00:04
Hunter Biden, thank you for doing this. I haven't seen you in 11 years, though I've talked about you.
00:11
As you know. In the meantime. In the meantime. And then I wake up in the morning and you're doing Candace Owens.
00:19
I love Candace. I do too. I do too. I've taken a lot of abuse for saying that, but I know her and I think she's a great person.
00:26
As a person. Yeah. Forget the politics and anything. And largely why I'm sitting here. We've known each other for, you know, quite tangentially for 30 years. Yes.
00:41
is that she, as a human being, is a really, really good person.
00:49
And thoughtful and generous and has a deep faith. And I just vehemently disagree with some of her positions. And it used to be that way. I remember. Remember? I mean, when you and I knew each other, It wasn't as if our politics were much different. Right. But everything has... Everything changed. And I attribute it to one thing.
01:20
We can get to that, but... what's the one thing to Donald Trump? I think he, I think he, I, everybody says, you know, he's a symptom of the disease. And the reality is, is that I think he's one of the most transformational, uh, individuals in, uh, our political history for offer, offer, uh, for ill. And, um, I think he had such an opportunity to do great things, and he just decided that all he was going to do was for himself.
01:53
But anyway, regardless, we have two hours to talk. We're from the same place.
02:01
I grew up with your high school girlfriend, I think.
02:05
I'm very familiar with the world that you're from, because I'm sort of from it too. And I noticed the change during Obama.
02:14
And I'm not blaming Obama. I'm not blaming anybody. But the society changed. It was like all of a sudden, if you didn't like Obama, you were a racist. And I felt like in our neighborhood, that was the violence. You couldn't say anything about Obama that wasn't positive. Do you remember that?
02:29
No, I mean, I think that I had a completely...
02:34
probably a different perspective on that.
02:37
But I don't, I don't discount if you say that you felt that way.
02:41
Well, it was before then, like if it was Clinton, you know, I knew a lot of Clinton staffers and you could be like, really? Monica Lewinsky? And they'd be like, yeah, Monica Lewinsky or Bush, you know, really the Iraq war? Yeah, the Iraq, you know, it was like, but people seem to lose their sense of humor in 2008. At least my neighbors did. It was like, what did you, I'm sorry, did you say something about Obama that's not flattering?
03:04
And that to me- Yeah, I can see how you would get that.
03:07
You know what I mean? I mean, you're a public figure. You're on TV.
03:10
No, I mean it like dinner.
03:12
Yeah, no, I know.
03:13
But I mean- And it was the ladies who were all about Obama.
03:17
Remember that? It's like all the, this whole thing of like well-educated, humorless, rich white ladies, that all began during Obama.
03:24
That may be the case. That wasn't, it understandably was not my experience. Yeah.
03:30
that it wasn't and so how did you wind up deciding to speak in public and with first of all with candace which i strongly approve of but i just like how did that happen so the um the first interview that i did um was with andrew callahan and who is a brilliant in my opinion journalist and um documentarian and I didn't know anything about him, but I had a lawyer that had done some work for him that had also done some work for me. And he said, hey, you should check this guy out.
04:02
And I did. And what I noticed about Andrew is that I believe he has a real finger on the pulse of what's happening, particularly to a certain demographic, like draft age, 18 to 35-year-olds. And he has a wider audience also.
04:22
It's funny that you say draft age.
04:24
That's an interesting way to put it.
04:27
Yeah. We may be coming up to...
04:31
Anyway. Do you think we're going to get a draft?
04:35
No. No. I don't think that they have the...
04:40
I, I, I, no, I don't, I don't think.
04:42
Cause that's when like I physically joined the protest at that. I mean, that's so crazy.
04:46
Well, I think you should physically join the protest now. I mean, you're already there. And, uh, but anyway, I met with, I, I, I watched a lot of stuff that Andrew did. I, I really liked it. And, uh, And I went on and, you know, I think that the thing that kind of shocked people was my willingness to be completely open about all of the... I noticed. Is that I don't... I welcome any question.
05:10
I always say that addiction is...
05:14
It's never an excuse, but it's often an explanation for some of the things that people, the narrative that they've been told about me.
05:25
And they did a beautiful thing to me that was ugly in the moment, which was they completely exposed me in a way that I don't know of any public figure or person associated with a public figure, particularly family, has ever been exposed.
05:42
You know, I mean, they literally stole 22 years of my entire digital footprint from every deleted image to every deleted text to everything. And...
05:55
And in that total exposure, there was nowhere to hide. And for me, I realized is that the only way to out was through, is owning the things that were true and speaking truth to the things that were false.
06:14
And I did that with Andrew, and I thought it would just be a one-off.
06:19
But then I, a guy named, well, you're close with him, and I consider him a friend by text. I don't want to sully his reputation as Sean Ryan. And I sat down with Sean Ryan. Amazing man. Amazing man.
06:37
Sean is kind of MAGA adjacent. He was between 2020 and 2024. And he had said some pretty rough things about my dad. Not so much about me, but about my dad that I vehemently disagreed with and to this day vehemently disagree with.
06:56
But I thought that Sean was a great listener. And I really appreciated his willingness to not allow what he had been instructed to believe to infect the way in which he listened. And I sat down with him and we did close to six hours.
07:18
and you you kind of i know that it's like seems like this is a very public thing by virtue of everybody watching here but the fact of the matter is is these experiences in this long format can be very intimate oh big time and um and and it and that was my experience with uh with sean and we and we connected on the thing that i have been able to connect with with almost everyone like universally, which is, um, addiction and recovery.
07:53
And for me, thank God it's recovery. And I, um, and I've been sober, uh, clean, sober for, and somebody said, stop saying clean. Uh, so I've been substance free and sober for, um, for over seven years now. And, um, I don't think people knew that. I think people conflated my past addiction with my father's presidency and just assumed that I was still using. Because, you know, I mean, New York Post, you know, I think they printed 1.5 articles about me a day for almost close to four years.
08:25
And none of it good. Not positive?
08:30
Not much that was positive. No, not at all. Anyway, long story a lot longer.
08:35
I'm having that experience in the New York Post at the moment.
08:38
Yeah, by the way, welcome to my world. I'm not naked. Yeah, hopefully naked pictures don't come out. I could call some of our friends.
08:48
No one wants to see those. Yeah. Well, I didn't think so either, but apparently they do.
08:54
So anyway, long story short and long story longer.
08:58
I go, and I do this with Sean, and this is public now, I can say it, is Sean had dinner with Candace. They live in the same neighborhood down there in Nashville. And he said, you know, I really, really like her.
09:11
And she told my wife that one of the interviews that she most wanted to do was with me, with Hunter Biden. I'm not referring myself in the third person right now. I haven't gotten to that point yet.
09:25
And, you know, I thought about it, and Like you, and we've talked about this a little bit, but like you, Candace has said some really, really awful things, not just about me, but also about my dad. You know, the whole Biden crime family thing, but really, really kind of pointed things.
09:45
And I believe that if I could sit down with her, not to convince her of anything, but to see that I was just as human as she was.
09:57
And that I own my feelings. And I've been incredibly transparent about them.
10:06
And I thought that if we could find that commonality, that we could have an actual conversation. And that's what occurred. And...
10:18
And I don't agree with Candace still on a lot of stuff. And I almost feel like, why do I have to make that caveat as it relates to it? Because I never used to have to make that caveat. Going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, how did it change? I truly believe that the level of vitriol, meanness, and cruelty in our politics has always been there, but never like this.
10:42
never in a way in which it is practiced with impunity.
10:48
And that to me has, I mean, I think that I can mark it. Now, it's interesting that you say that, that your experience is that that kind of division started in 2008, but nothing like this, Tucker.
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12:39
the divisions are so intense. I always thought of divisions as racial or religious, you know, you're Protestant marrying a Catholic, you know, or black person marrying a white person. I feel like the divisions now are ideological and political. And that's, I mean, this morning I texted Erica Kirk and Candace Owens, both within like an hour of each other, not related to each other, but just because I really like them both. And I'm not embarrassed of that. And I've, And that's my right, by the way. I get to like people whether or not I'm fully aligned with their program, right?
13:13
That's my view.
13:14
Yeah.
13:14
I've taken so much abuse for that. It's like, how could you be friends with two people who disagree with each other? Well, I don't know. I am.
13:21
Right?
13:24
What world do we live in? Well, that's kind of how I feel. Yeah. That's strongly how I feel. First of all, I decide who I like. You don't get to decide who I like.
13:31
Yeah. Don't you feel that? I do. And I think that what it is, it's a reflection of this, is that who are you getting that from? You're getting that from other people with niche audiences with big microphones in front of them. You're getting that from the comments section that I know you don't read. No. But other people in your organization read from, you know, on X. You're getting that. I think we have literally been torn apart on purpose.
14:04
Not because it was...
14:07
I don't think that the people that created the social media platforms that rule our lives to this day...
14:15
They thought, this is what we're going to do. We're going to create something just to tear people apart. What I think that they did was they created a monster in which they realized that it is fueled by division and vitriol and conflict and making you question yourself. I mean, let me give you an example.
14:39
Remember that the whistleblower for Facebook when I think Facebook was still Facebook. It happened like in 2022. She was a senior executive at Facebook and she came up to the Hill. And this is a nonpartisan thing. And she came up to the Hill and she had all of that documentation of internal studies within Facebook that showed... that there had been something like, and I forget the numbers, so don't hold me to it, but an exponential increase in the number of teenage suicide among girls between the ages of 13 and 17 years old.
15:13
Exponential.
15:15
That began with the inception of Instagram.
15:20
And then...
15:22
not only an exponential increase in actual suicides among teenage girls, but an even greater increase. If suicides went up triple, girls reporting self-harm went up by like 300% over the course of like the inception of Instagram until 2022 when this woman walks in with all the documents. And Instagram knew that and knew that it was literally directly related to their algorithm.
15:52
sending these messages to girls that they are not worth, that they need more, whether it's about their bodies or body shaming, and continuing to send it over to them, knowing the negative impact that is having. But it's because...
16:11
It made them money.
16:13
It's because you become addicted to that response that Instagram would get with that bag of heroin in your pocket known as an iPhone.
16:28
And you know what they did?
16:30
Nothing. They buried the report.
16:33
They literally did nothing.
16:35
I mean, nothing. So my question, and then what happened...
16:40
This woman, whistleblower, comes forward. She brings all of the evidence that Facebook meta knows about this.
16:49
And she said, like, now what do we do about it? And you know what Congress did? Senate, House, you know what they did? Nothing.
16:58
We have done absolutely nothing.
16:59
Well, it's just suicides of our people. I mean, not a big deal.
17:02
That's what I'm trying to say. And as it relates to our politics, it's the same thing. We are being fed the equivalent of a suicide pact.
17:13
by organizations and companies that are run by, by the way, literally a handful of very, very, very, not just generationally, but wealthy people to the degree that we haven't seen since the robber barons at the turn of the 1900s and late 1800s. And those people, I'm not saying are evil, but what they have created is a tool. And a tool can be either a hammer can build a home or it can, Tear down your house.
17:46
And they build a tool and they make more money by tearing people down. They make more money by dividing people. They make more money. And so they just let the algorithm roll. And it's tearing us apart. And I'm not saying that's the only problem.
18:03
Not myopic enough to say that all of the issues that we have. But going back to...
18:10
Donald Trump, because for me, the one existential threat that I think that we face as a country is Donald Trump. I am not this believer that Trump is merely the symptom of a disease. I believe that Trump is central to why this disease has gone from a local epidemic to a pandemic in the United States of America.
18:46
It's not a defensive Trump to ask then why on the big failures of the Trump administration, the real ones, the ones that history will record like this war, There's been no pushback from the other side at all. Yeah. So that tells you, I mean, you could say lots of things about Trump are bad, but getting us into a war we can't win in which Americans are dying in Iran that will only diminish America's power and bankrupt us. I mean, that's the only exit, really.
19:16
Yeah. And make Iran stronger. Yeah.
19:19
And like, no, no, Chuck Schumer is like, yeah, it's bad. But of course he endorses like the whole leadership structure endorses that. So like, can't really say like they like Trump now.
19:30
Yeah. I don't know if they like Trump. Maybe it's like he's obnoxious or whatever, but he's doing what they want. I think it's a little bit of a... Well, by the way, I don't disagree that there's an enormous failure of what I call the elite oligarch Epstein class of Washington, D.C. Yes! That you and I both know... Very well. Yes. And that have...
20:01
that are as interested in protecting their corporate overlords as they are in protecting anything. And I mean, just take like the issue of stock trading, okay? Yeah. My dad in 1972 took a vow that he would never own a stock or a bond. And he kept that vow since 1972 in over 50 years of public life.
20:27
And he retired from the presidency as having probably the lowest net worth of anyone that had ever entered the presidency.
20:38
And meanwhile, he got tagged with this idea that he, you know, is the Biden crime family and that, you know, all of that crap. But my point being is this, is that how is it that we have not been able to pass a law? I couldn't agree more. I know you do agree. Yeah.
20:55
But how is it possible?
20:57
And it's not just Republicans. Pass a law that prohibits members of Congress from trading.
21:01
Yes, of course. Yeah. I mean, it's the most common sense thing in the world. And it should be in the administration too. It should be anybody with the access to the most valuable insider information of all. And meanwhile, not only are we not passing the law, Donald Trump is selling $100,000 early access to his true social tweets, which is just a front running for insider trading. Literally in the open.
21:25
And that's what I mean, the quantitative, qualitative difference of Donald Trump as compared to anything I've ever experienced in politics before, is the sense that the rule of law only applies to as a weapon rather than as a prophylactic for the Constitution to be able to operate in a way in which the founders envisioned it.
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23:29
Almost no arguing with your point. That's true. Yeah. I would just say, I think it's been that way for a long time.
23:36
And it's just open now. It's open. It's just obvious. If you're selling truth, social access. Yeah, man.
23:44
But it's like, come on.
23:47
I saw this guy. There's this incredible guy on TikTok. And he's a professor. But he goes, it's a red cup. garage he's like a and he have you ever seen this well you don't have any of this he explains things by using red cola solo cups yeah and he he has this thing everybody go look at it it's uh all of the money that every president uh and of the 45 that came before donald trump made in the presidency okay and it's four blue solo cups okay And then all of the money that Donald Trump has openly said that he made in his financial report in the first 500 days of the presidency.
24:36
And it is over $3 billion. And it takes the entire wall.
24:41
Yeah.
24:42
I mean, you can't argue that. I mean, presidents shouldn't make any money in office. Like, what is this? No.
24:47
And by the way, this whole idea of a blind trust. And so that's what I mean by the qualitative and the quantitative difference. And the idea that there are still a group of people out there that... Voted for Donald Trump because they thought that they were going to be able to change things. You know, it talked about this a little bit before we came on. But my hero, and I know that you are too, as it relates to public life, people that is one of them, with all of his faults, was Teddy Roosevelt.
25:19
Great. And Teddy Roosevelt... A side picture of him over there to my great-grandfather. Yeah. I got something for you, by the way.
25:26
But the...
25:28
Teddy Roosevelt, by all accounts, came very close to abusing the power of the executive.
25:41
Oh, you think? He certainly did.
25:43
But he did it because he realized that in order for this experiment to be able to continue, you could not have an unfettered oligarch class.
25:57
Yes.
25:57
that drained all of the wealth of a country and put it into their pockets while the other 99... By the way, and people don't understand this, I'm not talking...
26:12
I'm talking the 0.01%. Yes. There are only 9,000, like a little over 9,000 families in this country who are billionaires out of 350 million people. You know what the, the, I, this is shocking to me.
26:29
You know what puts you in the top 1% of income earners in this country? Yeah.
26:35
No. Annual $750,000. That's the top 1%? 1%. So the people that I'm talking, I'm not talking about taxing or redistributing wealth among the top 1%. I'm not talking about it even in the top 0.5%, which would be like $10 million. I'm talking about the 0.01%, literally about a little under 10,000 individuals in this country that control...
27:04
and that have almost like 40% of the entire wealth of a nation
27:09
who decide... 9,000 families have 40% of the entire wealth.
27:14
Somebody do the numbers for me. I probably screwed that up completely. But an inordinate amount of the entire considered wealth of this country.
27:24
Well, you can't have democracy under those circumstances.
27:26
No, you can't. And Teddy Roosevelt knew that. And what he did is he went out and he used the power of the executive to be able to go out and bust the trust and redistribute that wealth. It was called the Square Deal, And then he used the power of the executive to do things that are every single one of us still benefits from today, which is, for instance, the national park system. Yes. The entire national park system was the brainchild of one person as it related to one island, which was Audubon.
27:57
And he came to Teddy Roosevelt and he said, hey, look.
28:01
We're losing this magnificent place, this island in the Gulf off the coast of Florida.
28:10
Because it's a bird habitat that has, I don't know, like half the species of wild birds. And he comes to Teddy Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt just goes out and he says, okay.
28:22
And he turned it into the first national park, I think.
28:26
And then he went out and he did that across the country. I mean, can you imagine doing that today?
28:33
No. No. But can you even imagine the people in, not the people, Donald Trump having a thought about using the power of the executive to benefit anyone but himself first?
28:54
No. No. And that's the thing. But I also look back on the last 25 years, 20 years anyway, and I can't really think of many big executive initiatives that, like, benefited the majority.
29:06
No, neither do I. And that may be a question about the unitary executive. But no one has ever done it in a way in which their, you know— Where literally, I believe that everything that he has done contains not just a, you know, an underlying current of how does it benefit him personally. It is the first thought of everything that he does.
29:32
Yeah, I think that's true.
29:32
Yeah.
29:33
The problem I have with focusing on Trump, and I'm trying not to be defensive because obviously I campaigned for Trump and with Trump and spoke at the Republican National Convention and defended Trump for a decade on Fox News. So I'm definitely implicated in it, obviously. Mm-hmm.
29:48
But it's not just defensiveness. I think two things. One, focusing on Trump as the source of all evil in the world drives you crazy. Like I saw that happen. I don't believe that.
29:57
Just, you know, I don't believe that he's the source of all evil. Right.
30:00
But, you know, people who feel that way, literally I had one of my closest friends went off the deep end. Yeah. Just like Trump. And all of a sudden Trump's under the bed and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's monomania. Yeah. But I also think it's like... He was under my bed.
30:16
Okay, that is funny. You win.
30:18
Along with some of his friends.
30:21
That is so good.
30:23
But second, it's like exculpatory to the rest of us. It's like, I don't know. I watched a lot of crappy stuff happen in D.C. over the 35 years I lived there and I didn't even recognize it as crappy at the time. And we're all kind of implicated in this. We've had a lot of bad leaders, actually, or mediocre leaders. I don't know we've had a flamboyantly corrupt leader like this, and we haven't ever. That's true.
30:47
We've had a lot of low-grade kind of like what's-in-it-for-me leadership.
30:51
And we tolerated it. And we celebrated things that were not impressive at all and pretended they were impressive and, ooh, so brave and all. This is like, it was all crap, actually. We're kind of, this is the end of like a long cycle of mediocrity. That's all I'm saying. Okay, so I've owned up.
31:08
Yeah. Okay. To, like, for instance, is...
31:13
And I'm absolutely certain that my engagement in Washington, D.C., when I took on Burisma, when my dad was vice president as a client at the end of the year, it was a stupid thing to do.
31:28
Because I wasn't fully aware of what a swamp it was and the narrative that would be able to be spun. It was a horrible idea. Now, I had my reasons, okay? But they're not good enough.
31:43
I own that.
31:44
I own the idea that I do believe that there is this revolving door in Washington, D.C. that needs to be shut, in which people come in and out of administrations. We know them all. They're trading on access. And they're not bad people that are trading on access. I did not trade on access. You can look through 22 years of mine. But I know this. I know that I received...
32:07
incredible privileges that no one else in the world, including to the point of my pardon, no, literally there's no one else in the world that was in my position that their father happened to have the authority and the power to do it. And I realize how privileged I am.
32:27
But I think that there needs to be a reckoning with, if I'm willing to do that, I think that you, and I saw the, I like Thomas Massey. I like where Marjorie Taylor Greene is going. I like that there are people that have kind of woken up to the...
32:52
A lot of the reason that we're here is because of Fox News. A lot of it has to do.
33:01
Well, we're in a war right now because of that we're losing because of Fox News. I couldn't agree more.
33:06
And so I just think that I don't think that every problem this country faces is because of Donald Trump. I don't think that he is the source of all evil. I don't even remotely believe that. I do believe this, though. We are at an inflection point in this country.
33:25
Whether it's because of the technology as it relates to AI, and as it relates to our debt, and the fact that Donald Trump is responsible for, what, 20% of the entire debt of the entire nation over the course of, you know, since its inception?
33:42
Yeah, it's bonkers. Yeah, it's bonkers.
33:44
Yeah.
33:45
And we are in desperate, desperate need of leadership.
33:49
I agree.
33:50
And so I want to reach across to everybody and say, look, let's figure out the things that we can agree on. Instead of pointing constantly. And one of the things that I think that we can agree on is that we have the exact wrong leadership at the exact wrong time.
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So get out of credit card debt. I mean, it is just crazy to borrow money. No judgment, but it doesn't make any sense to borrow money at that rate. If you want out, call 800-685-5696. 800-685-5696 or visit AmericanFinancing.net slash Tucker. Sue, I think you're kind of making my point.
35:27
Which is that, you know, finger pointing is unhelpful, except when we point fingers at ourselves. That is very helpful. Very helpful. Very important to say, that's kind of what I was inarticulately trying to express to you, which is like, it gets the rest of us off the hook to point to one guy and be like, it's all his fault. It's like, actually, it's all of our fault, including mine. And I, you know, famously advocated for the Iraq war and thought that was the last stupid thing I was ever going to do. It turns out it wasn't. I advocated for all kinds of things. um that i now regret advocating for um particularly the things that you said about me it's a deep regret no i do actually i mean i yeah i mean i yeah regret in the sense that as someone who has dealt with addiction yeah not quite as uh in an exciting way as you did but i've been there for sure uh extend grace to people who are out of their minds.
36:24
You would think I would do that. I should have done that more. So I do regret that. But no, what I'm saying is you look back and I really thought that I could influence Trump into not going into this war.
36:38
I think that that's a really interesting point.
36:40
No, I mean, that's the core of it right there.
36:42
Because you said, the things that you said about Trump after 2020, which are famously out there.
36:50
Oh, when I got pissed in a text with a producer and then Fox News leaked that text in the New York Times.
36:56
Yeah, wonderful organization you worked for.
36:58
Really ridiculous.
37:05
Talk about how you came around in 2024, not as it relates to like you just a knee jerk reaction to being opposed to Democrats, but what, why?
37:16
Oh no, it was a very specific trajectory. I was, I was, this is like such an impossible rich guy thing to say, but it's just a fact I was in Europe with my kids on the med the August of 2023, I think.
37:29
And Mar-a-Lago got raided.
37:32
And that was like, that was ridiculous. On a documents charge? Really? And I'm from the city, so like I know a lot about the documents stuff. And it was like transparently absurd. They're literally sending armed FBI agents into his bathroom? Like, no.
37:46
And so to me, what that said was Trump is actually being persecuted by by the Uniparty. Therefore, he is its sincere opponent. And my overriding feeling, since I wrote a whole book on this 10 years ago, is that the problem in Washington is that on the big questions of the economy and foreign policy, both parties agree. It's the agreement that is the threat, not the disagreement. So I thought that and I thought, well, Trump is clear. They're trying to put him in jail on these nonsense charges and they are not. They were nonsense. Well, they're nuclear secrets. That's not true. And I was like, so he clearly is their opponent.
38:20
So I thought, and this is my sin, I can have an effect. And my goal literally from that moment up until February 28th was I don't want to go with Iran because I really saw that as the end of a lot of stuff of the, well, the post-war order, which is kind of ridiculous, but compared to what?
38:38
I'm kind of against the post-war order. On the other hand, I'm not sure what follows will be better. So I was really focused on this Iran thing. And I knew that both parties were for it. Schumer's totally for it. Lindsey Graham's totally for it. They're all colluding against America to start this regime change war with Iran. And I was like...
38:54
I'm gonna single-mindedly focus on it. That's all I'm gonna do with my life is I'm gonna, and I knew a lot of people in the Middle East and I thought, oh man, I can do this. And I realized on February 28th, first of all, I had zero power, okay? But it was mostly vanity. I was like, I have a mission. I can do this.
39:12
And it was, it was, I overstated my own influence like dramatically in a very embarrassing way and my own importance. And like, I thought I could do things that like I had no control over any of this stuff. And I was humiliated correctly. I was humiliated in front of my wife. I was like, I'm doing a good thing.
39:33
And, um, and so, yeah, I was mad at Trump, but I was also really mad at myself. And so that's, that's the story. And I, I've, I actually am really grateful I went through that. Yeah. Because it puts your own power in context. You think like you've got all this, you know, whatever SWAT and you have zero. Yeah. So what next?
39:54
I have no idea. But I... No, I mean, really. What, for me? Yeah, not just for you, but what next for all of us? Like, I am...
40:09
I've been out talking to people and completely different audiences, you know, across the board.
40:16
And the most significant reason of why I decided to go out and talk is that...
40:24
What I realize is that my experience is not only not unique, it's almost universal. Now, to the degree that my experience, my addiction overwhelmed me, is sometimes often exaggerated by virtue of how much attention has been paid to it.
40:44
You know?
40:46
It was two years of my life.
40:47
Some people noticed. Yeah. Some people noticed.
40:51
Oh yeah, exactly.
40:54
God, it was awful. I mean, notice to the degree that, you know, my wife and I were living in, um, the Hills, uh, in LA and we had this little place and, and I, it was just early in, in my recovery.
41:11
And, uh, Trump from the Oval Office invited in these right-wing influencers, these MAGA influencers online. And this is back in 2019.
41:27
And he started the Where's Hunter thing.
41:29
And the next day, the New York Post printed an aerial photograph of the house that I live in. where you could stand on the street below to be able to look through the floor and ceiling windows.
41:41
And a group of men with bullhorns and MAGA hats showed up at the door, banging on the door with my then pregnant wife, who was home alone, who literally fled the house. They chased her in a car and literally ran her off the road.
41:59
And that was my experience for like a two-year period of time until my dad was elected. And then we got Secret Service and we'd left that house in the middle of the night.
42:13
And the next house we went to, they found us in this documentary filmmaker, ended up being like, he wrote a whole scripted film. He parked a billboard truck.
42:24
Where, in LA?
42:25
Yeah, in LA, in Venice. I was right on South Venice Boulevard. He parked one of those digital billboard trucks in front of my house that ran all of the nude pictures of me smoking crack.
42:38
Actually? For a week.
42:40
straight and then sat on the canal with bullhorns in a canoe and just shouted at my house over and over again for a week then we had to leave that house did you know him yeah no no god no some crazy guy you know i mean he was not crazy he was you know He then went on to make like a whole movie about me.
43:06
But anyway, my point... Did you see it? What? Did you see it? No, I didn't. I did not see it. Do not go see that movie. I didn't know it existed.
43:18
But, you know, my point is that I have...
43:26
the total exposure that I've had has given me this incredible gift.
43:32
And number one is that by that transparency is that I don't have any more secrets and the secrets that I felt ashamed of, like just the word crack. Like, you know, I mean, it's so heavy.
43:50
It shocks people, all of the associations that people make out of it, particularly of our generation.
43:56
and um and uh to be able to speak about it openly and what i found is is this deep connection with people there's no wall between me and them anymore and uh because they know all of my flaws the ones that you would never want to show anyone and and they know i'm willing to talk about them and in that they're able to come up to me and say I mean, everywhere I go. When I got off the plane in the airport, someone came up to me, told me about their experience in recovery.
44:31
Thanks for what I'm doing.
44:33
Their brother just got arrested though, is in jail. You gotta do something about the fentanyl deaths here. It's everybody. And it's been an incredibly beautiful, beautiful experience. And I say to everybody is that I'll talk about the politics.
44:52
but it's really the bait to be able to talk about the thing that connects us. And so all the way back, sitting down with Candice, is that the thing that Candice and I were able to connect on in a very human way was her own experience, not personally, but with her family and addiction and the people that she loved. And I don't know anyone that hasn't been impacted by it.
45:16
That's for sure.
45:17
Yeah. And I guess what my point is, is that By starting there for me, I feel like our connection as it relates to it. I've known you've been sober for well over 20 years now. 24 years this month.
45:31
24 years this month. And so you're...
45:40
Your capacity to be able to understand it at that level, and also at a family level, makes it a lot easier to see the hunter that you thought that you knew.
45:54
And I think, and by the way, I'm not putting words into your mouth.
45:57
No, I think that's 100% true.
45:59
But the thing for me is that with you, the transformation, not transformation, because it's not a transformation. Anybody that knows you realizes it's not a transformation.
46:13
Is out on your own now.
46:20
And not...
46:22
understandably like anybody that has a job being beholden to corporate structure yeah fox news is that i i feel as if that combined with the incredible ultimate betrayal and what i mean by betrayal of the the of the promise the singular promise that was important to you as it related to trump yes that we would not get into the potential of ending up in a war a world war three or another incredibly devastating protracted war in that region uh that would expand clearly uh with the entire uh global oil supply in jeopardy it's so it's so crazy i cannot even believe it happened is that it has given an opening for us to be able to have a conversation that is more constructive about a way forward.
47:25
That's my feeling. I strongly agree with that.
47:27
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48:29
Application times and rates obviously vary, but we think they're pretty darn good. And always my, I mean, I've certainly talked about you and all the drama that you went through a lot.
48:41
I have really only one question, one thing that has bothered me for years now. Yeah. Eight years or whatever, six years, whatever it's been. Yeah.
48:53
And so I just want to ask you directly about it. So the laptop comes out or doesn't come out. I hear that it's in circulation. I get calls from people in that kind of shadowy way that you're familiar with. Way before, right?
49:04
I can't, you know, I can't remember.
49:06
So much drama has happened, but you know, if you're in the news business or politics, like you, you know, people call you, there's this thing, you know, you hear everything all the time. And like, how much is true? You don't know.
49:16
I heard about the laptop. And then I heard, you know, so you don't know if it's real. And then I heard somebody calls me and goes, you're on the laptop.
49:26
And because you had written a letter of recommendation for college for my son. Yeah.
49:32
Who didn't end up going to the school or even getting in, whatever. It didn't help, it turns out. Oh, thanks.
49:38
But anyway, I knew that it was real because who would know that we knew each other? Yeah. Right? No one could fake that.
49:46
And that our wives were friends and all that stuff.
49:49
But it's Washington. You know everybody there. Yeah.
49:51
So then I hear this story about how, then the official story comes out about how the laptop was left. You left a couple of laptops in a laptop repair store in Greenville, Delaware, which I'm a town I'm very familiar with. So, and the guy was blind. Then I interviewed the guy who seemed to totally believe the story, John McIsaac. I mean, he seemed to be telling the truth, but the story did not make sense. Meanwhile, I'm getting...
50:16
We get approached by Israelis connected to Benjamin Netanyahu. Like, I know that. Yeah. Who are shopping this stuff to me at Fox News.
50:25
Yeah.
50:26
And I'm like, I don't think that that part of the story, the laptop is real. I thought that from day one. But the way that it entered the bloodstream of the American media was not real. So I just want to ask you point blank. Did you drop off laptops? No.
50:41
And this is the thing that I've said over and over again. I have literally zero recollection or memory of ever dropping off a laptop at John Paul McIsaac's. No. The answer is no. And John Paul McIsaac. That's wild. So John Paul McIsaac. who's legally blind, who on the day when the laptop became public, sat outside of his shop and gave an interview and flat out says that he doesn't remember seeing me. He couldn't identify me. And also that his security cameras that he has don't have any footage from that time.
51:17
And so regardless though, regardless of anything, just this, The laptop, according to Lev Parnas, under oath in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, was being sought by Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine all the way back in 2018. And so...
51:38
Rudy Giuliani is working with a guy named Andrei Derkash, who was a MP in Ukraine and a known Russian GRU agent. So Rudy goes over there and basically takes his dossier and receives information that Hunter Biden's Hard drive, not laptop, is for sale.
51:59
And the person that they can go to is this other Ukrainian-Russian oligarch who is living in Austria.
52:09
That's what Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were doing, getting on the plane before they were arrested. So how did this... Before John Paul MacIsaac was ever a twinkle in anybody's eye. I believe that.
52:20
The story, that was always the weak part of the story. Like, he drops off laptops and forgets them.
52:25
So even John Paul MacIsaac, okay, there is no such thing as a laptop. The laptop that he eventually turns over a year later, 18 months later, to the FBI...
52:38
The thing that is distributed and disseminated that John Paul McIsaac claims that he got off of a device was a hard drive. And that hard drive had a limited amount of information, a limited amount of gigabytes. I don't know the difference between a gigabyte and a whatever.
52:57
And that goes into the hands. He somehow can't find anybody. You can't throw a stone in Trolley Square without hitting someone that knows me personally.
53:10
Right.
53:11
And he knows that. He's lived there his whole life.
53:14
Instead, what he finds through this guy, Applebaum, is Rudy Giuliani's lawyer. Right.
53:24
Bob Costello, he turns over this hard drive.
53:27
The hard drive becomes the platform from which all of the other stolen information from, which by the way, every single forensic expert has made it clear, is that there's no possible way all of the information that was eventually labeled as my laptop came from one laptop.
53:51
It's way too large. It came off the cloud. Exactly. They hacked my cloud. I read about this in this book. I thought that from day one. So on Substack, I'm laying all of this out.
54:04
And there's a whole... The NDI, the whole thing about...
54:13
There's these different silos. There's the Netanyahu silo, the Israeli side. There is a Russian-Ukrainian side of it. And then there are the U.S. actors that include Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Miles Gao, and a whole bunch of, you know, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman and all of these guys.
54:33
Well, once the material starts circulating, the data from the cloud. Yeah.
54:38
All kinds of people get involved and they're shopping it for different reasons. And I agree.
54:42
Yes. But my point is- But who stole it?
54:46
Well, from the cloud?
54:47
Yeah.
54:47
Well, I don't know. You have as good a guess as mine in terms of actually who was the original hacker of that information, who has the capacity to be able to do it.
54:57
And so, you know, I have my- But you don't have evidence.
55:02
I don't have a forensic, a digital forensic evidence that it was hacked by this person or this entity or this organization, that it was Mossad or that it was the GRU or that it was some kid in his basement and, you know, figured it out. But here's the point. Overall, here's the thing. Is I get caught in these conversations about all of this. But the reality is this.
55:31
Of what was distributed that was authentic, it's all mine.
55:36
All those emails. Yeah, yeah. And you know what? You know what not a single one of them proves?
55:42
of any criminality of my father whatsoever, of any way in which I ever sent an email saying, hey, dad, I need you to get this done on behalf of a client of mine. Now, I think that's dispositive. And I challenge anybody because it's all out there. The entire digital world. And I'm not just talking about my emails. I'm talking about 20 years of emails. I'm talking about 20 years of text messages. I'm talking about erased voicemails.
56:12
Like deleted voicemails, deleted photographs. They don't actually delete, is what you're saying. They clearly don't. I mean, voicemails from my dad to me. But that's not the only voicemail that was out there. But not a single one of them in which I say, hey, when my dad is in office or in power as vice president or president, in which I say, hey, dad, I need you to do this for me. Or even contacting one of his staffers. So either I'm incredibly, incredibly, incredibly good, You know, inactive addiction is a crack addict or it doesn't exist.
56:46
It truly literally doesn't exist. The entire narrative of the Biden crime family. I mean, I literally, unlike anybody else, is like I say to everybody, OK, show me your phone. Because I showed you mine and you didn't find a goddamn thing. Not one thing. Every investigative body in the United States of America has investigated me for over 10 years at that point. And not one single thing of criminal activity other than use of drugs.
57:18
And all of the things that are associated with addiction is proved by the laptop.
57:24
So is the world getting more stable or less stable? That's a rhetorical question. We're not in charge of the world, but you are in charge of, in fact, responsible for your own family and your savings. The dollar has lost nearly a third of its purchasing power in six years. That's crazy. You know what hasn't? Gold. And that's one reason you should think about gold right now. It's about 25% below its high from earlier this year, which is amazing. Gold, relative to its power and endurance, is pretty cheap right now. Central banks are reducing their reliance on treasuries and increasing their holdings of, yes, gold.
57:57
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58:25
When did you find out that the contents of your digital life were in circulation? That day that the New York Post released it. You had no idea?
58:34
No idea. None.
58:36
What were you doing that day?
58:37
How did you find out? So it was like two weeks before the election, right? October. So up until that day, you had no clue?
58:45
Because the FBI had the material.
58:47
None. None. No clue. Zero. Zero.
58:50
Zero.
58:52
I'm sorry, I stepped on your answers. What were you doing that day when you found out?
58:56
I was with Melissa and Beau was, let's see, about six months old.
59:05
And a friend of ours, we were in LA and a friend of ours said, hey, come out to Palm Springs.
59:15
I got a Airbnb on like a golf course there. And it's really cool. You guys never been out there. And it's like, we're, we're in the home stretch now. It's like, you know, I have survived the, I mean, because B even before the laptop, remember, I mean, they were beating the shit out of me. That's when Donald Trump was doing the where's Hunter thing. I didn't have any, you know, security, like I don't have today, but I didn't have then is, you know, it was just me and Melissa and a baby.
59:42
And, with any time we went outside the house is like people would follow us everywhere and and not just to follow us but to harass us and because donald trump was going to his rallies and his big line was and they were selling shirts where's hunter so everybody felt it was incumbent upon them if they supported trump and mega to find hunter you know to go and find where's hunter And so we drive out to Palm Springs and we get there and we unpack, you know, put my bag in my room and there's like a little plunge pool out of the back of this little house.
60:21
And I get a call.
60:24
And it's a friend of mine who was also my lawyer at the time. And he said, some guy saying, the New York Post is saying, somebody has your laptop?
60:33
Yeah.
60:37
And you know, it took me years to piece it all together And so one of the things that I've done over the course of the last seven years, other than paint, which became literally the, I've always painted, but it was literally the thing that saved my life. It just allowed me to focus and occupy my hands in a productive way in which I felt that I was creating and also allowed me to get out of myself and not be consumed by the shame And of my addiction and all the failings that I perceived in myself at that moment in time, which, you know, in early addiction and not just through your own experience, but through the experience of watching others is a really tenuous time.
61:30
And, and I've done a lot of writing and, and it took me a long time to figure this out. Like what happened? How did this, who was involved? And there's all of these names and there's like a, you know, a list of 20 Russian names and 20, you know, I mean, all of this stuff. And, um, And so I decided on Substack, what I could do is I could basically do the first draft of that and get the audience potentially to participate and give me more information.
62:02
So I'm doing that on Substack now. And...
62:05
The thing about it is this, is that it was a complete and utter surprise to me. I was a little over a year into my recovery. I kind of made it through what I thought was the worst of it. And then we were just literally thrown in the middle of it.
62:27
And the worst thing happened was, is that because they were nude pictures, And this is the only reason that Twitter took them down and Facebook took them down, is they violated their own internal rules as it relates to revenge porn. You're not allowed to publish nude photographs of anyone without their consent, no matter what, for whatever reason.
62:55
And so that's why on the front page of the New York Post and the story associated on the digital with all of the links were like a ton of nude photos with me, of me. I'm just barely blurred out of the women that were in it. All consensual, legal, all those things. Of course, they don't make that point.
63:19
And that's why they took it down. But then that became the story.
63:24
You know, the suppression and this idea that 40 former intelligence officers said it had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign. No one in that 40, regardless of what you think of them. Not much. Yeah, I know you don't, but no one in that 40 ever said that the laptop wasn't real. But that's what everybody on the right decided to say.
63:48
First of all, you know, the intel people are the most dishonest people.
63:53
By the way, I'm not going to argue on behalf of anybody. All I know is let's just stick to me.
63:58
No, but I'm just saying like the point of that statement was to suggest that the contents were not real.
64:04
Well, you may think that, but it definitely did not say that. And all I know is this. It became completely out of my control. So therefore, now I was not arguing about what was on it. Remember what Rudy Giuliani did. He went to literally the courthouse steps in Newcastle County with Bernie Carrick, and he held a laptop, which there's no existing laptop. He had taken a hard drive or a thumb drive and put it and pretended like there was a laptop. Yeah. And the one thing he said was this contains images of minor children.
64:41
Which, bullshit. I mean, an absolute, complete, and utter effing lie.
64:48
And that's what he did. Because you know what it didn't have on it? It had no evidence. And they had it for over a year at this point. It had no evidence of anything other than I was a drug user. But the problem was, and not only a drug user, but a crack addict.
65:05
And the problem was, is that I had gone about nine months before and I had done an interview with the New Yorker.
65:12
And I admitted everything as it relates to my addiction. It was probably one of the smartest decisions I made, not in conjunction with anybody, but literally me and Melissa sitting there. And I said, I'm going to tell this guy everything.
65:24
I have to get it off my chest. I can't have this hanging out there as my dad moves through a presidential campaign and let the chips fall where they may. And it totally scooped them.
65:34
And so what they had to do is create another narrative around it that is evidence of corruption. So when anybody says, Hunter Biden, what's your first thought?
65:46
laptop. Can I just say one thing, though? This is what I experienced during that time. The allegation that there was abusive minors on the laptop, that came from the Israelis. I'm just telling you that. They came to me with that. So I know that. And one of the things that enraged me about the statement from those sleazy intel guys is that they blame the Russians for it. Now, maybe the Russians had a hand in it, but it was the Israelis who were pushing that. Fact. Fact. I mean, literally to me. Yeah. And you've gone through it.
66:17
But they're all such slaves to Israel.
66:18
Is there anything? I just want to clear with your entire, like, you know, not a single thing in my anything that is in any way true about that.
66:30
Well, that's such a serious crime that I think it's just common sense that if there was evidence of that... You think that it's common sense, but I'll tell you what, about 40 million people on X don't think that. There was an abuse of minors in there?
66:47
If there was evidence of abuse of minors... You know how many people call me a pedophile to this day? Anyway, I'll spare you. But I agree with you. That's exactly right. And you know, it's...
67:00
But they were pushing that so hard. And all the intel guys were like, oh, it's Russia. It's like, you lie. You lie. Because they called me. I sent one of my producers out to go meet with a guy connected to Netanyahu. They were behind that. And I felt that everybody in D.C. knew that. But there was so much pressure never to criticize Israel in any way that they were just like, oh, it's the Russians. It's the Russians. They're the ones penetrating our political system. It's like, you lie. Everyone knows what's actually happening. This was my perspective.
67:32
And it drove me insane.
67:34
And by the way, I didn't say that on Fox News. I'll admit it. I didn't. Yeah. I didn't. You're right. I just want to say I was part of the problem also, but I knew it. But that's a thing, Tucker. Yeah, I agree.
67:47
So we're here now.
67:48
Yeah.
67:48
Yeah. No, I didn't say he was the Israeli. No, I'm saying what I'm saying. But we're here now. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why, just on a purely selfish basis for me, is that, like, I don't know how you could possibly have thought that of me. And by not saying it, I thought that you thought that of me. I mean, it's like...
68:09
I am, it is. Thought that the child molestation thing?
68:12
Or whatever. Yeah, like all of the stuff that they were saying.
68:15
Or any of it. You know what I mean? Like the.
68:18
Well, people addicted to drugs, especially cocaine, I know for a fact, get pretty dark. That's just a fact. They do. They do. They definitely do. Oh. Oh, yeah. And the cocaine thing.
68:29
By the way, it's all there. You can watch it all. I guess I don't need to tell you that. You can see the motel rooms. But I've seen it. You're not the only person I've seen this. Yeah, exactly. But there's a big difference. Screws up your sex thing. Yeah, there's a big difference between that and the reality of what's out there, which is the worst thing that you can possibly say about anything. And that's my point. My point is that...
68:49
I thought I was over it. I was in Palm Springs. I was there for about three hours. It was the first time that Melissa and I had gone away. Because remember, we're still in that kind of COVID period and people. And so we're out there and I get this call and it just like, your whole world kind of like, you know, just like this kind of void opens up and you just like think that you're about to get sucked into it. Because what's the worst thing that you could ever say about someone, in my opinion, is that.
69:22
Oh, definitely. Is the reality that you're, and that's what Rudy Giuliani was saying.
69:28
And- Were you ever close to going back on drugs during this period? No, no. And because I knew this,
69:40
is that I don't want to give people the impression that it's not available to them, but it was a miracle.
69:50
The miracle of my life at that moment, despite all of these consequences, like just not, I mean, landing like nuclear bombs in my life. Yeah.
70:10
is that I was in a better place and continue to be in a better place than I've ever been in my life. I've been stripped to the bone.
70:20
There was no facade. The entirety of my ego was destroyed.
70:32
Like all of those things that you protect out of fear. You don't realize that they're out of fear, but almost all of them are out of fear. It's like you're talking about...
70:44
The vanity.
70:45
Yeah. Believing that you could change the course of the administration, of history, of being there, and that you could overlook all of the things that you know of him in order to save the world. Like, that's a beautiful thing to hear someone admit to being that introspective to be able to do that. In the same way, I was so emasculated that I had to make a decision to live or die. And in the living, I had to live in that, in that, that emasculation, that completely stripping of ego.
71:24
And, and it didn't, it wasn't instant. And it wasn't like I woke up the next morning and didn't think like the sun would ever come up, which I kind of felt. Yeah. But then Bowie woke up You know, and those little nine months old or six months old at the time.
71:43
And I look at this amazingly magnificent woman that has saved me, that is lying there.
71:52
And I thought, you know what?
71:59
I have to choose to live.
72:01
Like, I want this life.
72:07
I want this love.
72:09
I don't want to be afraid. I'm going to choose to live. And then it just became a matter of moment by moment having to make that choice at the beginning. How did you meet your wife and get sober? I know. It's a crazy story. And I wrote about it. And I said that if any of my children came to me and told me this story, I would probably have them commit it.
72:34
But it was truly love at first sight.
72:36
A long story that I've written about, and I was in active addiction and staying at a hotel.
72:47
Where? The Petite Hermitage in West Hollywood at the time. I know it well. Yeah.
72:54
And I was at the pool.
72:57
I got kicked out the next day, but- On the roof. Yeah, on the roof. And these two people sat down next to me where I was alone. I was reading a book.
73:09
And they struck up a conversation as the pool kind of filled up during the day. And at one point- Did you know them? No, I never met them before.
73:20
I said, you have to meet our friend, Melissa.
73:24
And I said, sure, sure. And- Uh, and I had no intention of meeting anyone. I'd gone to LA basically to, to, to, um, to choose the coward's way out of, of, uh, suicide, which was, I knew that the drugs and drinking would eventually take me. And, um, And I had broken all contact with anyone that cared for me or loved me. And they called every day and I just didn't answer.
73:53
And I'm sitting there and it was an incredibly, incredibly dark moment in my life and the darkest.
74:04
And for some reason, I did this thing. I said, yeah, yeah, just give me your number. I'll call. Because they insisted, they insisted, they insisted that I call this woman.
74:12
And I said, I can remember any number.
74:16
If you tell me a number, I can remember it.
74:20
And of course, I can't remember a number. But it was my way of getting out of the situation. Yeah. And I had left my book there. So like two hours later, I came back to pick up my book on the chasing line. And the woman said, what's the number?
74:38
And I said, and she said, I knew you were lying. And she had a pen in her hand and she wrote it on my, on my hand.
74:45
And, um, that night I was taking a shower and I, I didn't, I can, the difference between nine o'clock at night and two 30 in the morning. I, I mean, I, I literally was staying up 10 days at a time. I mean, it was, it was awful. And, uh, and, uh, and I'm about to wash this off my hand. I think, I think, I should probably really call this woman.
75:11
So I texted that number and I said, hey, your friends gave me your number. Would you like to get a drink?
75:18
At 2.30 in the morning? 2.30 in the morning. And the response I got back was, I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, who the F is this? And it's 2.30 in the morning. No.
75:32
And for some reason, in the morning, I felt like that was really, that's rude to do to a woman. Like, it's not just like funny, like you made a mistake or like that you, like that, that was really rude. And I don't know where that it came from in me. The, the, the feeling that I needed to apologize and say, I would, I would like to buy you lunch. I didn't realize the time I, and, and, and she had no idea who I was. I mean, none.
76:04
and uh except for her friends met this guy at a pool and so she says that they said you really need to go meet him and she said she'd be over for lunch and then it was one o'clock and then it was two o'clock and then it was you know she'd be there in half an hour and then it was four o'clock and then it was six and finally sometime did you know anything about this what did you nothing literally nothing just her first time yeah and that's it nothing not a picture not anything and um I walk up and now I'm over at the Sunset Marquis, which is up the hill because every hotel I'd say, I wouldn't do anything wrong.
76:42
It was just like the cast of characters that would be in and out of my room. They decided that, you know, in the morning, Mr. Biden, we don't have another, we don't have availability.
76:52
Hotel looks empty to me.
76:55
Well, and so I had moved to over to this other hotel. And this is when I still had a little bit of money to be able to pay hotel bills. And I wasn't in the, you know, the super eight.
77:07
But I walk up and there's this outdoor seating area. And I see this woman.
77:15
And she was wearing a denim shirt, just like this.
77:19
And I walk up to the table and I know this sounds melodramatic and like I'm making it up, but I looked in her eyes and I saw eyes that saw me.
77:33
And I said, I know that this sounds crazy, but I'm in love with you.
77:43
That's the first thing you said to a woman you'd never met before? The first thing.
77:47
And again, I know it sounds crazy. Yeah.
77:54
And the craziest part is, though, the miracle of it is, is that she didn't run.
78:00
She saw through me. I mean, she saw not through me. She saw me.
78:07
And within three hours, I had told her everything that I had not told the people that tried to love me back into existence for the previous two years.
78:20
She literally was, I said, about two hours in, I said, I'm addicted to crack cocaine.
78:29
Like I'm killing myself. She said, that ends today.
78:34
And it didn't end that day. It ended, the crack ended within a week and then the alcohol. A week? Yeah. And the alcohol ended within like 20 days.
78:48
Tapering.
78:50
In June, I count June 1st as my sobriety date. And from that moment I said that to her, we were married 10 days later.
78:59
That's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard in my life. And it remains a miracle. You know my daughters, and there's nothing that I love more in the world than them. And they spent, I always say the greatest sin of my addiction was my absence from my children.
79:23
As you know, the one thing about my dad always taught me about is that they're being available. And during a time in their life when they loved their Uncle Bo, they loved their Uncle Bo as much as I loved them. And he was like a second father to them. And after Bo died, and then they lost me for a period of time. And there's enormous trauma in that.
79:53
And my point about talking about the girls is that, like, I don't, like, my father, my family, my sister, my uncle, my aunt, my Aunt Valerie, my mom, you know, they all tried to save me. I mean, I have the most incredible family in the world.
80:12
But it took a stranger to see the love left in me.
80:21
And, and I don't know why, but it was, it to me, and I love to think of it this way, by the way, that it was a miracle that there was something divine about it.
80:32
And, um, And I'm a firm believer in that faith that sometimes the things that we cannot explain are God acting in our life in a way in which it might as well, that it tried to get to us in every other way possible. And then finally they have to smack you over the head with a hammer.
81:00
I believe that so strongly. That is true. That's a fact.
81:04
And for me, that is the truth about all of this is that I think that I've been given a gift and the gift of my addiction that brought me to that point where it could totally break me.
81:21
Not for me to go out and aggrandize myself in a way in which I tell a different story than what actually happened, but to tell the actual story.
81:31
That's why I hate talking about the, you know, the laptop or this or the, you know, defending myself. But the story that I get to tell is that there are such, there is such a thing as redemption.
81:45
And that's not the outward redemption. This is not like some, this is the inward.
81:50
That you can find the person that is worthy of love in yourself.
81:57
Yeah.
81:58
all of the things and all of the mistakes that I made in my life, and I don't mean all of the narrative that has been out there, but the mistakes that I've made in my life in terms of relationships, in terms of, have all been based in fear.
82:15
fear of not being enough, a fear of not living up to some expectation, fear of being found out, fear of being embarrassed.
82:25
I mean, everything from as something as trivial as like, fear of asking the girl to dance.
82:34
And I drank over that and I used over that or fear of having to come to terms with the trauma of losing my mother and my sister.
82:44
or facing it in any way. Or fear of being found out that I'm not really as good as I think that I am. That I am that person that people want to view as the privileged failed son that's never done anything with his life.
83:07
And all of that fear is evaporating. I'm not without fear.
83:12
I still...
83:14
but in a very different way.
83:16
And there's no way that I could have gotten here without having gone through that. And that's the promise of, uh, of at least not picking up a drink or a drug today is that maybe I can get there. I'm saying to somebody, I was talking before, I don't think that there's anything that is, has more, um, uh, the guidance in my life than the serenity prayer is being able to really truly understand the things that you can change as compared to the things that you have no control over.
83:56
Yes. And that's not about feeling powerless, but, For instance, what it made me think of is what you just said.
84:05
Yeah, I know. I agree completely.
84:07
It's vanity to think that you can change certain. Like, you're in charge of the world now? You're God? I mean, no, you're not. Yeah.
84:14
And there's that incredible, and I don't know if it's apocryphal or if it's true, that quote from Mother Teresa in which she says, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. Exactly.
84:25
And in loving my family, what I also realize is my family is much larger than my immediate blood.
84:37
And beyond just my first circle of friends, my family is a group of people that are still sick and suffering, that are literally to step out that door, that are...
84:51
that are uh that feel that there is no hope and no way out for them and that they are caught in a cycle of degradation and demoralization and violence because of the drug or the alcohol which is the worst in my opinion worst drug that there is um addicted yeah i agree with that yeah and um and and but it starts you know, in the immediate, and then hopefully it radiates out.
85:22
If it's done with sincerity and authenticity and you're not living a double life, you know, for whatever reason, You're not working on behalf of a corporate chill. You're not working on, I'm not pursuing a goal of which, you know, I'm a consultant in Washington DC and I, you know, I mean, like what, it was all bullshit.
85:51
It was all bullshit. What was I adding to the conversation? What was I adding to the, um, uh, to the, to the discourse? What, what purpose was, you know, any, uh, of, of that at the time? Um, I can't do that anymore. And that's why I'm an artist. And that's why I write. And that's why I'm speaking out. And that's why I, I work with an organization called peak path health, which is a great rehab in LA, but I'm helping set up a foundation for them for aftercare. I work with an organization called Boston universal, which does a homeless prevention and, um, and tenants rights advocacy in LA.
86:29
And that's not to say, oh, I'm such a good guy. I mean, because I get paid and I enjoy the work and I think that they're really good people. And I write a Substack because I hope to get paid. I hope people go read it so that I can make a living. you know i was telling you before my my uh you know uh i really believe in cryptocurrency i really believe in those things i want to do something in that space and you know not because of any other thing than i believe in it but you know what i also want to make some money yeah and that's my life now i get to say that and say but this is me i'm not running for anything You gave me a platform.
87:08
I'm going to use it. And not only am I going to use it to benefit myself and my family, but hopefully benefit people along the way.
87:14
And I would ask the same of you, which I think right now, and not this is like who am I to ask, is that I think that we have such an opportunity to find common ground, to do this a different way.
87:29
You are, if not the most, in my estimation, the most talented communicator of your generation.
87:37
And whatever anybody has to say about you is that there is no doubt is that you are a incredibly effective communicator as is Candace, by the way. Yes.
87:51
And I think that you have an opportunity to, and this isn't like, you know, train all, you know, ammunition on the administrator. I'm saying the opportunity to find, that, uh, you know, common purpose.
88:08
You wonder if it's, if it's in the, without the vanity of it. And I mean, no, no, I strongly agree. I mean, we're here for a reason. And once you're passed, once you get out of debt, it's like, what's the point of accumulating money? I, I really feel that.
88:22
And that's exactly the way I feel. Just get me out of the dead. And that's the other thing. People don't like, Oh, you know, you, you like, I mean, millions of dollars that I, uh, uh, you know, law firms and others and, and, um, yeah. Anyway, sorry.
88:39
Yeah. You know about that. Yeah.
88:42
But I, I wonder if like there, nothing you have said, you grew up in a very famous political family. I know you grew up in Delaware, but your world revolved around Washington. You went to school there. You live there. Went to college there. Yeah. Yeah. Went to college there. Um, You know the political system really well. You've said nothing about it, basically.
89:04
You haven't suggested a political solution to any of this. I don't think that's an accident because I think there probably isn't an immediate... I mean, you can make things better in the margins, but the problems that people face are mostly not political problems. No. Right. So I think that we overstate the importance of voting for this or that guy. I mean, to me, that's the lesson of Trump. I campaigned for the guy.
89:30
There are things about him I still like. I don't think he's like, you know, he's complicated. Like everybody is complicated, but it didn't work.
89:38
It didn't work. It didn't matter that you voted for him. You got the same thing that you were going to get if you voted for Kamala Harris. Like that's my perspective on it.
89:45
Yeah.
89:46
And so what does that tell you? It tells you that you're putting your faith in the wrong thing, which is in a political system. Whereas there's got to be a real solution that begins with changing people's hearts. That's what I think. Exactly.
89:58
Exactly.
90:00
Because, It comes from us. We're trying to find the problem out there. Exactly. And it's here. Yeah, we're the problem.
90:10
Yes. Right. No, I've discovered that about myself.
90:13
And so all the people out there that have such a problem with me sitting down with you or sitting down with Candace and like, I'm not hard enough on you. You got to apologize for this and you got to do this. It's like, you know what?
90:27
F them. Here's my point. It starts with us.
90:32
Like, I'm not going to ever change, Chuck. Like, I can get into the whole debate about the Democratic Party and whether you're not going to label something Democratic Social or this. You know what I think? I like people who believe in what they have a conviction. Yeah. And they're honest about it. I totally agree. So I don't agree with everything that Zerohan Mandani does. But you know what? He has conviction. He has competence. And, you know, like, I mean, he balanced the budget. Yeah. Crime is at record low in New York right now.
91:05
And regardless of what you think about him, is that like, so from a political perspective, I don't care if it's Zora Mamdani or Thomas Massey. And I don't agree with 90% of the stuff that, well, I think I don't, but I don't think that matters in this moment in time.
91:23
I don't think any of those labels matter in time. I want someone with the courage of their conviction, principles, That is, but it all starts here.
91:36
All starts here. And everybody else can nitpick around whether, you know, all of the labels that we apply to each other and all of the vitriol. And there has to be, like, I think there needs to be, you know, accountability for the people that are literally robbing us effing blind.
91:53
And I think there will be accountability for that. But my point is, in this moment, can we not all see that we are about to reach a point in the evolution of humanity that will be a larger step than in the entirety of the existence of this earth. That's right.
92:19
And like, so what does all of it matter? If you have people that drive me crazy like Elon Musk and every other person that has a hand in, which is a handful of them, and what's happening with AI right now, telling us in easily within the next five years, if they haven't already done it, that we're going to reach AGI.
92:42
And if we reach AGI, then we're not more than a maximum of another five years, more likely two or three away from super intelligence. And once that happens, We literally have taken a step in the evolution of humanity and of humankind. And the largest singular step that will ever be taken in the exponential way in which things will advance from there is completely outside of our control.
93:15
And the only thing that we can hope for is that we have leaders who That have humanity's best interest in mind. And I don't know.
93:26
I shouldn't say I don't know. I do know. I think we have the exact wrong leadership at the moment.
93:31
I totally agree.
93:33
Do you know anybody in your life who you talk to who's like very excited about AI? Because I don't. I don't really know anyone who's really for this. Where's the constituency for this? It seems like the population doesn't want it at all.
93:47
I don't know why anyone would want it in the way that it's being offered to us. Look, the thing I say is this. It's not theirs.
93:58
What they're building is off the back of the output of all of humanity. I agree. It's ours. It belongs to me. It belongs to me just as much as it belongs to a Sam Bushman in the Kalahari.
94:15
It belongs to us. From the moment that there was a cave painting that was put into a digital database in a context to the poetry of Shakespeare to the book that you wrote to my last podcast transcript.
94:35
That is what is AI. It's all of ours.
94:39
Every scientific discovery, every single public dollar, all of it is, we own it.
94:47
And we somehow are going to make like five or six individuals in this country trillionaires.
94:55
By allowing them to literally rob us of that and make it theirs and them decide?
95:03
Do you trust Sam Altman to decide the fate of humanity or any of them for that matter?
95:10
I've done thousands of interviews over 35 years and I've never had... the feeling of wanting to run out of a room more strongly than I had when I talked to Sam Altman. So he's, he's, he's out of 350 million Americans, he's probably 350 millionth of who I trust.
95:27
Yet. To control the future of humanity. Yet, yet here we are, right?
95:32
Yeah. Yet here we are. And, and, and, and you know what we're doing?
95:38
is I'm supposed to hate Tucker Carlson because he's an anti-Semite and he's this, I know you're not, you're not an anti-Semite. I 100% know you're not an anti-Semite. No, that's what my point being is that- I would just say so.
95:52
My point being is, is that like, if it's anti-Semitic to point out that Bibi Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then you know what? I don't know what to say to people anymore.
96:08
I mean, all you have to do is just open your eyes.
96:10
Just literally open your eyes, open your heart for one minute.
96:14
Yeah.
96:15
And realize, you know, I- It's such an obvious lie. It's like, who's even intimidated by that anymore? My point is, is like, how is it possible that they're dividing us on things like that?
96:28
I agree.
96:29
And I can tell you how it's possible.
96:32
It's the distraction that is being created by a handful of individuals and the people that work for them to keep us divided through our algorithm. And as much as you're not addicted to your phone because you're not on social media and things like that, the vast, vast, vast majority of us are, myself included, is everyone has a pocket full of heroin and they access it
96:59
Thank you.
97:01
literally a thousand times a day.
97:03
So you're saying you got off crack and more impressively alcohol.
97:06
Yeah. No, I'm not. I'm not that bad. All I'm saying is- But not off your phone. No, no, I am. I'm very, I'm not nearly, I'm very wary of it. I'm very wary of anything like that. But what I'm trying to say to people is that I'm no better than anybody else. I look at my phone just as, you know, as much as anybody else. I don't feel that it is necessarily a problem. But what I do find is like, for instance, is that you gravitate towards the negative things people say about you. Yes. Way more than you ever gravitated to the beautiful things that people say about me.
97:40
That is so true.
97:41
So I'm on X and the amazing thing was is that I go on X And I start talking about addiction, but I also start talking about the absurdity of the moment that we live in and some of the players that are outsized characters in this morality tale we're living through.
98:03
And there's these beautiful messages from people.
98:09
about their own struggle and their own addiction. And I showed my sister what you wrote about X, Y, or Z. And she said it gave her the strength to make it through one more day. And these beautiful things where people would say, hey, I'm a three-time Trump voter, but I just want to say, keep on keeping on, brother. I love you for your recovery. It gives me hope.
98:37
And there's thousands of those messages. But, you know, what happens is that, you know, the one that catches your eye, the one that says, you know, you're, shut up, you, you know, you crackhead pedophile, you know, you're, you know, criminal and you stole from, like, it's like, and it was a great lesson for me in the experience that everyone is having, not just on X, but across the board in which we're all being, and it's purposeful. The thing that I never fully believed until I read this whistleblower is how intentional it is.
99:16
And as long as we're looking at each other, as long as we're trying to find all of the things that are wrong with our life in the other, and by the way, whether it's the other that's the immigrant or whether it's the other that's our neighbor, is we're not looking at ourselves.
99:34
And we're not focused on the things that really matter.
99:38
And one of the things that really matters is we better wake up wake up to the way in which we're being led by the nose to believe that we all hate each other.
99:50
And it's making us worse.
99:53
I mean, there's this, one of my favorite scenes in the Gospel of Luke is the story that Jesus tells about the two men who go to pray at the temple, and one's the Pharisee and one's the tax collector, and the Pharisee looks over and says, God, thank you for not making me that guy, because he is a pig. He's a sinner, unlike a righteous, good person like me.
100:13
And the tax collector who knows he's a sinner because he's a thief and he knows he's a thief and everyone knows he's a thief, doesn't even look up. He can't even look at God and he just says, have mercy on me. And Jesus says, who is justified before God?
100:26
It's not the man who turns to the guy next to him and says, I'm better than you. It's the man who knows that he's not better than anybody. That's the man who's justified before God. And I just feel like all of life is that story.
100:38
When you stop looking at other people and being like, you suck. You suck.
100:41
Yeah. And look inside and realize that I suck. That's where wisdom and peace come from.
100:48
Yeah.
100:50
There's a, there's a scene in the Gnostic gospels and I forget which is the acts of, I forget, Acts of Philip or something anyway. Have you read the Gnostic Gospels? Never. And really, you got to. The whole trove of Gospels. I mean, a lot of people would say that it's heresy, but it's the...
101:15
When Constantine unified the church and declared Catholicism, Christianity, State religion of Rome. State religion of Rome.
101:31
They basically effectively chose four gospels and banned all the other ones. And they found in, I forget the, in Hominy, these 2000 year old texts, which were the other gospels written by Mary Magdalene and written by Philip and written by...
101:55
And anyway, part of one is this.
102:00
Jesus is speaking to the disciples, and this is before. And he says, learn to suffer as I do.
102:07
And that is everything.
102:12
That all wisdom comes through suffering. That is true.
102:17
And in that suffering, you're able to love.
102:24
in that suffering, you're able to see the other.
102:27
It's the exact, exactly what that you were saying in Luke.
102:34
Yeah.
102:34
Is that, is being able to, like not being the person casting judgment, And by the way, it doesn't mean that you are without discretion.
102:50
It simply means is that as much as I'm not going to, what is the idea of my empathy overwhelms my critical thinking, is not that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, however, is...
103:10
is if I can feel this strongly about what they're doing to, to, to kids in detention centers in, in, in the United States of America, I can also feel just as strongly about, um, or have as much empathy for, um, uh, for someone who feels like they have been completely left out and without any options that are living in Bethel, Maine, that feels that this country has completely let them down and is looking for a hope, something, an object for their anger.
103:59
I want to bring them into the fold.
104:03
I want to be able to talk to them.
104:06
Those people that I think voted out of anger and that are still looking for someone to be their retribution.
104:21
for people who are dependent on alcohol, which is a lot of people, I think you're absolutely right to say it's the scariest of all drugs because it's the most insidious. It's just ubiquitous everywhere.
104:32
How do you get off it exactly? You said you got off crack in three days or something like that pretty quick.
104:37
Yeah. Well, that's the thing is that- How do you get off alcohol? Yeah. Alcohol is the, and I mean this in this sense, and I have people push back on me, but I, Alcohol is the most destructive drug that there is. Not just by virtue of the fact that it is as ubiquitous as it is. It is, physiologically, impacts your body. It impacts every organ, every major organ, and in particular, every major pleasure center of your brain. It's the only drug other than benzodiazepam that you can die from, withdraw from.
105:11
so everybody always you know uh glory you know there's the hollywood version of you know how horrible it is to come off of opiates um or you know um or cocaine and the reality is it's it's really painful and it's uncomfortable and you think you are going to die but particularly as it relates to cocaine it's out of your system in 72 hours There is no more physiological need for it. And you won't die from withdrawing from it.
105:41
Alcohol, you'll die. You'll go into seizures.
105:46
And it stays in your body, not just for three days, it stays in your body for at least 30, if not more.
105:53
And you've created these neurotransmitters in your brain that your brain is still crying 30, 60, 90 days later, still crying for you to drink.
106:07
And the worst part is, all you got to do is walk out your door.
106:11
And usually it's not more than, you know, particularly if you live in a urban environment, you know, a quarter of a mile from wherever you may stay.
106:19
And no one looks at you funny when you have a cocktail.
106:22
No, exactly. And it's encouraged. And, um, so uh for me um it was hard hard work is that i this time didn't i've been to a a number of rehabs and in uh in 2019 after i met melissa and she said this ends is that i started i tapered she had me taper how did she know to do that got her to completely intuitive and um I mean, it was really, really incredible.
107:03
And she tapered me. And then at one point it got really bad. And I had the true delirium tremors and she called a doctor to come over. What's that like?
107:15
Literally the feeling that if you don't remove yourself from your own body, that you're gonna die. Because you are. I mean, there's the real potential of you dying from seizures. And it's the most excruciating feeling that I've ever had of any kind of pain.
107:34
And I had gone through it before, but I had done it in a clinical environment in which they just usually use benzodiazepam to wean you that way. And so I had weaned enough, but not enough to stop that. And so I had to go through it. Where were you? Melissa had rented a house, this little house. for us up in the hills, I mean, hard to get to from anywhere. Like I couldn't walk. She took my keys, she took my wallet, she took my phone, she raised every number from it that didn't have the name Biden in it.
108:10
I mean, she had to do the hardest thing for anyone that loves someone is for a period of time, she had to be my jailer.
108:21
and my nurse and literally nursed me back to life.
108:28
And it was incredibly intense at the beginning, 24 seven that you have to be there, because you literally could take it with alcohol, not particularly, singularly with alcohol, you could die.
108:44
How long did it take you to feel better?
108:53
In that instance, 10 days before I could ever really eat anything and taste it. Actually. Yeah. You know, I mean, or have any interest in not being forced to eat something.
109:04
And then, and then you start to, you know.
109:11
you have this kind of, uh, everything is kind of gray scale, you know, for even after you get a little bit of a, a boost around 30 days, and then you try to ride that as long as possible.
109:28
But what happens in your brain is that somebody explained it to me this way is that you have these little messengers that alcohol sends to your pleasure centers of your brain. And so the messengers imagine with little birds in a normal person, the bird flies up to the birdhouse and that's your dopamine or whatever it is in like a normal in a normal circumstance, like you have a you have a happy experience.
109:55
and sends two birds up to live in the birdhouse.
110:02
And the maximum that you're supposed to ever have is like 10. It's like the happiest. What alcohol does is it sends 20 birds at a time. And so it creates 20 birdhouses. And then the next time you want to get, you got to get to 30 birdhouses and then it builds 40 birdhouses. Then there's a thousand birdhouses. And when you take the alcohol away, and you have a normal, happy experience, like a cup of coffee in the morning.
110:28
It only sends two birds. And your brain says, there are 998 other birdhouses that you have to feel for me to feel normal. And you don't have it.
110:39
And there's nothing in a normal experience that can possibly produce that except the drug. And so your brain, the thing that you think that everyone, of course, has to believe is providing you with rational, logical information is saying, if you don't get this, you're going to die.
111:01
And in the case of alcohol, it means it.
111:05
If you don't get this, you're going to die. And by the way, not only are you going to die, you're going to feel like this for the rest of your life.
111:11
So fix me.
111:13
And so your brain's telling you. And so the first time that you face a trauma or an obstacle or something good happens, your brain says, I know how to make it better.
111:25
I know how to fix it. I know how to make you not feel this way. I know how to make you not have this anxiety. I know how to make you not have this fear. We've done it before.
111:36
Do it.
111:37
And that's, that is the, what alcohol at least did as it relates to me, but also I'm positive the science of it is, anyways, to me, the most dangerous thing.
111:54
I've lived it. And that's an amazing description and an accurate one, I think. How do you stay sober for seven years?
112:02
Uh...
112:04
Almost everything that I do is no longer with the idea that I am like living on a knife's edge. In the early days, though, you really do have to really protect yourself, not put yourself in positions of, you know, people always say to me like, well, can I still go to the bar with my friends? Well, not, no.
112:27
You know, getting clean and sober is really easy. All you have to do is change everything.
112:32
And that everything, and what I really mean by that, is that don't go back and put yourself in the same exact circumstances that you were in, where your same group of friends, if they are heavy drinkers, or your family. If you can't go to Thanksgiving without everybody getting drunk, maybe don't go to Thanksgiving this year trying to get sober.
112:56
And so that in terms of changing everything, but staying, I promise you, everybody, it gets not only easier, but there's this thing in the program that I practice in which they call the promises in which you will know and experience an ease by which life happens as you are able to live life on life's terms and which like everything, it doesn't fix everything. Look at me.
113:27
You know, six felony charges and two trials later. And it didn't solve anything. It didn't solve all the consequences that I had to face. But you know what? Can you imagine what my life would be like? I'd be dead.
113:45
I'm 100% long dead.
113:47
If I had decided the only way to be able to fix this is to anesthetize myself.
113:53
I mean, I would be long dead.
113:55
And that's what they were hoping.
113:58
And I truly, truly do believe that.
114:01
I believe that they knew that the singular, what they perceived as my father's Achilles heel was his family.
114:10
That regardless of what anybody says about Joe Biden, that there was nothing more important to him than his family. And that he had just lost Beau.
114:18
And that the idea that I truly believe that they wanted me to relapse, which was equivalent to death.
114:26
I'm positive they did.
114:28
What does that tell you about, I mean, why would, one thing I noticed just being, living in Georgetown as a kid and knowing, you know, a million people from political families is the families were all, dealing with tragedies that on a bigger scale than normal people, like there's something about that environment that is really hard on the, on families. And you see it in the most famous political families. They're all a lot of casual.
114:52
I don't know. See that that's one of the things that, that, um, well, number one is I really truly didn't grow up in DC. Um, yeah. And you know, we, we really were in Delaware and, um, which was different.
115:04
And, but yeah, To your point, is that what I found is this, is that I lived it publicly.
115:12
But, you know, Tucker, what I found is, is that I was in a...
115:23
I forget where I was in a stranger. Somebody's driving me and he told me a story. It told me about their life and their addiction and that their, you know, their brother was in jail and their father, you know, just got arrested and addicts. And I think Everybody has those stories. Everybody. That's for sure. Except mine played out on the front page of the New York Post in a way that literally I don't think it had for anybody, any political family ever.
115:55
I mean, even the Kennedys to the degree in which they, you know, and I really mean that. Like, I mean, the total evisceration of anything or even the notion that I deserved any privacy.
116:07
I mean, I really, like, I look at some people and I say, like, just...
116:13
Put yourself in my shoes for one minute.
116:17
On what level? On what level do you think that that was right?
116:24
I look like somebody like Miranda Devine. And just on what level? If that was Ivanka, And I'm not talking about, like, just take her existing 20-year digital footprint, everything that she's ever done. It's like, I guarantee you, and I don't know, I guarantee you, everybody has a nude. Everybody has a picture that they don't want to see. Everybody has a text message out of context. Everybody has a voicemail they wish that they hadn't left. Everybody has an email in which it doesn't have the entirety of the email chain.
116:59
Like, you know how many conspiracy theories were born out of the fact that I wrote Buckley a recommendation to a school, which you reminded me he didn't get into. You know what I mean? Like, out of context, you are able to do something. And how is that in any way fair? However, that's what happened.
117:19
And what's your wife think? I mean, Oh my God.
117:26
She's like, talk about. She didn't sign up for this. Yeah. Like talk about like, you know.
117:33
Yeah. She is so tough. She's like a, she is a, she is a warrior.
117:43
Amazing.
117:45
She is absolutely amazing.
117:48
I mean, look, I mean, I wasn't, there's no way that I could even prepare for it. And I, and this had been my life.
117:56
None that I could prepare for it.
118:00
The fact she didn't run, it says everything that you need to know about her because there wasn't much other upside.
118:11
Well, the truth is that, uh,
118:17
but we'd be always the the ultimate upside so but she's she is she is one amazing person what's your plan you're on a path yeah it seems like you kind of moved into it sideways maybe not with a plan I don't know but you're clearly moving in some direction where is that headed I
118:45
I don't know. And that's one of the things is that I don't, I know the things that I care about. I care about reaching people that are still sick and suffering. I really do. Because by the way, not because I'm a hero, not because I'm some saint and I want, you know why? Because it's the most rewarding thing that I've ever done in my life.
119:07
It gives me sustenance. It makes me feel good about myself.
119:13
I mean it. It makes it easier for me to make it through the day.
119:20
And so it's purely selfish.
119:22
And that's one of the things about sobriety that I tell everybody is that the ultimate goal is to get to the end, and particularly as it relates to the program that I practice, as you get to the end of the steps, the whole thing is so that you can be of service to somebody else. And not because you are sainted at the end, and all of a sudden, you're St. Francis walking among the forest. It's because it's the thing that saves you. The only way to truly get out of yourself is to do for somebody else.
119:51
Is to, you know, to sit here and for me, the easiest is to find other people that have had, you know, same and similar experience.
120:04
And it's not like you have to look far.
120:05
No.
120:06
I mean, it's around every single corner. There's somebody. And that was the beautiful discovery that I had.
120:14
So there's that. I want to reach a million people in recovery and I've created this thing at hunterbiden.com backslash recovery in which anonymously for nothing other than to create a storyboard, a story core is people get to share their experience, strength and hope because what helped save me was realizing I wasn't alone.
120:39
and I want to write about it, and I'm going to put it on Substack, and part of it's free, and part of it's subscription, and I want to continue to practice my art.
120:51
ultimately at the end of the day is that like anybody else is that, you know, I want to, um, I want to have the financial security to be able to, you know, to, uh, to not constantly feel as if I have to make, um, you know, choices that I don't want to have to make like anybody else, like anybody else in their life. How close are you to financial security? Uh, like I'm a million miles away. Um, I'm several million miles away.
121:19
I am. But, um, yeah uh you know my uh Winston Strawn wants their money um uh lawyers uh yeah my oh yeah all it's all legal bills yeah and um and uh anyway like tens of thousands of dollars oh no millions of dollars millions of dollars millions I mean just uh I don't know exactly what it is I think it's between four and six million that Winston Strawn says I that I owe them for for my couple of convictions and anyway.
121:56
Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of money.
121:58
How do you, how does that affect you?
122:00
I don't know. I, I, I would hope that they, uh, oh, how does it affect me?
122:07
It affects me in this way is that, um, I have to find a sensible solution and a way through. Um, I really, uh, uh, I've wanted to avoid, um, bankruptcy, uh, because the road back from that is just so long and I'm 56 years old, but I don't allow it to consume me.
122:30
You know what I mean? I really don't. I, and I can't, um, uh, it is, uh, I don't want it to be the principal motivating factor for, for everything I do, because the truth of the matter is the mountain. So it's such a long climb that I, I, I don't, I don't see the solution to it right now. Um, but one will present itself and I think cooler heads will prevail and, and, and, you know, and, uh, I'll be able to, um, I just have faith.
123:06
I don't know, man. I just have faith. Not blind faith. Just work hard. I mean, shit, I'm really working my ass off. I mean, everybody says, oh, go get a job. I have two jobs. I have two jobs. And then on top of that, I have all of this that I'm trying to do. And then I'm, you know, a whole thing that I've been trying to build is relates in that, you know, I'm working my butt off and doing that. You know, they took away my law license, which means that that avenue that I spent, you know, 25 years working towards to graduate from Yale Law School is not open to me right now.
123:44
And so I have to, in many ways, you know, reinvent myself, but not out of whole cloth.
123:52
and spending the past seven years, you know, I'm really, really dedicated to my art. I'm really dedicated to the, to the, to the work of, of writing, you know, you're a brilliant writer and you, you, you know this better than anybody. It's, it is, it isn't, it is a practice as much as an art. It's a discipline as much as it is. And, and, and so I've been practicing that discipline since I wrote my first book. And, and so I have a lot to say. And, um, and um and there's ways to be able to do that now and uh ways to be able to do that that can um you know that like i think it's really important for me to be authentic about everything but also the ways in which i can do it which i hopefully can um put food on the table last question is about faith how has this affected how you feel about god and changed your
124:50
Your relationship.
124:51
I don't know whether I would say that it's changed, but it is deep in my belief in, whether you want to call it, I do, as God, is the absolute certainty of this.
125:10
There is literally, in both the theological, but also metaphysical sense, no distance between me and you or anyone, we are all literally connected.
125:30
And that connection, that universal connection to everything is what I refer to as God, is us realizing that all of our fear is delusion.
125:46
is being separated. It's all the idea.
125:50
And so my faith is in the fact that I know that there is not a sentient being that literally is me. And I don't know if that makes sense to you, but, uh, but I, I truly believe that there are, um, there has been a, uh, a, a real thing in my life that has saved me time and time and time again, and that has taught me hard lessons, uh,
126:46
and that I believe that I cannot explain by other than what I choose to call God no question about that and we do get glimpses of the connection between people all people I think that's what we refer to as a transcendent moment when we like rise above all the things we're concerned with and sort of look down just for a split second but this happens to people throughout life and you're like oh wait a second yeah you know people are really connected to each other in a real way yeah
127:17
Yeah.
127:19
And when you start to get honest with yourself, like really, really get honest with yourself. And I'm not talking about everybody has to go through what I went through to be able to get honest with themselves.
127:32
I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
127:36
But I think that there are spiritual practices that I did not either have the courage or the patience to endure.
127:46
It's not like I was moving to Rishikesh to sit in a cave and meditate for seven years.
127:53
Instead, what I got is a trial by fire.
127:56
And like I said, the complete eradication of an ego, not by courage or conviction on my part, but by a necessary choice to survive.
128:12
I had to choose to either stay in bed or get out and live. And if I was gonna live, I had to let go of that.
128:19
Yes.
128:20
And I did.
128:22
And for now, today, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
128:29
It's a beautiful thing. It doesn't solve everything. It doesn't solve my debt. It doesn't solve my, you know, I still got to, you know, put on my pants like everybody else.
128:42
And I still have, you know, to deal with a relationship that, you know, like anybody else in a family that I love, drives me crazy.
128:53
I love like everybody else.
128:57
But I don't have to live a lie.
129:01
Hunter Biden, thank you very much.
129:04
Thanks.
