The Hunter Biden Interview

131m 40s

Keskustelussa Tucker Carlson ja Hunter Biden pohtivat syvällisesti Yhdysvaltojen poliittista ilmapiiriä, joka on muuttunut entistä vihamielisemmäksi ja jakautuneemmaksi. He tunnistavat ongelman alkaneen jo Obaman kaudella, mutta Trumpin nousu on heidän mukaansa kiihdyttänyt kehitystä, jossa sääntövaltio toimii aseena eikä suojana. Biden korostaa, että Trump edustaa laadullista muutosta politiikassa, koska hänen toimintansa tähtää ensisijaisesti omaan hyötyyn, ei kansakunnan etuun. Toisaalta Carlson muistuttaa, että myös hän itse on ollut osa ongelmaa, esimerkiksi kannattaessaan Irakin sotaa ja uskoessaan voivansa vaikuttaa Trumpiin. Keskustelu siirtyy henkilökohtaiselle tasolle, kun Biden avautuu riippuvuudestaan, toipumisestaan ja siitä, miten hänen yksityiselämänsä vietiin julkisuuteen. Hän kertoo, ettei koskaan jättänyt kannettavaa tietokonetta korjaamolle, vaan hänen pilvitietonsa varastettiin ja niitä levitettiin poliittisista syistä. Biden korostaa, että koko ”Bidenin rikollisperhe”-narratiivi on vailla todisteita, mutta hän myöntää tehneensä virheitä. Lopulta molemmat päätyvät siihen, että poliittiset ratkaisut eivät yksin riitä, vaan muutos on aloitettava itsestä ja ihmissuhteista. He näkevät toipumisen, rehellisyyden ja inhimillisen kohtaamisen avaimina yhteiskunnan parantamiseen.

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Perustin pyöräilyvää teitä valmistavan ornotin vuonna 2013. Mielestäni parasta Shopify saan se, että voimme harjoittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknistä osaamista. Voimme hallinoida yrityksen taustajaristeelmiä ja front-endia sekä myydä verkossa, vaivatta. Jos Shopify olisi pyöräilyvaruste, se olisi mielestäni itse polkupyörä. Sillä asiat hoidetaan ja meidän liiketoimintamme hoituu Shopify-sa. Aloita ilmainen kokeilu Shopify-piste-com-sivustolla. Honorbiden, Thank you for doing this. Karalsin. I haven't seen you in 11 years. Though I've talked to Bessio. As you know, in the meantime. And then I wake up in morning and you're doing Candace Owens. I love Candace. I do too. I've taken a lot of abuse for saying that. But I know where and I. I think she's a great person. 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. Is that she is a human being. Is a really, really good person. 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 attributed to one thing. We can get to that. But what's the one thing? I took Donald Trump. I think he. 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 individuals in our political history. For offer for ill. And I think he had such an opportunity to do great things. And he just decided that all he was gonna do was for himself. But anyway, regardless, we had two hours to talk. We're from the same place. I grew up with your with your high school girlfriend, I think. So 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. And I'm not blaming Obama. I'm not blaming any, 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 advantage you couldn't say anything about Obama that wasn't positive. Do you remember that? No, I mean, and I think that I had a completely probably different perspective on that. But I don't, I don't discount if you say that you felt that way. Well, it was before that. 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 war. You know, it was like, but people seemed to lose their sense of humor in 2008. At least my neighbors did it. It was like, what did you-- I'm sorry, do you see something about Obama that's not flattering? And that to me? Yeah, I guess you would get that, you know what I mean? I mean, you're a public figure, you're on TV. No, I mean a like dinner. Yeah, no, I know, but I mean, and it was the ladies who were all about and remember that? It's like all the, this whole thing of like well-educated humanist, that all began during that maybe the case, that wasn't understandably was not my experience. That it wasn't. So how did you wind up deciding to speak in public? And with first of all, with Candice, which I strongly approved, but I just wanted how did that happen? So the first interview that I did was with Andrew Kellian, and who is a brilliant in my opinion journalist and 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." 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, just like draft age, 18 to 35-year-olds and he has a wider audience also. And it's funny that you say draft age, that's an interesting way to put it. We may be coming up to, and anyway, do you think we're gonna get a draft? No, no. I don't think that they have the. I don't think. Because that's what I've physically joined the protest at that. I think you should physically join the protest now. You're already there. But anyway, I watched a lot of stuff that Andrew did. I really liked it. And I went on, and I think that the thing that kind of shocked people was my willingness to be completely opened about all of the. I don't. I welcome any question. I always say that addiction is 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. And they did a beautiful thing to me that was. that was ugly in the moment, because they completely exposed me in a way that I don't know of any public figure or a person associated with public figure, particularly famminen has ever been exposed. 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 in that total exposure, there was no word 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. And I did that with Andrew and I thought it would just be a one-off, but then I, the guy name, well, you're close with him, and I consider him a friend by text. I don't want to sell his reputation is Sean Ryan. And I sat down with him and Sean Ryan, and Sean, is kind of, you know, mega 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 into the state vehemently disagreed with. 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 weight in which he listened. And I sat down with him, and we did close to six hours. And you kind of, I know that it seems like this is a very public thing by virtue of everybody watching here. But the fact of the matter is these experiences in this long format can be very intimate. Oh, big time. And that was my experience with Sean. And we connected on the thing that I have been able to connect with almost everyone, like universally, which is addiction. Yes, in recovery. And for me, thank God, it's recovery. And I've been sober, clean sober for, as somebody said, stop saying clean. So I've been substance-free in sober for over seven years now. And I don't think people knew that. I think people conflated my passed 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 one point five articles about me a day for almost to four years. And none of of a good. In all of it with not not positive? Not much of it was positive. No, not at all. Anyway, long story, long story a lot longer is that I'm having that experience than you're a post at the moment. Yeah, by the way. Welcome to my world. I'm not naked. Yeah, hopefully hope these naked pictures don't come out. I could call some of our friends. No one wants to see those. Yeah. Well, I didn't think so either, but apparently they do. So, anyway, long story short. It's long story longer. I go and I do this with Sean and Sean call, and this is public now. I can say it is Sean had dinner with Kansas. They live in the same neighborhood down there in Nashville. And he said, you know, I really, really like her. 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 version. I haven't gotten to that point yet. And I thought about it, and like you. And we've talked about this a little bit, but like you, the kid has said some really, really awful things. Not only about me, but also about my dad, you know, the whole Biden crime family thing, but really, really kind of point of things. 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, and that I own my families. And I've been incredibly transparent about them. I've been, and I have, and I thought that if we could find that, you know, commonality that we could have an actual conversation. And that's what occurred. And I don't agree with Candace still on a lot of stuff. And I almost feel like, like, why do I have to make that, you know, 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. Never in a way in which it is, it is practice with impunity. 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. You know, a lot of people hit that afternoon slump and immediately reach for another cup of coffee, guilty. But is the answer always more caffeine? Well, sometimes you just need hydration. Thing is, a lot of people are already drinking a ton of water, but they are not fully hydrated, because water alone isn't always enough. 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I feel like the divisions now are ideological and political, and that's, 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 that's my right, by the way, I get to like people whether or not I'm fully aligned with their program, right? That's my view. 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. Right? What world do we live in? Well, that's kind of how I feel. That's strongly how I feel. First of all, I decide who I like. You don't get to decide who I like. 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, but other people in your organization read from on X. You're getting that. I think we have literally been torn apart on purpose because not because it was the, I don't think that the people that created the social media platforms that rule our lives to this day taught 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 and making you question yourself. I mean, let me give you an example. 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 the 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. Exponential that began with the inception of Instagram. And then not only an exponential increase in actual suicide among teenage girls, but an even greater increase. Like if that if suicides went up triple, girls reporting self-harm went up by like 300% over the course of like a the inception of Instagram until you know 2022 when this woman walks in with all the document. And Instagram knew that and knew that it was literally directly related to their algorithm. Sending these messages to girls that they are not worth that they they they they need more that that they that they're whether it's about their bodies or body shaming and continuing to send it over to them knowing the negative impact that has happened. But it's because it made them money. It's because you become addicted to that you know that response and that that Instagram would get with that bag of heroin in your pocket known as an iPhone. And you know what they did? Nothing. They buried the report. They literally did nothing. I mean nothing. So my question and then what happened? This woman whistleblower close forward. She brings all of the evidence that that that Facebook meta knows about this. And she said like now what do we do about it? You know what Congress did? Senate House? No, you know what they did? Nothing. We have done absolutely what's just suicides of our people. I mean not a big deal. That's what I'm trying to say. And as it relates to our politics is the same thing. We are being fed the the equivalent of a suicide pact 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 rubber bandage. It's a turn of the 1900s and 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 can build a home or it can tear down a your house. And they build a tool and And they're 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 rule. And it's tearing us apart. And I'm not saying that's the only problem. Not myopic enough to say that all of the issues that we have. But going back to 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. 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. So that tells you, you could say lots of things about Trump or 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 and make Iran stronger. 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. Yeah. I don't know if they like Trump. Maybe it's like he's a little bit obnoxious. 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 the, of what I call the the elite oligarch Epstein class of Washington DC. Yes. That are that you and I both know very well. Yes. And that have that are as interested in protecting their corporate overlords as they are in protecting anything. And I mean, just take like the, the, the issue of stock trading, okay. Yeah. My dad in in 1972 took a vow that he would never own a stocker upon. And he kept that vow since 1972 in food over 50 years of public life. And he retired from the presidency is having probably the lowest net worth of anyone that had ever entered the presidency. And meanwhile, he got tagged with this idea that he, you know, is the Biden crime family and that, you know, all of, all of that crap. But my point being is this, is it, how is it that we have not been able to pass a law? I couldn't agree more. I know you do agree. But how is it possible? And it's not just Republicans that pass a law that prohibits members of Congress. Yes. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's the most common sense thing in the world. 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. 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 is is, is, is only applies, as a, as a weapon, rather than as the prophylactic for the, the, the constitution to be able to operate in a way in which the founders envisioned it. 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Yeah, man, but it's like, come on. I saw this guy. There's this incredible guy on TikTok and he's a, the 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. He explains things by using red solo cups. And he has this thing, everybody go look at it. It's all of the money that every president 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. And it is over $3 billion and it takes the entire wall. Yeah. It's like, and I mean, I can't argue that I mean, president shouldn't make any money in office. What is this? No. And by the way, this whole idea of a bunch is, and so that's what I mean by the qualitative and the quantitative difference and the idea that 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 and before we came on. But my hero, and I know that you are a, too, as it relates it in public life, people that is one of them, with all of his faults, was Teddy Roosevelt. And great. And Teddy Roosevelt. And I picture him over there, my great-great-great-father, yeah, I got something for you, by the way. But the Teddy Roosevelt, by all accounts, came very close to the abusing the power of the executive. Or you think? He certainly did. 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 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 1%, I'm talking the 0.01%, there are only 9,000 families in this country who are billionaires. Out of 350 million people, you know what the, this is shocking to me. You know what puts you in the top 1% of income earners in this country? No. Annual? A $750,000. That's the top 1%? 1%. So the people that I'm talking about, I'm not talking about taxing or redistributing wealth among the top 1%. percent, I'm not talking about it even in the top 0.5 percent, which would be like $10 million. I'm talking about the 0.01 percent, literally about a little under 10,000 individuals in this country that control and that have almost like 40 percent of the entire wealth of a nation who decide 9,000 families have 40 percent of the entire wealth. I take you somebody do the numbers for me. I probably screwed that up completely, but in an ordinent amount of the entire considered wealth of this country. Well, you can't have democracy under those circumstances. 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 it 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 Autobahn. And he came to Teddy Roosevelt and he said, hey, look, we're losing this magnificent place, this island off the in the Gulf of the coast of Florida. And because it has, it's a bird habitat that has, I don't know, like, like half the species of wild birds. And he comes to Teddy Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt just goes out and he says, okay. And he turned it into the first National Park, I think. And then he went out and he did that across the country. I mean, can you imagine doing that today? No. No. And but you 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. 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. No, I'd neither do I. And that may be a question about the, the unitary executive and the, and, and. But no one has ever done it in a way in which the, the, um, you know, where literally I believe that everything that he has done contains not just a, uh, you know, an underlying current of how does it benefit him personally? It is the first thought of everything that he, I think that's true. Yeah. 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 official convention and defended Trump for a decade on Fox News. So I'm definitely implicated in it. Obviously, um, 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. Just, you know, I don't believe that he's the source of all evil. But I, but you know, people who feel that way, literally I, I had one of my closest friends went off the deep end. Yeah. Just like, yeah, 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, it's like he was under my bed. Just, that is funny. Oh, along with some of his, his friends. That's so good. Oh, yeah. But second, it's like exculpatory to the rest of us. It's like, I don't know. We, I watched a lot of crappy stuff happen in DC went over the 35 years. I live 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. We had a lot of low grade kind of like, what's in it for me? Leadership. And we tolerated it. And we celebrated things that were not impressive at all. And pretended that they were impressive. And ooh, show 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, I, I've owned up. Yeah. Okay. To like, for instance, is I, I'm absolutely certain that my engagement in Washington DC as, you know, when I took on Burisma, when my dad was vice president as client at the end of the year is like, it was a stupid thing to do. Yeah. You know, because I wasn't fully aware of the, of what a swamp it was. And, and the narrative that would be able to be spun. It was, it was, it was a horrible idea. Now, I had my reasons. Okay. But they're not good enough. I own that. I own the idea that I do believe that there is this revolving door in Washington DC 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 my, but I know this. I know that I received incredible privileges that no one else in the world, including to, 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 realized how privileged I am. But I think that there is a, I think that there needs to be reckoning with if, if I'm willing to do that, I think that you, and I saw the, the, the, and I, like, I like Thomas Massey. I like where, where, and Marjorie Chelle Green is going. I like that there are people that have kind of woken up to the, but a lot of the reason that we're here is because of, uh, of Fox News. A lot of it has to do, well, we're in a war right now because of that we're losing because of Fox News. And so I, I, 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, you know, 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. Whether you, it's because of the technology is relates to AI. And as it relates to our debt, in the fact that Donald Trump is responsible for what 20% of the entire debt of the entire nation over the course of the, you know, sense its inception. That's the first. Yeah, it bonkers. Yeah. And we are in desperate, desperate need of leadership. I agree. And so I, and I, I want, I want to reach cross to everybody and say, like, look, let's figure out what the things that we can agree on. Instead of like pointing, you know, the, uh, and constantly, and one of the things that I think that we can agree on is that we are, we have the exact wrong leadership at the exact wrong time. Home ownership has always been at the center of the American dream. It is an actual asset. A place people work their entire lives to build a place of stability and security and real value. 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So I think you're kind of making my point, which is that finger pointing is unhelpful except when we point fingers at ourselves. That is very helpful. Very important to say. That's kind of what I was inarticulatly 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 famously advocated for the Iraq war and thought that was the last stupid thing I was ever going to do. Turns out it wasn't. I advocated for all kinds of things that I now regret advocating for. Particularly the things that you said about me. It's deep regret. No, I do actually I mean, yeah. I mean, I regret in the sense that as someone who has dealt with addiction, not quite as in exciting ways you did, but I've been there for sure. Extend grace to people who were out of their minds. You'd think I would do that. I shoved on that more. So I do regret that. But no, what I'm saying is like, you look back and I really thought that I could influence Trump. Talk about that. Not going into this war. Yeah, talk about I think that that's a really interesting point. No, I mean, that's yeah, that's the core of it right there because you said the things that you said about uh, Trump after 2020, which are famously out there. Oh, when I got pissed in the text with the producer, then out of context, and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One wonderful organization you worked for really ridiculous. And so, um, and talk about how you came around in 2024, not as it relates to like you just knee jerk reaction to being opposed to Democrats. But what? Why? Oh, no, it was a very specific trajectory. I was, uh, I was, this is like such an impossible, which I think is the fact I was in Europe with my kids on the med, the August of 2023, I think. And Marlago got rated. 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 document stuff. And it was like transparently absurd. They're literally sending armed FBI agents into his bathroom like no. And so to me, what that said was Trump is actually being persecuted by the unit party. Therefore, he is it 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 there opponent. So I thought, and this is my sin, I can have an effect in my goal literally from that moment up until February 28th was, I don't want to go over to 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, you know, 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 clueding against America to start this regime change where we're with Iran. And I was like, I'm in a single mindedly focused on this. All I'm going to do with my life is I'm going to, and I knew a lot of people in the least. 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 could do this. 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. 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 because it puts your own power and context. You think like, you've got all this, you know, whatever, squat, and you have zero. Yeah. So what next? I have no idea. But I, I mean, I mean, really, what for me? Yeah. Not, not just for you, but what next for all of us? Like, I am, uh, I've been out talking to people and completely different audiences, you know, across the board. And, and the most significant reason why I've decided to go out and talk is that what I realized is that my experience is not only not unique. It's almost universal. Now, to the degree that my experience, my addiction, uh, yeah, overwhelmed me is sometimes often exaggerated by virtue of how much attention has been paid to it. That, you know, there's two years of my life. Some people noticed. Yeah, some people noticed. Oh, yeah, exactly. God. It was awful. I mean, notice to the degree that, you know, my wife and I were living in the hills in LA. And we had this little place. And I was just early in, in my recovery and, uh, Trump from the Oval Office and invited in these right-wing influencers, these, and MAGA influencers, um, online. And this is back in 2019. And, uh, and he started to wear his hunter thing. 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, the floor ceiling windows and a, uh, group of men, uh, with full horns 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. And that was my experience for like a two-year period of time until my dad was elected. Then we got secret service and, and we, we, we'd left that house because we, in the middle of the night. And a, uh, and the next house we went to, they found us in this, uh, documentary filmmaker, and ended up being like a, he, he wrote a whole scripted film. He parked a billboard truck. We're in LA. Yeah, in LA, in Venice. I was reading on South Venice Boulevard. He parked a, a, one of those digital billboard trucks in front of my house that ran all of the new pictures of me. Smoking Cracking. Actually? For a week. Straight. And then sat on the canal with bull horns 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 knows. Some crazy guy. You know, I mean, he was not crazy. He was, you know, he then went on to make a, like a whole movie about me. Um, but anyway, my point, did you see it? What did you see? No, I didn't. I did not see it. I do not go see that movie. I did not. I didn't know what existed. Um, but, um, you know, my, my point is that I have, the total exposure that I've had has given me this incredible gift. And number one is that, uh, by the, that, that transparency is that I don't have any more secrets. And the secrets that, that I've felt ashamed of, like just the word crack. Like, you know, I mean, it's so heavy. It, it shocks people. Um, all of the associations that people make out of, particularly of our generation. Yes. And, um, and, uh, to be able to speak about it openly, and what I've 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, not 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, the airport, someone came up to me, told me about their, uh, their experience and recovery. Thanks for what I'm doing. You know, they're, uh, you know, they got their brother just got arrested though. It's in jail. You know, that you got to do something about the fentanyl deaths here. It's, it, everybody. And it's been an incredibly beautiful, beautiful experience. And I say to everybody is that I'll talk about the politics, 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, and addiction and the people that she loved. And I don't know anyone that hasn't been impacted by it. That's for sure. Yeah. And what I guess what my point is is that by starting there for me, I feel like, like our connection as relates to it, I'm known you've been sober for, for over, well over 20 years now, 24 years this month, 24 years this month. And, um, and, and so, you're, you're a capacity to be able to understand it at that level. And also at a family level, oh yeah, makes it a lot easier to like, you know, see the, see the hunter that you thought that you knew. Um, and I think, and by the way, I'm not putting words into your mouth. No, I think that's, that's a hundred percent true. But the thing for me is that with, with, with you, I, the transformation, not transformation because it's not a transformation. Anybody that knows you realize this is not a transformation is out on your own now and not understandably, like anybody that has a job being beholden to corporate structure. Yeah. Fox news. is that I, I, I feel as if that combined with the incredible ultimate betrayal. And I want to mean by betrayal of the, of the promise, the singular promise that was important. to you as it related to Trump, that we would not get into the potential of ending up in a war, a war war three or another incredibly devastating, protracted war in that region. That would expand clearly with the entire global oil supply in jeopardy. It's so, it's so crazy, I cannot even believe it happened. It has given an opening for us to be able to have a conversation that is more constructive about it away forward. That's my feeling. I strongly agree with that. You know one thing that might make you feel a little better about your life is buying life insurance because life ends and the last thing you want is to leave the ones you love hanging. There's nothing worse than that. If you're providing for a spouse or children or parents, it makes a lot of sense, in fact it's your obligation to think about what would happen if you left. Well life insurance for our partners at ethos is a very easy way to solve that nagging problem. Ethos makes the process super fast and simple. It's 100% online, you get a quote in seconds, you apply in minutes, and in some cases you get coverage the very same day. There is no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions, nothing too invasive. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies start as low as 30 bucks a month. Ethos also has a 4.8 out of five star rating on trust pilot over 4,000 reviews. That is pretty good. So for 10 minutes investment, you can figure out if ethos is the right plan for you. You get a free quote today at ethos.com/tucker ethos THOS.com/tucker application times and rates obviously vary, but we think they're pretty darn good. I've certainly talked about you and all the drama you went through a lot. I have really only one question, one thing that has bothered me for years now, eight years or whatever, six years, whatever it's been. 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? I can't remember you. So much drama has happened, but if you're in the news business or politics, people call you, there's this thing, you hear everything all the time and how much is true you don't know. I heard about the laptop and then I heard, unless you don't know if it's real, and then I heard somebody calls me and goes, "You're on the laptop," and because you had written a letter of recommendation for college for my son who didn't end up going to the school or even getting it, whatever. It didn't help. It turns out. Oh, thanks. But anyway, I knew that it was real because who would know that we knew each other, right? No one could fake that, and otherwise we're friends and all that stuff. But it's washed in. 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. And while I'm getting, we get approached by Israeli's connected to Benjamin Nanyahu, like I know that, who are shopping this stuff to me at Fox News. 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, the American media was not real. So I just want to ask you point blank, did you drop off laptops? No. This is the thing that I've said over and over again, I have literally zero recollection of memory of ever dropping off a laptop at John Paul McIsaac's, no, the answer is no. And John Paul McIsaac, who's legally blind, who on the day when the laptop became public, sat in, outside of his shop, he gave an interview and flat out says that he doesn't remember seeing me. He doesn't identify me and also that his security cameras that he has don't have any footage from that time. And so regardless though, regardless of anything, just this, the laptop, according to the lab partners 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 Rudy Giuliani is working with a guy named Andre Derkacz, 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. And the person that they can go to is this other Ukrainian Russian oligarch who is living in Austria. That's what led Pornis and Igor Fruin were doing getting on the plane before they were arrested. So how did the four John Paul McIsaac was ever a twinkle in anybody's eye? I believe that. The story. That was always the weak part of the story. So even John Paul McIsaac, 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. The thing that he 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 like gigabytes. I don't know the difference between the gigabyte and the whatever. 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. Right. And he knows that. Look at his whole life. Dead what he finds through this guy, Applebaum, and Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, Bob Costello, who turns over this hard drive. 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. It's like the, it's way too large. Came off the cloud. Exactly. They hacked my cloud. They, there's a, I thought about this in this book. So on Substack, I'm, I'm like laying all of this out. And there's a whole, you know, the, the, the, the, the whole thing about, there's the different silos. There's the Netanyahu style, the Israeli side. There is a Russian Ukrainian side of it. And then there are the US actors that include Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Miles Gow, and a whole bunch of, you know, Lev Parnis and, and Igor Fruman and all of these guys. Once the material starts circulating, the data from the cloud, you know, all kinds of people get involved and they're shopping it for different reasons and I agree. Yes. And so it, but my point is, it's all it. Well, from the cloud. Yeah. Well, I don't know. You have as good a guess as mine in terms of actually who had, who was the original hacker of that information, who has the capacity to be able to do it. And so, you know, I, I have, but you don't have evidence. I don't have a, 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, or that it was some kid in his basement and, you know, 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 of what was distributed that was authentic, it's all mine. All those emails. Yeah, yeah. I got so quickly. And you know what? You know what? Not a single one of them proves 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 forefoot and I'm not just talking about my emails. I'm talking about, or 20 years of emails. I'm talking about 20 years of text messages. I'm talking about erased voicemails, like deleted voicemails, deleted photograph. They don't actually delete 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 or even contacting one of his staff or so. Either I'm incredibly, incredibly, incredibly good, you know, inactive addiction is a crack at it. Or it does doesn't exist. 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, okay, show me your phone because I'll show 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. And all of the things that are associated with addiction is proved by the laptop. 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 daughter's lost nearly a third of its purchasing power in six years. That's crazy. You know, it 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 reducing their reliance on treasuries and increasing their holdings of, yes, gold. Radalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund in a friend of ours, recommends holding up to 15% of your portfolio in gold. We started Battalion Metals to give Americans an honest, fair, priced way to buy metals. Battalionmetals.com/tucker is the place to go to learn more about buying metals. Gold and silver, precious metals, IRAs, secure storage, all of it. Battalionmetals.com/tucker. 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. No idea. None. What were you doing that day? How do you find out? So it was like two weeks before the election, right? October right. So up until that day, you had no clue because I had the material. None. No, no clue. Zero. Zero. I'm sorry, I stepped on your answers. What were you doing that day when you found out? I was with Melissa, and Bo was, let's see, about a six months old. And a friend of ours, we were in LA. And a friend of ours said, hey, come out to Palm Springs. I got a Airbnb on like a golf course there. And it's really cool. You guys have never been out there. And it's like we're in the home stretch now. It's like, you know, I have survived the, I mean, because even before the laptop, remember, I mean, they would beat the shit out of me. That's when Donald Trump was doing the wears 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. And with any time we went outside the house, it's like people would follow us everywhere. 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, wear his hunter. So everybody felt it was incumbent upon them if they supported Trump and mega to find hunter, you know, to go and find wears on her. 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 pull out of the back of this little house. And, and I get a call. And it's a friend of mine who was also my lawyer at the time. And he said, some guy saying that Newton puts in somebody has your laptop. And you know, it took me years to piece it all together. And so one of the things that I, I, I've done over the course of the last seven years other than paint, which became literally the, I'm always painted, but it would 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, by the shame. And of, of, 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. And, um, 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. So I'm doing that on Substack now. And the thing about it is this is that it was a complete and utter surprise to me. I had like, we had, I had, I was, you know, a little over a year into my, um, my recovery. I kind of made it through the, that, like what I thought that was the worst of it. And then we were just literally thrown in the middle of it. And the worst thing happened was, is that because they were new pictures, and this is the only reason the 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, uh, publish new photograph of anyone without their consent, uh, no matter what for, for whatever reason. And so that's why, uh, 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 new photos with me of me. I'm just barely blurred out of the woman, um, that, that were in it all, um, uh, consensual legal, all the, those things would, of course, they don't make that point. And, um, and that's why they took it down, but then that became the story. You know, the suppression and this idea that 40, um, uh, former intelligence officer said it all, it had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation, clean pen. No one in that 40, regardless of what you think of them, not much. Yeah. I know you don't, but no one in the 40 ever said that the laptop wasn't real, but that's what everybody on the right decided to say that first of all, yeah. You know, the intel people are the most dishonest people in all the way. I'm not going to argue on behalf of anybody. All I know is that it's just stick to me. No, but I'm just saying like the point of that statement was to suggest that the contents were not real. Well, you may think that, but it's, it's, it definitely did not say that. And all I know is this when it became completely out of my control. So therefore now I was not arguing about what was on it. Remember what Rudy Duteliani did. He went to the, the, the, the, literally the courthouse steps in Newcastle County. Yeah. With Bernie Karrick and he held a laptop, which there's no existing laptop. He had taken a hard driver, a thumbtribe and put it and pretend it like there was a laptop. And the one thing he said was this contains images of minor children, which bullshit. I mean, an absolute complete and utter effing why. 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 that had no evidence of anything other than I was a drug user. But the problem was, and not only drug user, but crack at it. And the problem was is that I had gone about nine months before and I had done an interview with the New Yorker. And I admitted everything as it relates to my addiction. It's probably one of the smartest decisions I've made not in conjunction with anybody, but literally me and Melissa sitting there. And I said, I'm going to, I'm going to tell this guy everything. I have to get it off my chest. I can't have this hanging out there as as we my dad moves through a presidential campaign and let the chips fall where they may. And it totally scooped them. And, 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? Laptop. You know, can I just say one thing, though, that this is what I experienced during that time. The allegation that there was abusive minors, definitely 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. So, and you've gone through it, but they're all such say anything. It's just I'm going to clear with it with your entire like, you know, not a single thing in my anything that is in any way true about that. 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 tell you what, about about 40 million people on X don't think that, you know, I mean, it's like there was an abusive miners in there? If there was evidence. How many people called me a pedophile to this day? Anyway, I'll spare you. I don't know. But I agree with you. That's exactly right. And you know, it's um, but they were pushing that so hard and I'll tell you guys 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 one of guys connected to Netanyahu. They were, they were behind that. And I felt that everybody in DC knew that. But there was so much pressure never to criticize Israel in any way that they were just like, 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. That this was my perspective. And it drove me insane. 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. Is it great? Is it? I so, so we're here now. Yeah. No, I didn't see you. No, I'm saying what I'm saying, but we're here now. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why it's just on a purely selfish basis for me. Is it 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 was one of the, it's like, it's like, I am, it is. But that the child molestation thing or whatever. Yeah, like all the stuff that they were seeing or any of it, you know what I mean? Like the, the, um, 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 in it. Oh yeah. And the cocaine thing. By the way, it's all there. No, I guess I can watch it all. I guess I don't need to tell you that you can see them, but I've seen it. And they're not the only person I've seen us. Exactly. But 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 any. And that's my point. My point is, is that I thought I was over it. I was in, I was wearing, I was there for about three hours. It was the first time that Melissa and I had gone away. Because remember, you're, we're still in that kind of COVID period and people. And so we're, we're out there and I get this call on them. And it just like your whole world kind of, like, you know, you 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 that is the reality that you're, and that's what Rudy Giuliani was saying. And, and, you ever close to going back on drugs during this period? No, no. And, and because I knew this, is that I, I don't want to give people the impression that it's not available to them, that, that, that, but it was a miracle. The miracle of my life at that moment, despite that, despite all of these consequences, like, like, just not, not, I mean, landing like nuclear bombs in my life, is that I was in a better place and continued to be in a better place than I've ever been in my life. Because I would think, you know, I've been stripped to the bone. There's nothing, there is no, there was no facade. Like, you have to, the, the entirety of my ego was, was destroyed. Like, all of those things that you protect that out of fear, what, you don't realize that they're out of fear, but almost all of them are out of fear. It's like, what, you're talking about, um, the vanity. Yeah. I believe that you could change the course of the, of, of, of the administration of history of being there and that you could overlook all of the things that, yeah, that, that you know of him in order to save the world. Like, that's a beautiful thing to hear someone admit to be 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 deliver die. And in the living, I had to live in that, in that, uh, that emasculation that, uh, completely stripping a ego. And, um, and it didn't, it wasn't instant and it wasn't like, I, um, uh, woke up the next morning and didn't think, like, the sun would ever come up, which I kind of felt. Yeah. But then, but we woke up, you know, and those little nine month old or six month old at the time. And I look at this amazingly magnificent woman that has saved me that is, uh, lying there. And, and I thought, you know what? I have to choose to live. Like, like, like, like, I, I want this life. I want this love. I don't want to be afraid. I'm going to choose to live. And I would, and then it's just became a matter of a moment by moment, having to make that choice to begin. Your wife and get sober. You know, it's a crazy story. And I wrote, I wrote about it. And I, like, I said that if any of my, uh, children came to me and, and, uh, and told me this story, I would probably have them commit it. But it was truly a love it for a site. Um, a long story that what that, uh, I've written about, but, uh, and I was in active addiction and, um, staying at a hotel and, uh, uh, we, uh, were at the petite dermatage in West Hollywood at the time. I was at a hotel. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I was at the pool. I got kicked out the next day, but the on the roof, in the roof, and, um, in this, uh, these two people sat down, uh, next to me, where I was alone, I was reading the book, uh, and, uh, they struck up a conversation as the pool kind of filled up during the day. And at one point they turned into them. No, I never met them before. I said, you have to, you have to meet our friend Melissa. And I said, sure, sure. And, um, and I had no intention of meeting anyone. I'd gone to LA basically to, to, to, um, to choose the cowards 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 it just didn't answer. Now, and I'm sitting there, oh, and it was incredibly, incredibly dark moment in my life. And, um, the darkest. 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, this woman. And, um, I said, I can remember any number. If you tell me a number, I can remember it. And, um, it'll, of course, I can't remember the number. But it was my way of getting out of the situation. And I left my book there. I said, like two hours later, it came back to pick up my book, get on the chase and I went out up to that. And the woman said, what's the number? And I said, uh, 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. And, um, that night was taking a shower. And I didn't, I didn't, I can, the difference between nine o'clock and at night and two thirty 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 should probably really call this woman. So I texted that number. And I said, Hey, your friends gave me your number, which I like to get a drink and two thirty 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 two thirty in the morning. No. And, um, and for some reason I, in the, in the morning, I felt like that was really, that's rude to do to one. 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 came from in me. The, the, the feeling that I needed to apologize and say, I would, I would like to buy lunch. I didn't realize the time I, and, and, uh, and she had no idea who I was. I mean, none. 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, some time, do 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 would say, I didn't want to do anything wrong. It was just like the, the, the cast of the characters that would be in and out of my mind. room, they decided that, you know, in the morning, Mr. Biden, we don't have another, we don't have availability. Hotel looks empty to me. Well, and so I had moved to, over to this other hotel. And this, when I stole a little bit of money to be able to pay hotel bills and I wasn't in the, you know, the super eight. But I walk up and there's this outdoor seating area. And I see this woman and she was wearing a denim shirt just like this. 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, and I saw eyes that saw me. And I said, I know that this sounds crazy. But I'm in love with you. That's the first thing you said to a woman you'd never met before. The first thing. And again, I know. And the craziest part is though, the miracle of it is, is that she didn't run. She saw through me. I mean, she saw it not through me. She saw me. 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, for the, the previous two years. She literally was it. I said, I said, you're about two hours in. I said, I have a, I'm addicted to crack cocaine. Like I'm, I'm, I'm killing myself. She said, that ends today. And it didn't end that day. It ended the crack ended within a week. And then alcohol, yeah. And the alcohol ended within within like 20 days, that tapering. And June, I count you in first as my sobriety day. And you know, from that moment, I said that to her, we were married 10 days later. That's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard of my life. And it, and it remains a miracle. You know, my daughters. And there's nothing that I love more in the world than, than them. And, and they spent, I always say, the greatest sin of my addiction was my absence from my children. As you know, the one thing about my dad always taught me about is that they've been available is, and, and during a time in their life, when they love their Uncle Bo, they love their Uncle Bo as much as I loved them. And he was like a second father to them. And in his, and after Bo died, and then they, they lost me for a period of time. And there's an enormous trauma in that. 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 infallory, that my mom, you know, they all tried to save me. I mean, they, I have the most incredible family in the world, but it took a stranger to see the love that left in me. 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. And, and I'm a, I'm a firm believer in that, in, 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, it, it tried to get to us in every other way possible. And then finally, they have to smack you overhead with, yes, with a hammer. I believe that's so strongly. That is true. That's a fact. 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, not for me to go out and aggrandize myself in a way in which I tell a different story than what actually happened, to tell the actual story. That's why I ain't talking about the, the, you know, the, the laptop or this or the, the, the, you know, to, anyway, so, but the story that I get to tell is that there are such, there is such a thing as redemption. And that's not the outward redemption. This is not like some, I mean, this is the inward that you can find the person that is worthy of love in yourself. All of the things and all of the mistakes that I made in my life. And when I don't mean, you know, all of the narrative that has been out there, but the mistakes that I've made in my life in terms of relationships and terms of, you know, has all been based in fear, fear not being enough, fear not, a fear of not living up to some expectation, fear of being found out, fear of being embarrassed. Now, I mean, everything from as something is trivial as like, you know, fear of, you know, asking the girl to dance. Yeah. You know, and I drank over that and I used over that or fear of, you know, the, of having to come to terms with the trauma of losing my mother and my sister or facing it in any way or fear of being found out that I, you know, like that I'm not really as good as I think that I am. That I, that I, I am that person that people, you know, want to view as the, the privileged fails and that's never done anything with his life. And all of that fear is evaporating. It's not not without fear. I still, but a very different way. And there's no way that I could have gotten here, without having gone through that. And that's the promise of, of at least not picking up a drink or a drug today. Is it, maybe I can get there or saying to somebody, I was talking before, I don't think that there's anything that is, has more 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. Yes. And that's not about feeling powerless. But for instance, what it made me think of is what you just said, you know, I know I agree completely. And you, you had some vanity to think that you can change certain, like you're in charge of the world now, you're God. Yeah. I mean, no, you're not. Yeah. 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, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family, exactly. And, and loving my family, I also realize is my family is much larger than my, my immediate blood. And beyond just my, just 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, that are, that are, that feel that there is no hope and no way out for them and that they are caught in the 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 that they're addicted. Yeah. I agree with that. Yeah. And, and, and, but it starts, you know, in the immediate, and then hopefully it radiates out. 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, I'm not pursuing a goal of which, you know, I'm a consultant in Washington, DC and I, you know, you know, I mean, like, what, what, what, it was all bullshit. It was all bullshit. What was I adding to the conversation? What was I adding to the, to the, to the discourse? What, what purpose was, you know, any of that at the time? And I do it 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 Peek Path Health, which is a great rehab in, in LA, but I'm helping set up a foundation for them for aftercare. I work with an organization called Boston Universal, which does homeless prevention and, um, and, uh, tenants rights advocacy in, in LA. And that's not to say, oh, I'm such a good guy. I mean, because I get paid and, and, and I enjoy the work. And I think that they're really good people. And I, and I'm ready to sub stack because I'm, I, I hope to get paid. I hope people go read it so that I can make a living, you know, it's telling it before. My, you know, 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, then 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, 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. And I would ask the same of you, which I think right now, and not this is like who might ask, is that I think that we have such an opportunity to find common ground, to do this a different way. You are, if not the most, in my estimation, the most talented communicator of your generation. 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. And I think that you have an opportunity to, and this isn't like, you know, train all, you know, ammunition on the administrative, I'm saying the opportunity to find that common purpose. You wonder if it's in the, without the vanity of it. And I mean it. 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 really feel that's right. And that's exactly the way I feel. Just get me out of the debt. And that's the other thing. People don't, like, oh, you're not, you're like, I mean, millions of dollars. And I, you know, law firms and others. And, and, yeah, anyway, so. Yeah, you know about that. Yeah. 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 lived there. With the college there, yeah. Yeah, went to college there. You know, the political system really, well, you've said nothing about it, basically. 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 a immediate, I mean, you can make things better in the margins, but like the problems that people face are mostly not political problems. They're like, right. So I think that we overstate the importance of like voting for this or that guy. I mean, to me, that's the lesson of Trump. Like, I campaign for the guy. There are things about him I still like. And I don't think he's like, you know, he's complicated. Like everybody is complicated, but it didn't work. It didn't work. It didn't matter that you voted for him. You got the same thing that you're going to get if you voted for Kamala Harris. Like that's my perspective on it. Yeah. 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. Exactly. Because it comes from us. We're trying to find the problem out there. Exactly. And it's here. Yeah, we're the problem. Yes, right? No, I can't buy, I've discovered that about myself. 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 what the, and like, I didn't, I'm not hard enough on you. Do you got to apologize for this and you got to do this? It's like, you know what? F them, here's my point. It starts with us. Like, I'm not going to ever change Chuck. Like, I like, like, I can get into the whole debate about the democratic party and whether you're not going to label something democratic social as this, you know what I think? I like people who believe in what they have a conviction. Yeah. And they, and, and they're honest about it. Like total agree. I don't agree with everything that, uh, as long as I'm on Donnie does, but you know what? He has conviction. He has confidence and, you know, like, I mean, he balanced the budget. Crime is at record low in New York right now. And regardless of what you think about him is that like, so from a political perspective, I don't care if it's Zora and mom Donnie or Thomas Massey. And I don't agree with 90% of the stuff that that in turn, well, I think I don't, but I don't think that matters in this moment in time. I don't think any of those labels matter in time. I want someone with a courage of their conviction, principles that is, uh, but it's all starts here, all starts here. And everybody else can nitpick around whether, you know, all of the labels that we applied to each other and, 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, uh, effing blind. That I think that will be accountability for that. I think that, but my point is, is in this moment, can we not all see that we are about to reach a point in, in the evolution of, of, of humanity that is, uh, will be a larger step than in the, in, in the entirety of the existence of this earth, right? And like, so what is all of it matter? If you have people that drive me crazy, like Elon Musk, and every other person that has a, um, a hand in, which is a handful of them, and what's happening with AI right now, telling us and, and easily within the next five years, if they haven't already done it, that we're going to reach AGI. 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, of, of humanity and, of, of humankind, and the largest singular step that will ever be taken in our, the exponential way in which things will advance from there is completely outside of our control. And the only thing that we can hope for is that we have leaders that are, that, that have humanity's best interest in mind. And I don't know. I think what I shouldn't I say, I don't know. I do know. I think we have the exact wrong leadership. I am totally agree. I saw it evenly. 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, who, where's the constituency for this? It seems like the population doesn't want it at all. Yeah, I don't know why anyone would want the, um, uh, want it in the way that it's being offered to us. Look, the, what the thing I say is this. It's not theirs. What they're building is off the back of the output of, of, of the, 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 Calhari. From the moment that there was a cave painting that was put into a digital database and the, in, in a context to the, the poetry of Shakespeare, to the book that you wrote to, um, you know, to my last podcast tape in transcript. That is what is AI. It's all of ours. Every scientific discovery, every single public dollar, all of it is, we own it. And we somehow are going to make like five or six individuals in, in this country trillionaires by allowing them to literally rob us of that and make it theirs and them decide like, do you trust Sam Almond to be the, the, to decide the fate of, of humanity or, um, or any of them for that matter. I've done a, you know, 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 Almond. So he's, he's, he's out of three and a 15 million Americans. He's probably 350 million of who I'd trust. Yet to control the future of humanity. Yet yet here we are. Right. Yeah. Yet here we are and, and, uh, and, and you know what we're doing 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 institution, right? I'm 100% known. You're not an institution. I might know. No, that's what my point being is that that would just say so. My point being is, is it like, if it's anti-Semitic to point out that BB Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then, you know what? I don't know what to say to you. I don't know what to say to people anymore. I mean, all you have to do is just open your eyes. This literally opened your eyes, opened your heart for one minute. Yeah. Then realize, you know, I, such an obvious lie. It's like, who's even intimidated by that? I don't even, my point is, is like, how is it possible that they're dividing us on things like that, right? Great. And I can tell you how it's possible. 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 a, you know, addicted to your phone because you're not on social media and things like that. The vast vast vast majority of us are. My self included is everyone who has a pocket full of heroin and they access it literally a thousand times a day. So you're saying you got off crack and more impressively alcohol. Yeah. No, I'm not I'm not that bad. All I'm saying is not off your phone. No, no, I am I I'm very I'm not nearly I'm very wary of it. I'm very worried about anything like that. But what I'm trying to say to people is that I'm no better than anybody else. Yeah. 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 it you gravitate towards the negative things people say about you? Yes. Way more than you ever grabbed it to the to the beautiful things people say about that is so true. So I'm on X and the amazing thing was is that I I go on X and I start talking about addiction. But I also start talking about you know the absurdity of the moment that we live in and some of the players that are that are outsized characters in in this in this morality tale we're living through. And and there's these beautiful messages from people about their own struggle in their own addiction. And you're my sister I showed my sister what you wrote about X Y or Z and you know she said a gave her the strength to 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 like I love you for your you know for your recovery. It gives me hope. And there's thousands of those messages. But you know what happens is that you know the the one that catches your eye the one that says you know you're shut up you know you crack head pedophile you know you're you know criminal and you stole from it like it's like and it was a great it lessened for me in the experience that everyone is having not just on X but across the board in which we're all being in and it's and it's purposeful. The thing that I never fully believed in until I read all this whistleblower is how intentional it is. 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 and we're not focused on the things that really matter. 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 and have to believe that we all hate each other. And it's making us worse. I mean there's this one of my favorite scenes in the gospel of Luke is you know that the parable to Jesus. 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 you know righteous good person like me. 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 does 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? 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. When you stop looking at other people and being like you suck and look inside and realize that I suck like that's where wisdom and peace come from. Yeah. There's a there's a scene in the Nostek hospitals and I forget which is the ex of I forget ex of Philip or something anyway you know the everywhere the Nostek hospitals and really you got to that they're the whole trove of of a gospel that I mean a lot of people would say that it's heresy but it's the emperor you know when Constantine unified the church under and declared Catholicism the Christianity the state religion overall state religion of Rome they basically effectively chose four gospels and banned all the other ones and they found in I forget the and homin and how many they these two thousand year old texts which were the other gospels written by Mary Magdalene and written by Philip and written by and anyway there's part of one is this is it says Jesus is speaking to the disciples and this is before and he says learn to suffer as I do and and that is that is everything that all wisdom comes through suffering that is true and in that suffering you're able to you're able to love in that suffering you're able to see or see the other it's the exact exactly what that you were saying in in Luke yeah is that is being able to like not being the person's casting judgment rather and by the way it's not mean it doesn't mean that you are without discretion simply means is that as much as I'm not going to and you know what is the idea of like my empathy overwhelms my my critical thinking yes is not that I'm not talking about that I'm talking about however is is if I can feel this strongly about what they're doing to to to kids into tension setters in in in the United States America I can also feel just as strongly about or have as much empathy for for someone who feels like they they have been completely left out and without any options that are you know are living in in Bethel Maine that feels that every that this country has completely let them down and it's looking for a hope something and an object further anger and I want to bring them into the fold you know I want to be able to talk to them those people that I think voted out of anger and that are still looking for someone to be their retribution 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 how do you get off it exactly you said you got off crack in three days or something like that pretty cool yeah well that's the thing is it 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 it it impacts every organ every major organ and in particular every major pleasure center of your brain it's the only drug other than bison of dyes or pams that you can die from withdrawal from so everybody always you know you know there's the hollywood version of you know how horrible it is to come off of opiates or you know or cocaine in reality is it's it's really painful and it's uncomfortable and you think you are going to die but that 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 alcohol you'll die you'll go in decisions and and it stays in your body not just for three days it stays in your body for at least 30 if not more and and you've created these you know nor transmitters in your brain that your your brain is still crying it you know 30 60 90 days later still crying for you to to drink and the worst part is all you got to do is walk out your door 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 know no one looks at you funny when you have a cocktail no exactly and it's encouraged and so for me it was hard hard work is it I this time didn't I've been to a number of rehabs and in in 2000 19 after my Melissa and she said the Zens is it I started I tapered she had me taper how does she know to do that? I did it completely intuitive and I mean it was really really you know incredible and she tapered me and then at one point it got really bad and I had the like true dilary tremens and she called a doctor to come over what's that like literally the feeling that you if you don't if you don't remove yourself from your own body that you're going to die because you you are you know 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 and and I'd gone through it before but I had done it in a clinical environment in which they just you know usually use benzodiazepam so I had weaned enough but not enough to to stop that and so I had to go through it where were you I was Melissa had rented a house this little house for us in them you know up in the hills I mean would 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 she that didn't have the name Biden in it she you know I mean she had to do the hardest thing that for anyone that is that love someone is for a period of time she had to be my jailer and and my nurse and a and literally you know nurse me back to life and it is you know it was it's incredibly intense at the beginning you know 24/7 that you have to be it's you know because you literally could the particular alcohol not particularly singularly with alcohol you could you could die how long did it take you to feel better and then it's just 10 days before I could ever really eat anything and taste it actually yeah you know I mean there have any interest in not being forced to eat something and then and then you start to you know you have this kind of everything is kind of gray scale you know for even after you get a little bit of a boost around 30 days and then you try to ride that as long as possible but what happens in your brain is that somebody explained to me this way is that you have these little messengers that alcohol sends to your pleasure center to your brain and so the messengers imagine with little birds in a normal person the bird flies up to the bird house and that's your dope of mean or whatever it is and like a normal you know in a normal circumstance like you have a you have a happy experience and you know sends two birds up and you know to live in the in the bird house and the maximum 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 bird houses and then and the next time you do you want to get you got to get to 30 bird houses and then it builds 40 bird houses then you have and then there's a thousand bird houses and when you take the alcohol away and you have a normal happy experience like a cup of coffee in the morning it only sends two birds and your brain says there are 998 other bird houses that you have to feel from me to feel normal and you don't have it 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 you know and in the case of alcohol it means it you know if you don't get this you're going to die and by the way not only you're going to die you're going to feel like this for the rest of your life so fix me and so your brain's telling you and so the first time that you face a trauma or an obstacle or a or something good happens your brain says I know how to make it better 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 do it and that's that is the wood alcohol at least did as it relates to to me but also I'm positive the science of it is anyways to me the most dangerous thing I've lived it and that's an amazing description and an accurate one I think how do you stay sober for seven years almost everything that I do is no longer with the 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 I people always say to me like well can I still go to the bar with my friends well not no getting clean sober is really easy all you have to do is change everything 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 you're same group of friends if they are heavy drinkers or you know or your family like if you if you can't go to Thanksgiving without everybody getting drunk maybe don't go to Thanksgiving this year trying to get sober and so that in terms of changing everything but staying it 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 and ease by which life happens as you are able to live life on life's terms in which like everything it doesn't fix everything it's look at me you know six and you know six felony charges in two trials later and a you know and and it it it didn't it didn't solve anything it didn't solve all the consequences that I had the face but you know what can you imagine what my life would be like I'd be dead I'm I'm 100% long dead if I had decided the only way to be able to fix this is to anesthetize myself I mean I would be the long dead and and that's what they were hoping and I truly truly do believe that I believe that they knew that the the singular what they perceived as my father's Achilles heel was his family that where he are there's one anybody says about Joe Biden that there was nothing more important to him than his family and that he had just lost both and and that the idea that that I I truly believe that they wanted me to relax which was equivalent to death I'm I'm positive they did 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 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 yeah I don't know see that that's one of the things that that well number one is that I really truly didn't grow up in DC right yeah and you know we we really were in Delaware and which is different and but to your point is that what I found is this is that I lived it publicly but you know Tucker what I found is is that I was in a I forget where I was and I was stranger it so much driving me and told me a story and it told me about their life and their addiction and that they're you know their brother was in jail and their father you know just got arrested and and addicts and I think everybody has those stories everybody that's for sure except my 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 even even the candidates do the degree in which they you know and I really mean that like I mean the total um a visceration of anything or even the notion that I deserved any privacy I mean I I really like I look at some people and I say like just put yourself in my shoes for one minute on what level on what level is it do you think that that was right you know I look like somebody like Miranda Divine and just on what level could would if that was if that was Ivanka and I'm not talking about like and just take the her existing 20-year digital footprint everything that she's ever done it's like I can't to you and I don't I don't know I can't to you everybody has a Good afternoon. Everybody has a good afternoon. fiction 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. Like, you know how many conspiracies theories were born out of the fact that I wrote Buckley a recommendation to a school, which you won't remind me he didn't get into. You know what I mean? Like out of context, you are able to do some. And how is that in any way fair? However, that's what happened. And what's your wife think? I mean, you I just was thinking about like like she like talk about she didn't sign up for this. Yeah, like talk about like, you know, yeah, she is so tough. She's like a, she is a, a, she is a warrior. You get amazing. She is absolutely amazing. 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. None. Did I get prepared for it? The fact she didn't run, it says everything that you need to know about her because one much other upside. Well, the truth is that, but we'd be, but we'd be the ultimate upside. So, but 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 its sideways, maybe not with a plan. I don't know, but you're clearly moving in some direction. Where is that headed? 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. It gives me sustenance. It makes me feel good about myself. And I mean it, like, it makes it, it makes it easier for me to make it through the day. And so it's purely selfish. 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. And 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 saying Francis walking among the, you know, 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. Is to, you know, to sit here. And for me, the easiest is to find other people that have had, you know, same similar experience. And it's not like you have to look far. No. I mean, we're out in every single corner. There's somebody. And that's what's the beautiful discovery that I had. So there's that. I want to meet, I want to reach a million people in recovery. And I want, 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 this share their experience, strength, and hope. Because what I would, what helped save me was realizing I wasn't alone. And I want to write about it. And I'm going to put it on substack. I'm part of it's free and part of a subscription. And I, and, and I want to continue to practice my art. And, and ultimately at the end of the day, is that like anybody else is that, you know, I want to, I want to have the financial security to be able to, you know, to, to not constantly feel as it, I have to make, 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? Like, I want a million miles away. I'm, I'm several million miles away. I am, but, um, yeah, you know, my, uh, which is strong once they're money, um, uh, lawyers, you have my, yeah, from, 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 Sean says I, that I owe them for, for my, a couple of convictions. And anyway, yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of money. How do you, how does that affect you? I don't know. I, I, I would hope that they, uh, oh, how does it affect me? It affects me in this way is that, um, I have to find a sensible solution and way through. Um, I really, uh, uh, I've wanted to avoid, um, bankruptcy, uh, because the, the road back from that is just so long and I'm 56 years old, but I don't allow it to consume me. I really don't. I, and, 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 don't, I don't see the solution to it right now. Um, but one won't present itself. And I think cooler heads will prevail and, and, and, and, you know, and, uh, I'll be able to, um, I just have faith. I don't know, man, I just have faith. It's not blind faith. Just work hard. I mean, shit, I'm, 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 I'm top of that. I've, uh, 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, in, in, in, that, uh, I, you know, I'm, I'm working my butt off and, and doing that. You know, they, 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. Um, and so I have to, in many ways, you know, uh, reinvent myself, but not out of whole cloth 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, to the work of, of writing. You know, you're a brilliant writer and you, you know, this better than anybody. It's, it is, it isn't, it is a practice as much as in an art. It's in all discipline as much as it is. And, and, um, 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, that, like, I think it's really important for me to be authentic about everything. There are also the ways in which I can do it, which I, uh, hopefully can, um, put food on the table. Last question is about faith. How is this affected? How do you feel about God? and change your, your relationship? I don't know whether I would say that it's changed, but it is deep in my, um, and belief in, uh, whether you want to call it, uh, that I do as God is the, the, um, the absolute certainty of this. There is literally in both the theological, but also, um, metaphysical sense, no distance between me and you or anyone. We are all literally connected. 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. It's being separated. It's, it's all the idea. And so my faith is in the, the fact that I know that, um, that there is not a, um, uh, that there's not a sentient being that is not, um, that literally is, is me. And, and, I don't know if that makes sense to you, but the, but 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, 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 rise above all the things we're concerned with and sort of look down just for split second, but this happens to people throughout life and you're like, "Oh, wait a second." Yeah. We are really connected to each other in a real way. Yeah. And when you start to get honest with yourself, like really, really get honest with yourself, I'm not talking about everybody has to go through what I went through to be able to get honest with themselves. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But I think that there are spiritual practices that I did not either have the courage or the patience to endure. I'd say it's not like I was moving a Rishi Keshe to sit in the cave and meditate for seven years. Instead what I got is a trial by fire. And like I said, the complete eradication of an ego not by courage or conviction on my part, but by necessary choice to survive. I had to choose to either stay in bed or get out and live. And if I was going to live, I had to let go of that. Yes. And I did. And for now, today, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. It doesn't solve everything. It doesn't solve my debt. It doesn't solve my, you know, you know, I still got to, you know, put on my pants like everybody else and, and, and I still have, you know, to deal with this relationship that, you know, I like anybody else in a family that I love, drives me crazy, and I love it. It's like everybody else, but I don't have to live a lie. I'm your buddy. Thank you very much. Thanks.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

Keskustelu käsittelee poliittista polarisaatiota, median roolia ja yhteiskunnallista muutosta.
Trumpin vaikutus, hallinnon epäonnistumiset ja oligarkkien vallan kasvu ovat keskeisiä teemoja.
Hunter Biden avaa riippuvuuttaan, toipumistaan ja ”kannettava”-skandaalin taustoja.
Sosiaalisen median algoritmit lisäävät vihaa ja jakautumista, mikä vahingoittaa erityisesti nuoria.
Keskustelu päätyy yksilön vastuuseen, inhimilliseen yhteyteen ja poliittisten ratkaisujen rajallisuuteen.

Summary:

Toisaalta Carlson muistuttaa, että myös hän itse on ollut osa ongelmaa, esimerkiksi kannattaessaan Irakin sotaa ja uskoessaan voivansa vaikuttaa Trumpiin. Keskustelu siirtyy henkilökohtaiselle tasolle, kun Biden avautuu riippuvuudestaan, toipumisestaan ja siitä, miten hänen yksityiselämänsä vietiin julkisuuteen. Hän kertoo, ettei koskaan jättänyt kannettavaa tietokonetta korjaamolle, vaan hänen pilvitietonsa varastettiin ja niitä levitettiin poliittisista syistä.

Biden korostaa, että koko ”Bidenin rikollisperhe”-narratiivi on vailla todisteita, mutta hän myöntää tehneensä virheitä. Lopulta molemmat päätyvät siihen, että poliittiset ratkaisut eivät yksin riitä, vaan muutos on aloitettava itsestä ja ihmissuhteista. He näkevät toipumisen, rehellisyyden ja inhimillisen kohtaamisen avaimina yhteiskunnan parantamiseen.

FAQs

Mikä on paras asia Shopifyssa?›

Paras asia Shopifyssa on, että voimme harjoittaa liiketoimintaa ilman teknistä osaamista. Voimme hallinnoida yrityksen taustajärjestelmiä ja front-endia sekä myydä verkossa vaivatta.

Milloin perustit pyöräilyvää teitä valmistavan yrityksen?›

Perustin yrityksen vuonna 2013.

Mikä on Hunter Bidenin mielipide Candace Owensista?›

Hunter Biden pitää Candace Owensiä hyvänä ja ajattelevaisena ihmisenä, vaikka on eri mieltä monista hänen kannoistaan. Hän korostaa, että he löysivät yhteistä inhimillisyyttä keskustelussa.

Mitä mieltä Hunter Biden on Trumpin vaikutuksesta politiikkaan?›

Hunter Biden uskoo, että Trump on keskeinen syy siihen, että poliittinen eripura on pahentunut. Hän ei pidä Trumpia vain oireena, vaan itse taudin levittäjänä.

Mitä mieltä Hunter Biden on sosiaalisen median vaikutuksesta?›

Hän uskoo, että sosiaalisen median alustat hyötyvät jakautumisesta ja vihasta, mikä on johtanut esimerkiksi teini-ikäisten itsemurhien lisääntymiseen. Hän kritisoi alustoja siitä, etteivät ne tee mitään ongelmalle.

Mitä mieltä Hunter Biden on Kongressin osakekaupoista?›

Hän kannattaa lakia, joka kieltäisi kongressin jäseniä käymästä osakekauppaa, koska heillä on pääsy sisäpiiritietoon. Hän pitää tätä itsestäänselvyytenä, jota ei ole vielä saatu toteutettua.

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