Hunter Biden on addiction and 'the gift of being publicly shamed' | NPR's Newsmakers

0:02Hi, Scott Simon here with a special episode. Conversation from our sister show, Newsmakers, home of NPR's biggest interviews. Today, Hunter Biden. I was on a plane once, seven years sober, and nothing was going wrong. And somebody asked me if I wanted a drink. And 10 years later, I woke up in a motel with a crack pipe. My dad got older before people's eyes, and I think that made them very nervous. You were pardoned by your father? Yes, thank God. Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January 6th gang? I think that that is an insane argument.

0:45Hunter Biden has been all over the Internet lately. He's trolled President Trump and discussed his past struggles with addiction. But he's also made appearances with some fierce critics, including the conservative podcaster and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens. When we sat down with Hunter Biden in NPR studios in New York City this week, he told us he had nothing left to hide. You've been speaking out so much in the past few months on lots of different platforms. I'm struck by your first post on X, though, back in May, was, I'm Hunter Biden. You've never actually heard from me. Yeah. What do you want people to hear?

1:28Well, the most important thing that I think I can do with a platform that I never asked for is to speak to the millions of people, the over 50 million Americans who are still sick and suffering out there as it relates to addiction. The one thing that I know that I have a double PhD in is addiction and recovery. And, you know, I have a lot to say about a lot of other things, But that's really all bait to get people to start to have an open discussion about something that I am absolutely positive impacts all of us. And that's addiction. Looking back, how did that begin for you? You know, I'm a believer in the idea that people can be genetically predisposed to addiction.

2:42And so I think that that definitely plays a part in it. But for me, it began the way that it begins for so many. I was a kid that had an incredibly loving and beautiful childhood but also filled with trauma. Well, I mean, your family suffered an incredible loss. Yeah. I believe you were two years old. Yeah. Death of your mother and the sister. Yeah, and I never wanted to associate because it feels like a loss of control when something happens to you when you're two years old, just about three. And that trauma, my brother and I being in the accident and being in that car with my mom and my sister, is I never wanted to believe or blame what I for so long kind of felt was my own failing, my own failing that I couldn't control my drug use.

3:58When I say drug use, I consider alcohol the most dangerous drug that there is, at least for this addict.

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4:50Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at CapitalOne.com. One year ago, Congress eliminated over a billion dollars in funding for public media, yet we, the people, haven't backed down. When you donate to the independent nonprofits that make up the NPR network, we hold the powerful to account together. It's the kind of journalism democracy requires that we, the public, must protect. Join the community of people who power this work at donate.npr.org. The way that it started is that this is something that I tell everybody now. I think the hardest question addicts and alcoholics have answering the people that love them is why.

5:36Why do you keep doing it? When you know it's hurting you and for that matter hurts the people you love. And the devastation is the blast radius of your addiction is not just impacting you but concentric circles around you. And the true answer is this, is because at first it works, is that I was, like so many people, is that I had a happy childhood, but I was uncomfortable in my own skin. And from the most trivial thing of being able to ask the girl to dance, to, you know, do public speaking, but also this sense of, and I know other people that are in recovery will immediately understand what I'm saying, is the feeling of being alone in a crowded room.

6:33And what alcohol did for me when I was younger, and I mean normal, like teenager in high school and go on the weekend have a beer or more. And what it did is it worked. All of that kind of fear-based reaction to connection disappeared. I was able to ask the girl to dance. I was able to do the things that I wouldn't have the courage to do unless I had a drink. And it works until it doesn't. It works until it becomes the thing that you become a prisoner to. Well, I mean, to point out the obvious, it became a lot more serious than just having a drink to ask a girl to a dance. Oh, 100 percent. But gradually.

7:38And the truth is, is that gradually, with varying degrees of consequence, I was able to drink and be functional for a long time. And not until 2003 when my – primarily my brother confronted me about it. And when I say confronted me about it, he said like, hey, you got to tone it down. and and my relationship was my brother was such is that I knew that if he was saying that to me that I had to take it seriously and so what I would do when he first did I said okay I won't drink for the month of January and I'd make it two weeks and then I'd say well I won't drink during the weekdays and then I would have a drink on a Wednesday until eventually I just said, I needed help.

8:44And that's one of the primary things is you need to ask for that help. And I did and I went to rehab and it worked. It worked for about seven years until I relapsed. What happened? absolutely nothing that's the answer it wasn't because of a tragic incident it wasn't because of a it was I was flying back on a plane I was by myself from a business trip from Europe the drink cart rolled by and the flight attendant asked if I like Bloody Mary it was a morning flight and I said, hmm, sure. You know? And it was the strangest thing because when I was in, when I went through rehab the first time, one of my counselors, one of the therapists, told me their own story of recovery and how they relapsed and how you always have to be aware of it and he told me a story of being seven years sober, being on a plane and having a drink.

10:04He was flying to D.C., and he woke up in Albuquerque like four days later. Now, I didn't wake up in Albuquerque. What I did was I kind of brushed it under the rug. And here's where addiction is insidious, is you're ashamed that you somehow failed because you've just relapsed. And 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, like all addiction, worse and worse.

10:53And I must say sources of addiction, at least judging from the outside, a lot more potentially lethal than a Bloody Mary. Yeah. And, well, one of the things— That bloody marriage can be awfully lethal if you have 10 of them. No, I understand what you're saying.

11:12But the most dangerous thing about crack cocaine, which eventually, not until 2017—or 16, excuse me, did I start smoking crack. But the most dangerous thing about illicit drug use and particularly certain 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 and my completely obliterating any judgment in me was alcohol. How do you come to terms with hurting the people you love most in the world?

12:13painfully and slowly, and with an enormous sense of, or acceptance of the grace that others have provided me. I am incredibly grateful every single day for the fact that my family, and particularly my daughters have shown me. I'm seven years clean and sober now. And as somebody said to me, I should stop saying clean because it's almost pejorative in a sense. So I'm substance-free for seven years, over seven years now. And it's taken those seven years to, 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 an ever-present, 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.

13:32And that hurt of becoming not just unavailable, but disappearing from them was incredibly painful to them. And the one thing that we learned, and that I've learned in recovery and the practices that I kind of employ, is that you can seek forgiveness, but never seek forgiveness with an expectation that you will be forgiven. I've been incredibly, incredibly blessed and that I've been given the grace of being welcomed back into the lives of the people that I love the most. Is it a struggle to stay sober every day? No, it isn't. And that's what I want other people to know that are out there sick and suffering right now.

14:31No, it isn't. It's beautiful. Days are beautiful, beautiful things. I'm literally, I am more grateful for my life and all of it right now than I've ever been in my entire life. I am filled with purpose and purpose with a small p. I don't mean like it just, I was given the gift of being so publicly shamed and humiliated. And my literally stripped bare, in some cases literally stripped naked in the public square. There were photos. Yeah, that I had nowhere to, I had nowhere left to hide. I had no more secrets that I could keep. They were all exposed, every single one of them. And in that, what I found is this, is that I either had a choice when I woke up in the morning to get out of bed and live or curl up and die, literally.

15:42And that, and I made the choice to live not out of courage, probably more out of just habit. Habit? Get up. Just get up. I had to get up. And when I got up, I realized, okay, like there's something to live for. And I always tell people that the most important thing that I think that you can do is figure out what it is that can literally fill your time in a productive way that is not a burden to you, something that you want to do. and um and uh and the second and most important thing is is get out of your own head and the easiest way to get out of your own head is to try to figure out how to be kind and help another person that's completely selfish completely selfish is uh because it's the it's the thing that brings me peace joy it's all for me i mean it literally is one of the most selfish things i I think I do on a daily basis, like sitting around talking about recovery for, you know, with people.

16:56Because what I get from the feedback, and you have to sometimes sift through it on platforms like X, I get a lot of feedback. As you get, thank you for saying that today. It helped me make it through the day. Let me strike off on that to ask. It 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? Yeah, no. They've been my, they've sent 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.

17:55I 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. And because I felt like if I, number one, if it devolved into a, an argument, at least in which I got to, you know, express my mind, it was worth, that was worth it to me. but maybe maybe we may see the humanity in each other and that was the instance with Candace and I will say this I don't agree with Candace on so many things and she knows this I don't agree with her as it relates to the way in which she talks about Judaism I do not particularly agree with the way in which she talks about homosexuality and the LGBTQIA community It really bothers me as someone who is my daughter is gay and I'm and and I it really bothers me.

19:10But the thing that that I got to with Candace was that that she saw me as a human being. And I think if I could at least break that kind of, I don't even know, the perception, misconception, misinformation, disinformation. Do you see her differently now too? Yes, I do. I see her differently in this. is that Candice is a mom. I can say without equivocation is that she is a... Her studio is in her house and I saw her interact with her kids and not in a performative way in any way. She's a mom. She's a mom first. It doesn't make the fact that she doesn't believe that we landed on the moon any different to me.

20:17but I know that she actually cares, whether I think that she's misguided in the way in which she expresses that. I do know that she cares very much about her faith. She is a newly converted Catholic, and I'm not a very good practicing Catholic, but I was raised a Catholic. So we found ways to be able to connect. And I think in a world in which we've all been told, and I think it's BS, told that we are all so divided and that we're on the brink of a civil war and that we're never going to be able to come back together. I think that that is just not true. I think that we are being fed that by people that have an interest in keeping us divided.

21:11And so if I could go sit down with Candace Owens and effectively break bread, I hopefully set an example of the way in which I think hopefully we're going to have a chance to heal. I have to switch gears. You've been in a political family all of your life. Taking advantage of the clear sight you say you have now. When a Ukrainian energy company pays you, I believe it was$83 ,000 a month as a consultant, was that because you were Joe Biden's son? I think in part, yes, 100%. I think what people conflate about that is this, is that I accept the criticism of the idea that I should not have taken that job because of the fact that my dad was at the time, was in the last year of his vice presidency.

22:19But 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 is that if you're 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're responsible for securing over a$2.6 billion budget for feeding 82 million people in 72 different countries on a daily basis. I was an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in the master's program for over four years.

23:07I went to Yale Law School. I was at Boyce-Shiller Flexner, in which I was an expert on corporate governance. I served on 17 other boards in between that time, all very significant boards, including as vice chairman of the board of Amtrak. And so I was preeminently qualified to be on that board. 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. And the way that you can certify that is this. is that they stole 20 years of my digital life. They stole every email, every text message, every voicemail, deleted voicemail somehow they got.

23:56And they took that and they made it available to everybody. You can still go on it and see it now. And I challenge anyone to find a single instance in which, when my dad was vice president, senator, or president, You have a single communication in which I say, hey, I need dad to do this for me because I'm getting paid. Not one. Now, one board membership compared to what I just read in the, and I think it was Forbes. Just from DOD contracts alone, Don Trump and Eric, while they're down as president, have received over$3.9 billion in DOD contracts to companies of which they have a stake in. $3.9 billion in the first year and a half of this presidency.

24:56They have made billions of dollars. Well, even if the numbers don't compare, though. Yeah. Are you and the Trump sons both part of the same system? No, not even remotely. Not even remotely. What did I do when my dad was president? I don't know the answer to that exactly. Well, everybody has an opinion, though. And what they think is, is that 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 when my brother was diagnosed with glioblastoma, I knew my father was never going to run for office ever again.

25:38And I decided to take 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 a president? When my dad was president, you know what I did? I painted. I sold paintings through a gallery to people that were all public. And you can go read about who bought my paintings because there was congressional testimony under oath given by every single one of the people that bought one of my paintings.

26:14I made$200 ,000 a year on average when my dad was president of the United States. That's it. $200 ,000 a year. And I can verify it because there's sworn congressional testimony. There is a – how many years have I been investigated? Ten years? By every single – I've been investigated by the House Oversight Committee, the Senate Judiciary, the House Judiciary, the House Ways and Means Committee, by the Department of Justice, Main Justice, by the Tax Division, by the Criminal Tax Division, by the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, by the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles. 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.

27:05So 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. I do have to ask this a little more difficult. You were convicted of federal gun charges in 2024. You realize the Supreme Court just made that unconstitutional. What they charged me, 922 G3. I guess I didn't, but you were pardoned by your father. Yes, thank God. Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January I think that that is an insane argument. Do I think that my father, 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.

28:10to commit crimes, including sexually abusing children. I don't think that the two are the same thing. Not only that is this, I ask you this question.

28:25My convictions, I was convicted and I was convicted by a jury and I was convicted because technically and 100 % I had committed a crime. I did not pay my taxes on time. And even though I paid them with penalties and interest, it's a crime to do so. I purchased a gun at a time when it could conceivably be argued that I was addicted to a substance. And that when I checked the box on that form and saying that I was not, I committed a crime. I mean, that's why the question's there. Yeah, exactly. To tear people who are – yeah. And which, by the way, the question also asks whether you've ever been a user of marijuana.

29:15And 80 million Americans who own guns have all used marijuana. And that's why the Supreme Court just overturned. It was unconstitutional. My point is this. 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, number one, I think that I will win some of this on appeal. But number two is that I, as a first-time offender for a nonviolent crime without a victim, am not going to spend any time in jail. That's a certainty. and that I would, 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, like any other person that had been convicted.

30:15Do you think that he should have had any faith in the idea that this Department of Justice, this Department of Corrections, this Department of Probation, that does things like moves Jelaine Maxwell from a minimum security prison to a prison camp without any explanation, that moves prisoners around. Alexander Smirnoff, who's convicted of bribing, accusing me of bribery, can't be found in the prison system right now because they've moved him somewhere. And so my point is, is that when my dad woke up after Thanksgiving and after the election occurred, and he read that Donald Trump had just appointed Matt Gaetz to be the attorney general.

31:01I 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, his Department of Corrections, and his Department of Probation.

31:25This message comes from Capital One with the Capital One Saver Card. Earn unlimited 3 % cash back on dining and entertainment. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at CapitalOne.com. Every episode of It's Been a Minute, NPR's What's Happening in Culture podcast starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow It's Been a Minute wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are filling your feed. This is Terry Gross.

32:06When I was celebrating my 50th anniversary hosting Fresh Air, I asked my guest, Roastmaster General Jeff Ross, to roast me. Terry Gross, a barely living legend.

32:21Still at it. Listen to Fresh Air on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. Did you want your father to run for re-election? No. No. Did you tell him? No. I told him this, is that I would, like I'd done my entire life, is that I supported whatever he thought was best as it related to what he wanted to do to serve. There was nothing that was more important to me than getting my dad back, getting my family back. And the presidency does something. the people I don't think fully comprehend.

33:18It's almost impossible for a president to be fully present in the lives of the people that he loves the most because it is literally all-consuming. It is an all-consuming thing. And I know that people have reported that at the end when he was making the decision that I was in there telling my dad that he has to stay and he's running, And literally nothing could be further from the truth. And I think that they know that. But just from a logical perspective, what would I possibly have to gain to continue to be the target that I was? The four years of his presidency were, I think, by anybody's estimation, a really difficult four years.

34:11A lot of it my own making, but a lot of it just by simply because of who he was in the position that he held in which the struggles that I was trying to overcome in sobriety, sober this entire time, building a family and rebuilding a family. To do it while he was president was maybe one of the most difficult things that I can ever imagine putting someone through.