SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Earlier this spring, the son of the 46th president of the United States reactivated his account on X and wrote, I'm Hunter Biden. You've never actually heard from me. Well, since then, Hunter Biden has been all over the internet, trolling President Trump, but also making appearances with some fierce critics, including the conservative podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.
HUNTER BIDEN: I wanted to go into the lion's den with the people that had pursued me the most vociferously over the past seven years and had said some of the most hurtful things that you can say about another human being.
SIMON: When we sat down with Hunter Biden in NPR's New York studios this week, he told us that he felt he had nothing left to hide. He struggled with addiction for years and saw his most embarrassing moments made public through congressional investigations and federal prosecutions. His abuse of alcohol and later crack cocaine began gradually, he said.
BIDEN: I was able to drink and be functional for a long time. And not until 2003, when my brother confronted me about it - he said, like, hey, you got to tone it down. Eventually, I just said I needed help. And I went to rehab, and I worked for about seven years until I relapsed.
SIMON: What happened?
BIDEN: Absolutely nothing. I was flying back on a plane. I was by myself from a business trip from Europe. The drink cart rolled by. The flight attendant asked if I'd like a bloody mary. I said, hmm. Sure (laughter). You know? And here's where addiction is insidious. You're ashamed that you somehow failed because you've just relapsed. You don't want to get honest with yourself about it. And therefore, you don't get honest with anybody around you about it. And so now you're hiding something. And I went through from 2010 up until 2019, it was an odyssey of recovery, relapse, recovery in varying degrees that became worse and worse.
SIMON: And I must say, sources of addiction, at least judging from the outside, a lot more potentially lethal than a bloody mary.
BIDEN: Yeah. The most dangerous thing about crack cocaine, which eventually, not until 2016, did I start smoking crack. But the most dangerous thing about illicit drug use is the potential for violence that occurs because of the trade of that drug, and the fact that it's not sold over a counter, like a bottle of vodka. The most dangerous thing, however, that I ever ingested in terms of what it did to my physical body and my mental state, completely obliterating any judgment in me, was alcohol.
SIMON: How do you come to terms with hurting the people you love most in the world?
BIDEN: Painfully and slowly, and with an enormous acceptance of the grace that others have provided me, that my family and particularly my daughters have shown me. I'm substance-free for seven years - over seven years now. It's taken those seven years, and it will take seven more to fully allow for the hurt to wash through the system. My hurt with my family and particularly my daughters, more than anything, who were in their late teens and early 20s when I went through the worst of it, was that I was ever present in their lives from the time they were born until the time that I decided that I was just going to disappear. And that hurt of becoming not just unavailable but disappearing from them was incredibly painful to them.
SIMON: Is it a struggle to stay sober every day?
BIDEN: No, it isn't. It's beautiful. Just days are beautiful, beautiful things. I am more grateful for my life and all of it right now than I've ever been in my entire life. I was given the gift of being so publicly shamed and humiliated, literally stripped bare, in some cases, literally stripped naked in the public square.
SIMON: There were photos.
BIDEN: Yeah. I had nowhere left to hide. I had no more secrets that I could keep. They were all exposed.
SIMON: Seems like you've made a particular effort in speaking out to be with people like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes. Have you made a particular effort to reach out to people who've, let's put it this way, not been in your fan club?
BIDEN: Yeah. They've said some of the most horrible, hurtful things that could be said about - and I really don't care what to say about me, but even more so about my family, about my dad. I don't agree with Candace on so many things. But the thing that I got to with Candace was that she saw me as a human being.
SIMON: Do you see her differently now, too?
BIDEN: Yes, I do. I see her differently in this. Is that Candace is a mom. She cares very much about her faith. She is a newly converted Catholic. I'm not a very good practicing Catholic, but I was raised a Catholic. And so we found ways to be able to connect. And I think in a world in which we've all been told that we are all so divided and that we're on the brink of a civil war, I think that that is just not true. We are being fed that by people that have an interest in keeping us divided.
SIMON: I have to switch gears. You've been in a political family all of your life. When a Ukrainian energy company pays you, I believe it was $83,000 a month...
BIDEN: Yeah.
SIMON: ...As a consultant, was that because you were Joe Biden's son?
BIDEN: I think in part, yes, 100%. I accept the criticism, the idea that I should not have taken that job because of the fact that my dad was in the last year of his vice presidency. But I will remind people that 75% of the time that I had that job, my dad was neither vice president nor president. And I would say to people criticizing me because of some idea that I was not qualified for the job, I would say this. I was chairman of the board of the U.S. Union World Food Program for over five years, the largest humanitarian organization in the world. We were responsible for securing over a $2.6 billion budget.
I served on 17 other boards in between that time, including as vice chairman of the board of Amtrak. And so I was preeminently qualified to be on that board. The question is, should I have taken that job when my dad was in the - and the answer is no, I shouldn't have. And I had never done that before. Now, one board membership, compared to what I just read in, I think, it was Forbes - just from DOD contracts alone, Don Trump and Eric, while their dad is president, have received over $3.9 billion in DOD contracts to companies of which they have a stake in.
SIMON: Well, even if the numbers don't compare, though...
BIDEN: Yeah.
SIMON: Are you and the Trump sons both part of the same system?
BIDEN: No, not even remotely. Not even remotely. What did I do when my dad was president?
SIMON: I don't know the answer to that exactly. I know you were having...
BIDEN: Well, everybody has an opinion, though. And what they think is, I was corrupt, and I drifted off my father's name, right? So where - other than the one instance in which you can talk about, in which I took a board seat with a company that, by the way, I did absolutely zero for as it relates to any government policy - other than that, how is it even remotely like what they're doing? How do you even mention my name in the context of their name, other than the fact that I was also the son of the president?
When my dad was president, you know what I did? I painted. How many years have I been investigated? Ten years. And what they came up with is that in one year, after I got sober, I realized I had not filed and paid for my taxes, so I filed and paid for them. And I paid with penalties and interest. And three years after I did that, they prosecuted me. That's what I did.
SIMON: You were convicted of federal gun charges in 2024?
BIDEN: Yeah. You realize the Supreme Court just made that unconstitutional, that - what they charged me, 922(g)(3).
SIMON: I guess I didn't, but...
BIDEN: Yeah.
SIMON: You were pardoned by your father.
BIDEN: Yes. Thank God.
SIMON: Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January 6 gang?
BIDEN: I think that that is an insane argument. Do I think that pardoning me opened the door for Donald Trump to pardon people that engaged in an insurrection, beat police officers, and then, since they're pardoned, many of them have gone back to commit crimes, including sexually abusing children. I don't think that the two are the same thing.
If my dad had won, he would have kept his word. He would not have pardoned me. And the reason that he would not have pardoned me is because I would have told him I have complete and utter faith in the fact that, No. 1, I think that I will win some of this on appeal. But, No. 2, as a first-time offender for a nonviolent crime without a victim, I'm not going to spend any time in jail. And I know that between the Department of Justice, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Probation, I have absolute faith in our system that I would be treated fairly like any other person that had been convicted.
When my dad woke up after Thanksgiving, after the election occurred, and he read that Donald Trump had just appointed Matt Gaetz to be the attorney general, I think that he made a decision then that Donald Trump had made a decision not to actually adhere to the Constitution, the rule of law, and that he intended to take out and meet justice through his own Department of Justice, in his Department of Corrections, in his department of probation.
SIMON: Did you want your father to run for reelection?
BIDEN: No.
SIMON: Did you tell him?
BIDEN: No. I told him I supported whatever he thought was best as it related to what he wanted to do to serve. And I know that people have reported that I was in there telling my dad that he got - he has to stay and run. And literally, nothing could be further from the truth. I just wanted to have my dad back.
SIMON: I mean, did you tell him that? Or...
BIDEN: When he made the decision, yeah.
SIMON: OK, but not before that.
BIDEN: No. Because I think it's unfair to me to do - this, because I know this also. There's only one thing my dad cares about more than his service, and that's his family. I would never want to be the reason that he didn't fulfill what he believed was his duty in service.
SIMON: Did you notice ways in which he was beginning to falter?
BIDEN: I noticed things that were purely associated and typical with growing older. His speech slowed down. His gait changed. It does not in any way mean that there is a cognitive failure. But my dad got older before people's eyes, and I think that made them very nervous.
SIMON: Has your father been following your recent interviews, postings?
BIDEN: Yeah. And he's - one thing that he said to me, stop using the F word so much.
SIMON: (Laughter) All right. I've read that.
BIDEN: And I said, you got to be kidding me.
SIMON: You haven't used it with us, at least - maybe I should say so far.
BIDEN: No. And I won't. I said, Dad, and I said, every single one of those F words was earned on my part (laughter). Yeah.
SIMON: For people who are watching and listening to us, can you say something that would help them take a step forward? What do they need to know now?
BIDEN: You are not alone. That's my single, most important message. Fifty million Americans on any given day are dealing with addiction. That means almost every one of the 350 million Americans have been impacted in some way by addiction. Addiction is a family disease. It is a communal disease, and you are not alone.
SIMON: Do you feel alone, sometimes?
BIDEN: Not now. The times that I felt the most alone were when - in the window between inebriation and sobriety, when you felt like you didn't have any way out and that your only choice was to anesthetize yourself again. In those windows, you feel more alone than anything that you can imagine. Every day, I was actively choosing suicide, and I knew it - not in a metaphorical sense. I knew I was killing myself. I didn't feel like I had any other choice. But today I have a choice, and that is the greatest gift that anyone can ask, is just to have that choice.
SIMON: Hunter Biden, thanks so much.
BIDEN: Yeah. It's an honor. Thank you, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOGO PENGUIN'S "SATURNINE")
SIMON: Hunter Biden spoken NPR's video podcast Newsmakers. The full conversation is on the NPR app and on YouTube. You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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