Hunter Biden, the 55-year-old son of former President Joe Biden has given a three-plus hour interview with Andrew Callaghan, an independent journalist, on Callaghan’s channel, Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.
His first televised interview in years comes after he was convicted of three felony charges for federal gun violations in June 2024 and was later pardoned by his father in December.
Hunter Biden spoke in depth about the slew of scandals and controversies he has faced in recent years and Newsweek has put together five takeaways from the interview.
Speaks About His Father’s Health
During the interview, Hunter Biden directly addresses his father’s health. In May, it was announced that Joe Biden, 82, had been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer with metastasis to the bone. Joe Biden had previously faced significant scrutiny over his health throughout his presidency and then during his brief run for re-election.
“The one thing about my dad is that he’ll never complain,” Hunter Biden told Callaghan. “He has very advanced cancer…spread beyond his prostate.”
Nevertheless, he said his father was “strong.”
“His bones are strong. He’s strong. He’s in good health otherwise. He’s in great health otherwise,” he said. “They can treat it, but it’s not curable. That’s all the public knowledge, but I think that’s literally everything that there is to know about it.”
A photo shows former President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden stepping out of a bookstore while shopping in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on November 29, 2024.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Condemns Democratic Establishment
Speaking about the Democratic Party, Hunter Biden specifically condemned people who had called on then-President Biden to step out of the 2024 presidential race and was critical of the Democratic establishment more broadly.
“The intelligentsia of the Democratic party, with 2020 hindsight, believes that Joe Biden should have considered not running again, because of their perception that he was too old. And so, then the drum beat began,” he said.
He then called out coverage from The New York Times and specifically mentions the Pod Save America podcast.
“The Pod Save America saviors of the Democratic party. What four, um, white millionaires that are dining out on their association with Barack Obama from 16 years ago, living in Beverly f***** Hills telling the rest of the world what Black voters in South Carolina really want, or what the women, the waitress living outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin, really believes.”
“I can’t believe that we do this over and over again,” he says.
He also said: “Everybody talks about Joe Biden now as if he was somehow the choice of the Democratic party,” before stating that this idea is “bull****.”
Joe Biden was considering a presidential run as early as 1987, when he was among the early favorites for the 1988 nomination. He was also a candidate in 2008 and 2016.
Discussing Joe Biden’s run for the Democrat nomination in 2020, Hunter Biden says that his father lost in states including Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as coming second in Nevada. He also said political consultant and analyst David Axelrod and David Plouffe, who previously managed Obama’s 2008 campaign, had appeared on TV that year saying that Biden would not get the nomination.
Hunter Biden said: “A lot of rural voters said ‘F*** you, we love Joe.’ A lot of urban voters said ‘F*** you, we love Joe.’ They voted for him overwhelmingly.”
He criticized George Clooney, saying he is “a brand,” as well as Axelrod, who was former President Barack Obama’s chief strategist in 2008 and 2012.
Clooney wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times last July calling on the Democratic Party to find a new presidential nominee after widespread concerns about Joe Biden’s performance in a televised debate with Donald Trump.
Of Axelrod Hunter Biden told Callaghan: “David Axelrod has one success in his political life and that was Barack Obama and that was because of Barack Obama.”
He then criticized Jake Tapper, who co-authored a book about efforts to allegedly cover up then-President Biden’s mental decline.
“What influence does Jake Tapper have over anything? He has the smallest audience on cable news.”
But Praises Kamala Harris
Despite his criticisms of the Democratic Party, Hunter Biden praises former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ultimately replaced Joe Biden as Democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential election campaign.
“I love Kamala Harris,” he said. “I think she would have made an incredible president. I know that she was an incredibly loyal vice president.”
“She did everything she could to support my dad, and to support me and my family personally,” he said. “I truly love her like family.”
Opens Up About His Laptop
Three weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published a front-page story that revealed details from emails from a laptop left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop. The contents and the controversy became a prominent feature of the campaign and a focus for Republican lawmakers while Joe Biden was in the White House.
Asked by Callaghan what happened with the laptop, Hunter Biden responded: “I don’t know, you tell me.
“My question to anybody who is keeping an open mind is—what is it that you think the laptop proves?”
“Everybody has a digital life,” Hunter Biden said. “By whatever means, they got my digital footprint, going back decades.”
Discussing the theories and coverage around the laptop, he said: “It is an entire fiction that makes money off of who thinks that’s right.
“You go down these rabbit holes and you do exactly what they say…Hunter Biden, laptop, Ukraine, China, Ukraine, China, Hunter Biden laptop, bird flu like, literally you keep doing that over and over again.”
“None of it bears any resemblance to reality,” he said.
Suggests US Should Invade El Salvador
President Donald Trump campaigned on a hard-line immigration stance and pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. This has involved hundreds of illegal migrants being deported to the CECOT maximum security facility in El Salvador, which is infamous for alleged human rights abuses.
The method his administration has employed to do this has sparked vigorous debate and concerns, with one case involving U.S. citizen Abrego Garcia, who was deported to El Salvador after the Trump administration alleged that he had ties to the MS-13 gang, gaining widespread attention.
Speaking about this in the interview, Hunter Biden said: “If you think the prison in El Salvador is not a f****** concentration camp, then you’re out of your f****** mind.”
“We just sent a bunch of people without due process, some of them most likely legally in the U.S,” he continued.
“How are we getting those people back from f****** El Salvador? Because I’ll tell you what, if I became president in two years from now, or four years from now or three years from now, I would pick up the phone and call the f****** president of El Salvador and say, you either f****** send them back or I’m gonna f****** invade,” he said.
