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

Hi, 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, 7 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, uh, an insane argument.

Hunter 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 terrorist 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.

Uh, 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?

Well, 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 a double PhD in his 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. And so, I think that that part— that definitely plays a part in it. But for me, it began the way that it begins for so many, is, you know, 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 2 years old.

Yeah.

Death of your mother and a sister.

Yeah, and I never wanted to associate, because it feels like a loss of control when something happens to you when you're 2 years old, just about 3, 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. And when I say drug use, I consider alcohol the most dangerous drug that there is, at least for this addict.

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The way that it started is that—this is something that I tell everybody now—is that I think the hardest question addicts and alcoholics have answering the people that love them is why. You know, why do you keep doing it? And 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 was— 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 will immediately understand what I'm saying is the feeling of being alone in a crowded room. And what alcohol did for me when I was younger, and I mean normal, like, you know, teenager in high school and have a, you know, go, you know, on the weekend have a beer or more.

And 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 is is you become a prisoner too.

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 on occasion.

Oh, 100%. But gradually. And 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 gotta tone it down." And my relationship with 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 2 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. And 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 was— and it worked. It worked for about 7 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'd like a 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 7 years sober, being on a plane, and having a drink. He was flying to D.C., and he woke up in Albuquerque, like, 4 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.

And 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—

Bloody Marys can be awfully lethal if you have 10 in a bottle.

I understand what you're saying. But 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 the 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?

Painfully 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 7 years clean and sober now. And somebody said to me I should stop saying clean because it's almost pejorative in a sense. So, I'm substance-free for 7 years, over 7 years now. And it's taken those 7 years to— and it will take 7 more to 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. And 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 what the practices that I 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 in 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. No, 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— I am filled with purpose, and purpose with a small p. I don't mean like— I was given the gift of being so publicly shamed and humiliated and literally stripped bare, in some cases literally stripped naked in the public square. There were photos. Yeah. That I had nowhere to, um, 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. And that And I made the choice to live, not out of courage, probably more out of just habit. Habit. I had to 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 the second and most important thing 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. Mm-hmm. Is because 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 think I do on a daily basis, like sitting around talking about recovery for, you know, with people. Because what I get from the feedback And you have to sometimes sift through it on platforms like X, because 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 too, to ask. 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 have been my— they've sent some of the most horrible, hurtful things that could be said about— and I really don't care what they say about me, but even more so about my family, about my dad. I wanted to go into the lion's den with the people that had pursued me the most vociferously over the past 7 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 an argument, at least in which I got to express my mind. 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 I don't 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 it really bothers me.

But the thing 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 and misconception, misinformation, disinformation. And—

Do you see her differently now, too? Yes, I do.

I see her differently in this, is that Candace 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. But 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.

And 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, 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%. As I think what people conflate about that is this, is that I will, 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. 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 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 US-UN World Food Program for over 5 years, the largest humanitarian organization in the world. We were responsible for securing over a $2.6 billion budget for feeding 70 or 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 4 years. I went to Yale Law School. I was at Boies Schiller Fleckner, 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'd 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. And 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, uh, and I think it was Forbes, just from DOD contracts alone Donald 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. $3.9 billion in the first year and a half of this presidency.

They have made billions of dollars.

Well, even if the numbers don't compare though, Yep. 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, and 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 the pre— 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. I 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, how many years have I been investigated? 10 years. By every single— I, I've been investigated by the House Oversight Committee, the, 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. So I filed and paid for them, and I paid with penalties and interest. And 3 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.

Yeah. You realize the Supreme Court just made that unconstitutional, that what they charged me, 922. I guess I didn't, but—

Yeah. You were pardoned by our father.

Yes, thank God.

Did that open the door for President Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January 6th gang?

Okay, um, I think that that is, uh, 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 their pardon, many of them have gone back to commit, uh, to 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. My 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 in saying that I was not, I committed a crime. Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's why the question's there. Yeah, exactly.

To deter people who are on— Yeah. Yeah. And which, by the way, the question also asks whether you've ever been or used or a user of marijuana. And 80 million Americans who own guns have all used or have marijuana. And that's why the Supreme Court just overturned it as 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, I'm not going to spend any time in jail. That would— 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, like any other person that had been convicted. Do 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 Ghislaine Maxwell from a minimum security prison to a prison camp, without any explanation that moves prisoners around.

Alexander Smirnov, who's convicted of bribing, uh, accusing me of bribery, can't be found in the prison system right now because they moved him somewhere. And so my point is, is that when my dad woke up after Thanksgiving and, uh, and after the election occurred and he read that Donald Trump had just appointed Matt Gaetz to be the, um, 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, his Department of Corrections, and his Department of Probation.

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Did you want your father to run for reelection?

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. Mm-hmm. And the presidency does something that people, I don't think, fully comprehend. A president— It'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 there was this kind of a— that I was in there. Telling my dad that he has to stay and he's running. 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 4 years of his presidency, were, I think, by anybody's estimation, a really difficult 4 years. A lot of it my own making.

But a lot of it just by simply because of who he was and 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. And more than anything, I just wanted to have my dad back.

Did you—

I mean, did you tell him that or—

When he made the decision, yeah. Okay, but not before that? No, because I think it's unfair to me to do— because this— because I know this also. There's only one thing my dad cares about more than his service, and that's me. And my mom, my sister, and his grandkids, my children. There's only one thing that he cared about more than his job, and that's his family. And for somebody in his family, particularly me, to say, "Dad, please don't do it." I don't know how it would— I think that's incredibly unfair to do to somebody. I would never want to be that. I would never want it to be the reason that he didn't fulfill what he believed was his duty in service.

Did you notice ways in which he was beginning to falter?

I noticed things that were— purely associated and typical with growing older. His speech slowed down. He literally lost a step. And when I mean lost a step, is that, like, his gait was changed. And all of it is, you know— not you know— all of it, I think, is something that every single person that's listening to this right now or in this room can understand having watched someone in their life get older. And 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. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Has your father been following your recent interviews, postings?

Yeah, and he— there's one thing that he said to me. Stop using the F-word so much. All right, I've read that. And I said, you gotta be kidding me.

You haven't used it with us, at least maybe I should say so far. No, and I, and I, and I won't.

I, I, look, I said, Dad, I said, every single one of those F-words was earned on my part.

Yeah, I mean, do you regret that?

Um, no, not at all. Really? Not even. I know, I think that there's a— Look, I think that there is an audience for me to speak the way that I would speak. If I was sitting having lunch with you, Scott, I wouldn't— That's not the way that I would speak. We don't— We're not familiar enough that I would say or do something that I think that would be shocking or offensive to you. When I'm talking to Andrew Callahan, who's 28 years old, and the average age of his audience is between 18 and 29, and he's using that word with me, I'm more than comfortable using it because that's the way that I talk with my friends. It's not the way that I talk to my daughter. It's not the way that I would talk to my wife. It's definitely not the way I talk to you or my dad. But I think that in this media environment, people say, oh, well, a lot of people turn off when they hear that harsh language. And I say, well, come to an Andrew Callahan event with me, where 1,500 people in a— I call them draft age, 18 to 35.

And it's an incredibly different world out there. And I think a lot of people are missing it. And a lot of people missing it because they can't speak to it. And what I've found is that the single superpower I have is that there is no barrier between them and me. They don't look at me and think, oh, he's something other than us, because they've seen all of me. And it gives them license, which I love, to come up to me. And you know what they say? They say, thank you for talking about this because my dad just got 1 year sober. Can you call him? And tell them, they say to me, "I lost my brother too." And they say to me, like, you know, "My best friend just overdosed from fentanyl. Can you send him a message? He's in the hospital." That's what they say to me. They don't say to me, "Wow, you really got to stop using the F-word." Yeah.

Are you ever really over an addiction?

Never. Never. Now, my wife hates when I say this. And she hates when I say this because she thinks that there is a psychological piece of this that most people in recovery— and she's not in recovery, she does not have this problem at all. Mm-hmm. But she thinks that imprinting that negativity onto you with a word is that once an addict, always an addict. I'm an addict. Is unfair to do to yourself. And I say to her, well, it's a fine line because what you always want to remind yourself of is that that proclivity to addiction, whether it's genetic, whether it's chemical, whether it is psychological or a combination of all of those things, will always exist within me. I cannot ingest a mind-altering substance without the possibility of falling back into addiction. And I have to always remind myself of that. Now, I don't have to always beat myself up with it, but I always have to be cognizant of it, aware. Because look, I was on a plane once I was 7 years sober. I had a good day. It was a beautiful trip that I had taken to Europe. I was on business.

And nothing was going wrong. Mm-hmm. And somebody asked me if I wanted a drink. And 10 years later, I woke up in a motel with a crack pipe. And that's a literal, linear way to tell the story. And so, I'm always aware of it.

For people who are watching and listening to us, watching and listening to you— Yeah. Can you say something that would help them take a step forward? What do they need to know now? Okay.

I love that question. Thank you. You are not alone. That's my single most important message. 50 million Americans on any given day are dealing with addiction. That means almost every one of the 350 million Americans, uh, have been impacted in some way by addiction. Addiction is a family disease. It is a communal disease, and you are not alone. And so speak about it. Share your story. And more than anything, is share your story of experience, strength, and hope if you've gotten to the other side of it. And that's what I'm doing. I've created a thing where you can go to HunterBiden.com/recovery and share your story of your experience, strength, and hope. And totally anonymously and not for anything. It's not a business venture. It's nothing. It's where people can go and share their stories so that other people can read them. And hopefully realize that they're not alone.

Do you feel alone sometimes?

Not now. I don't. 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, actively choosing suicide, and I knew it. Not in a metaphorical sense. I knew I was killing myself. And 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.

Hunter Biden, thanks so much. It's an honor.

Thank you, Scott.

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