagon.
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