On Monday, Tucker Carlson posted a more than two-hour interview with Hunter Biden. Hunter is the son of the 46th P.O.T.U.S., Joe Biden, and for years he has been known mainly as the addict son who somehow left a laptop in a computer repair shop.
A few years ago this would have raised my eyebrows. Tucker was clearly on a different side then. The idea of him sitting down for a long, largely civil conversation with Hunter Biden would have surprised me. Now it doesn’t. The interview still got my attention, but for different reasons.
To be honest, I never thought much about the laptop story beyond what it seemed to show about control—or the lack of it—around President Biden. I’m not interested in piling on the former president. He is very ill; reports say his cancer has spread to his bones. That said, I do believe his one term was rough on the country, and we are still dealing with the consequences. Even so, I have never fully understood the lasting significance people attach to Hunter’s laptop.
There are two sides to every story. That is why I am sharing the interview. Below is the video, followed by a short synopsis of the points that stood out.
Watch the interview here: [VIDEO]
Short Synopsis
Hunter called Donald Trump the central problem, not merely a symptom. “The one existential threat I think we face as a country is Donald Trump,” he said. “I’m not this believer that Trump is merely the symptom of a disease. I believe Trump is central to why this disease has gone from a local epidemic to a pandemic in the USA.” He framed Trump as a transformational figure who had a chance to change the country for the better and instead made everything about himself. Carlson did not strongly push back.
On the laptop, Hunter repeated that he has no recollection of dropping one off at the Delaware repair shop and did not believe the device was his when the New York Post story first appeared. He acknowledged that most of the emails and material are authentic and his, but insisted none show his father directing business or committing crimes. Carlson added a newer claim: he believed the laptop contents were real from the start, yet the false allegation that it contained evidence of abuse of minors was brought to him at Fox by people connected to Benjamin Netanyahu. He said pressure not to criticize Israel helped turn the default explanation into “the Russians.”
Hunter also spent significant time on addiction and recovery. At his lowest point in Los Angeles—isolated and using heavily—he met his future wife Melissa through two strangers at a hotel pool. He texted her at 2:30 a.m., later apologized, and on their first meeting told her both that he was in love with her and that he was addicted to crack. She said it ends today. The crack stopped within a week, the alcohol within a few weeks. He dates his sobriety to June 1 and calls the whole sequence a kind of miracle. The worst damage of the addiction, he said, was his absence from his children.
Taken together, the interview is less a standard political appearance than a series of refusals: refusal to treat Trump as a mere symptom, refusal to accept the simplest versions of the laptop story, and refusal to keep the personal completely separate from the political. Whether you accept Hunter’s framing is another question. The conversation is worth hearing in full.
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