Candace x Hunter Biden: The Interview (Transcript)

Crack cocaine carries such a stigma to it to begin with. But I say it because I think that there are so many people — I don’t think, I know — there are so many people. I think that at any given time, 30 million Americans are either in active addiction or in recovery. There’s not a single person that I know that hasn’t been impacted by addiction at some level, in some form. Personally, or with someone that is one degree of separation from them that they love? No one that I know, least of all me.

And part of that, one of the reasons I’m here — the stories that you tell about that in terms of my family, your family — that is where the common ground is for me. A friend of mine gave me this quote about 2 years ago, and it’s become my mantra. It’s attributed to Mother Teresa: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” That is my everything now.

And part of that is not just the family that you have by blood and birth, but also the community that you’re inextricably tied to. And that community for me is the recovery community, and people that are still sick and suffering from addiction.

So the biggest reason that I wanted to come talk to you — and this is not me blowing smoke — I think that regardless of whether I agree with you, you’re probably the most effective communicator I’ve ever heard behind a microphone, and it’s really driven me crazy at times. But I wanted to talk to you about those things and anything else you want to talk about.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah, I’m most interested in the addiction story. And I was saying to you before we started rolling, that this was something I noticed when I would cover various topics, whether it was pornography, drugs, drinking on my show — how many men would write and say they were suffering with various things. And yet they don’t often speak about how they’re quietly suffering, whether it’s with addiction to pornography, addiction to drugs. And I don’t think there are enough conversations about it.

So when I watched that interview of you just laying it out there — something that most people try to hide or they’re shameful of — I was like, there actually just needs to be more dialogue about it. I grew up with tons of addicts in my family. I have people in my family who are still addicted. And there is, I think, a natural anger that people have when they, for some reason, believe — and I think this was part of the anger that I had toward you before I heard you speak about your addiction — that you sort of think when somebody has money and political connections, that somehow removes them from going through these sorts of barriers in life.

So when I grew up, it’s like, okay, you have uncles that are addicted to crack, you have cousins that are doing crack, or experimenting with meth and drugs and those things. And then you see someone that has a life of privilege, and for some reason in your mind you wrongly go, “Okay, that can’t happen.” And it did happen. And I’d actually like to hear how you got addicted. What was actually the story, your path toward addiction?

The Path Into Addiction

HUNTER BIDEN: Thank you for asking me about that. I really mean it. One of the things that traps people — and I can only speak about myself — but I think that people that are addicts or that are in recovery find out really fast that you’re not as terminally unique as you think you are. And one of the things that is really important about addicts talking to each other and talking about it is that realization. Because one of the things that traps you in your addiction is shame.

You, like me, are Catholic, and we have learned that guilt is an appropriate emotion. Guilt is an appropriate response when you’ve done something wrong. You’re supposed to atone for it and you’re supposed to seek forgiveness, whether the forgiveness comes from an individual or not. That is the lesson — that it is only through seeking that forgiveness that you can release yourself from that guilt. That’s appropriate. Shame is not. Shame is just absolutely corrosive. Shame is you telling yourself that you’re not worthy. That you’re never going to be worthy, that the things that you’ve done, you can never be redeemed from.

And I’ve done horrible things in my addiction in terms of my relationships and decisions that I made. And more than anything, just removing myself from being present for the people that love me.

And what happened to me — and I really mean this — is that the exposure, not piecemeal, but the total exposure, my entire digital footprint stolen from me, a 20-year digital footprint, every text message, every picture, all of the things that you would be ashamed of, became front page news for 4 years, 5 years, beginning in 2019. And it forced me into a choice. And the choice was, do I get out of bed and live, or do I die? And it became that much of a dichotomy. And I chose to live.

It wasn’t easy. And maintaining sobriety in that kind of pressure cooker is often the thing that triggers you. But something broke in me in a good way, which was that I no longer have any fear. Sitting down with you is to me an all-in opportunity for you to see me as a human being and not, you know, “Hunter Biden laptop.” And the pictures that Congressman Greene put up in Congress, or the New York Post — I think I was on the cover of the New York Post in one year more than anybody in the history of the paper. And none of it was good.

But what it’s given me is the opportunity to own it all, to own all of my story without shame or fear, realizing that I have a community of people out there that I want to be of service to. I really mean that. And part of it is by me being able to be honest about it.

We were just talking before we started this — the hardest thing for any addict to do is not only get honest with the people that they love, but to get honest with themselves. And until they can really see themselves for who they are, all of it, and decide to love themselves, the cycle is just going to continue. At least in my experience, that’s the truth.

CANDACE OWENS: I think one of the things—

HUNTER BIDEN: Did I even answer your question?

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah, well, I want to talk about the first time that you got introduced to it. Because that’s interesting.

HUNTER BIDEN: Oh, I know I went into all the good stuff.

Hunter Biden’s Addiction Story

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah, actually do start with that. How did you actually get introduced? First off, describe for people who don’t know the difference between cocaine and crack, because crack is a lot more addictive. So just what is the difference between—

HUNTER BIDEN: I know I got a lot of heat for—

CANDACE OWENS: No, it was fantastic. It was fantastic. I was like, he’s actually very educated on this.

HUNTER BIDEN: Well, it was important to me to make the distinction that there’s this idea that there’s this kind of a secret, kind of special enhancement to powder cocaine that makes it into crack. And you have to have some technical degree in order to be able to do that.

Let’s start all the way at the beginning. I think that I’m genetically predisposed to being an alcoholic. I do believe that there is a genetic piece of it. I do believe that my brain works differently as an addict in terms of the way in which my synapses fire once they’re introduced to the dopamine hit and the serotonin increase that occurs because of an introduction of a substance.

I believe that I became acclimated and physiologically dependent upon that when I started to drink in earnest when I was in college, which you can control. I made it through Georgetown and I went to Jesuit Volunteer Corps for a year — the JVC, it’s kind of like domestic peace corps. I was JVC for a year after college. And then I went to Yale Law School, was married, had my oldest daughter when I was a first year law student, made it through all of that and made it through my first years of employment drinking probably more than most people do, but completely functional.

One day I woke up when I was 33 years old to my brother calling me and saying, “This has got to stop. You have got to stop.” And what he meant was that a whole weekend was missing, kind of. And I said, “Okay.” He drove me to the airport and put me on a plane in New York and I flew to a place that was started by Eric Clapton called Crossroads in Antigua. And I went to rehab and I came out, and my brother picked me up from the airport, drove me to an AA meeting, walked in with me — Dupont Circle in DC. I met my sponsor that first meeting that I ever went to. And I stayed clean and sober for about 7 years.

And then I relapsed. And it was just such a mundane, stupid story. I was on a plane by myself. Everything was okay. Things were looking up. Normal life pressures, but it was all good. And that’s the real insidious thing about addiction and alcoholism — it never goes away necessarily. There’s always the answer that is being presented to you by the thing that you trust the most, which is your brain.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

The Relapse Cycle

HUNTER BIDEN: And what it says is, “If you don’t want to feel this way, whatever the way is, or if you want to feel this way even more, I have the answer for you.” And I was on a plane by myself and I had a drink. And that drink in 2010, after almost 7 years of sobriety, started a cycle of relapse and recovery and relapse and recovery in which it was really hard for me to be honest with the people that love me, because I just wanted to hide it. I just wanted it to go away. And I thought, “Okay, I’ll get through this cycle and I’ll sleep it off this weekend and that’s it. I’m done.” And that would last a week, and then it would last 3 months.

And then I went back to rehab and then it became — and I came back and I started on — I mean, talk about, you talk about this all the time, which I love that you do — it was Big Pharma. I had shingles and so somebody prescribed me like 52 oxycodone. Ridiculous. And I started that, and then I started drinking again and the prescription ran out and then this cycle just started to happen.

But when my brother died, it all fell apart. Beau and I — I don’t purport that our relationship was unique or that my loss of him was greater than anybody else’s loss of their brother or someone that they deeply, deeply loved. But when my mom and sister and Beau and I were in that car accident in 1972 and we survived, it was the two of us every day. We’re a year and a day apart. We talked every day. I mean, except when he was in Iraq, I literally probably talked to my brother every day.

And when Beau died, my marriage fell apart after 22 years — for reasons that marriages fall apart, and I take a lot of responsibility for that — and it just started a really, really dark cycle. In the past when I would have these relapses, there’s always someone in such proximity to me that I couldn’t escape. In this instance, Beau was gone. Right after Beau died, I ended up separated from my wife within the month. And my dad, for the first time in my life, who was my rock, was stuck in his own grief — deep, deep grief.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: And I just went down into a hole. I checked myself into a rehab that year and came out and stayed sober for a while, and then relapsed and then went into an outpatient program in DC where I went 6 hours every day, stayed sober. And then I relapsed and I came back and they said — I admitted to them that I relapsed and that in this instance I also used cocaine. And they said, “Well, you have to take a drug test.” And I said, “I’m not going to take a drug test. It’s not protected by HIPAA in a rehab scenario, which is crazy, right?”

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

The Descent into Crack Cocaine

HUNTER BIDEN: Anyway, long story short, they said, “You can’t come back in unless you take the drug test.” And I said, “I’m not taking the drug test. I’m going through a divorce and it’s not protected by HIPAA. It will become public. I don’t want to do this to my family. I’m telling you, I use cocaine and I drank. Is that not good enough to come back?” And they said no, for whatever reason. And I’m not blaming them. This is not their fault.

I walked out and I knew Lincoln Park was a kind of open-air drug market. I saw a woman that was kind of famous in the area — since I had been in college, literally for 20 years — that I would see in the streets around DC in that area where I worked for a long time. And I went up to her and I said, “Can I get some crack?”

I think it was basically, “Can you help me commit suicide?” I mean, I know that now, looking back. It was the coward’s way. And I really mean that. I was a coward. I didn’t go and just do it. I said, “Let me do it this way and really, really, really drag everybody down with me along the way. Let me figure out the way not only to kill myself, but to maybe kill my dad. Really hurt my family, particularly my 3 daughters who adore me and I adore.”

And I smoked crack. The difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine is this — and I really truly do not want to give a roadmap for people to be able to do this, because I swear to God it’ll kill you — but it’s sodium bicarbonate, which is baking soda, water, heat. That’s it. That’s all. That is the entire difference, which allows it to be ingested through smoking. And the combination of those things makes it so that it affects your physiology much faster than it would if you just used powder cocaine through your nose or in any other form other than intravenously. It also allows you to ingest more, faster than you could possibly ever ingest by sniffing cocaine up your nose.

The combination of that, the combination of combustion, ritual — the ritual meaning the way in which you have to — I mean, I can still feel my hands doing it.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: It becomes this ritualistic thing. With the combination of combustion — and if you really study things about addiction, these are key components of oral fixation and things like that — it just becomes the most ungodly addiction that you can possibly imagine. To the point where I was smoking crack literally — I was either looking for, or smoking, or recovering — not even recovering, you don’t recover, you just go find more — for close to a 2-year period of time.

And it took me to places — I wrote all about it and I got made fun of about it. People think that when I wrote my book, clawing through the carpet to find crack cocaine and Parmesan cheese — I know it’s a real laugh line, but anybody that’s ever been an addict like that, they don’t laugh about it. It’s devastating. Think that you were that person. You can see yourself doing it. Just devastating.

The Shame of Addiction

And so what happens in addiction so often is people not only can’t admit that, they can’t even admit it to themselves. They just block it out. They get 30 days clean, they come out, they go back into the same exact situation that they were in before. And they think, “I’m just not going to do it again. I’m just going to make it.” And what will come up is that they’ll wake up in the morning and they’ll remember that time in the motel with the person, the prostitute that brought you the drugs and stole your wallet and all your drugs and everything. And you had to — you were combing through carpet to see if there was anything there, and you smoke whatever white that you found on the ground. It’s the shame.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: Thinking of yourself like that, regardless of who you are, regardless of where you came from, whether your dad’s the president of the United States or it doesn’t matter. And they don’t admit that to themselves. They don’t admit it to anyone around them. Don’t ever say it. And you know what happens? You never lose it. And it sits right here, in the back of your head, and it pops up and you just feel so disgusted with yourself that your brain immediately tells you, regardless of how far away you are from a drink or drug, “I know the way not to feel this way. I know exactly how to feel this way. You’re going to die if you keep feeling this way. You need to take a drink.” And that’s always how it starts.

I mean, alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the world, just by virtue of the amount of destruction and devastation that comes personally and to the people around people that are alcoholics. And I don’t find any difference between being an addict and an alcoholic. But that’s where it starts and that’s where it started for me. That’s my story until I met Melissa and got clean and sober. And I’ve been — till, you know — almost 7 years now.

The Nature of Addiction

CANDACE OWENS: When you’re in that moment, and I guess people don’t realize, you’re going through this and you don’t get to decide what your father does for a living. And I think that’s probably why people separated as well too, because like I said, there’s this idea of what a politician’s family is supposed to be.

And you obviously are— because I genuinely understand what those sorts of addictions do. I don’t think people realize you’re just not even yourself. It’s like a demon, the best way to say it. And maybe I’m taking a Catholic take on this, but it’s like a full demonic possession when you’re in the throes of these drugs.

And this was actually a great benefit of A&E doing intervention because people could really see these moments where people will choose the drug over their family. They will choose the drug over their kids. They will choose the drug over literally anything.

And I would actually tend to agree with you that I’ve wondered myself if there’s something genetic, because I’m not wired that way. Or maybe I just haven’t found the drug that would do that to me. I’ve just never had something and was like, “Oh, I just need to have that again or want it again.” And I’ve seen friends that they have something once and they’re like, “Want to do this every second.” And I go, “That’s very interesting.” It’s almost like you’re made of something different.

HUNTER BIDEN: I’m certain of that. And the science is certain of that in many ways. I think that we can all associate with, understand addiction at more or less devastating levels. So for instance, where’s your phone? You basically have a packet of heroin.

CANDACE OWENS: Right.

HUNTER BIDEN: We all do in our pocket. Constantly giving us that dopamine, which by the way, we can get to talking about that because I think that we are not nearly as divided as a people as we think that we are. I think that that bag of heroin in everybody’s pocket is feeding them a lot of that division.

We can all kind of understand the compulsion to do things that clearly aren’t benefiting us, like staying up until 3 o’clock in the morning and going through your For You page on TikTok. Every mother, father, can watch their teenager do that and go, “God, this is awful, and I’m going to take his phone away.” And then they turn back to their phone and they start going through their phone. And I am not any better.

So we can kind of all understand that compulsion. It’s when the compulsion becomes just so— the blast radius continues to grow. The difference between being addicted to your phone and being addicted to crack cocaine, I’m not saying are the same, but at least we can kind of get a little bit of an understanding of the physiology of that, of the way in which the brain actually works.

CANDACE OWENS: It’s like the micro versus the macro.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah. And everybody has the micro, so you can see the micro impact of it. But I think one of the reasons why people are so shocked by my story— and by the way, we’re able to conflate— is that if the New York Post every day for 6 years runs a picture online, I think they literally at one point did like 1.5 stories of me a day for an entire 18-month period. And in each, it didn’t matter what the subject was. It was a picture of me naked.

CANDACE OWENS: With the prostitute.

Staying Clean Through It All

HUNTER BIDEN: With whatever. And with a crack pipe in my lips. I don’t get mad at people when they go, “Was that your cocaine?” Well, number one, you know the White House. This just doesn’t make any sense. I had 7 Secret Service agents with me at any given time everywhere I went. The idea that I was in the Situation Room and would decide to drop off— I mean, that, but beyond that silliness, I don’t blame people for not realizing that I have worked my effing ass off.

In this environment, the proudest thing that I’ve ever done is stay clean and sober through all of that. Every piece of it. Both the trials, through the accusations, through the Alexander Smirnov sand Gallofs and Konstantin Kulyks and Lev Parnases and Rudys and Steve Bannons and every— all of that. Is that purely because of the love of the people around me and my willingness to own it all, I’m sitting in front of you. And you’re not taking that away from me.

CANDACE OWENS: Right.

HUNTER BIDEN: No. And by the way, that’s the beauty of it.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: The realization at one point is that you can try. I have no fear. No fear. And that’s why I’m here more than anything, because I probably, I’m certain that we disagree on a lot of stuff, but there used to be a time, Candace, where you and I could sit down together and disagree about tax policy.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: And disagree about the Catholic Church’s view on abortion, or disagree— whatever the subject may be— and still be able to go have a meal together.

The Gaslighting That Fueled the Anger

CANDACE OWENS: Right. I talk about that often on my show. Back when I was left-leaning in college, my best friend was Republican conservative. It wasn’t so at each other’s throats and hating each other and wanting to destroy one another. You could kind of see the good and the bad and go, “Well, this is why I have this perspective,” and perspectives could change. And that was allowed too.

I think about what it was that, just revisiting what made a lot of people, including myself, so angry about you. Or I guess it wasn’t really about you. It was the gaslighting. It was the letter that came from people saying it was Russian propaganda. That is what is driving us crazy about the Epstein files right now. It’s what’s actually leading, ironically, to the collapse of the MAGA support— we don’t want to be gaslit.

And to be fair, it wasn’t you. That’s why it was so refreshing when you were like, “Yes, I had a crack addiction. This is me. I did this. I was with hookers.” But you weren’t speaking for you. And there were literally a bunch of people that were coming out and saying, “This is not real.” And that is the most infuriating thing, because everyone can connect with addiction. Everyone could have this conversation actually, if you would come out and— and I probably in that environment, obviously, maybe that would have been a different result because we were at each other’s throats.

HUNTER BIDEN: No, exactly.

CANDACE OWENS: But that is what made people so angry. It was like, “Nope, he never smoked crack. It wasn’t real.”

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: “The laptop is Russian propaganda.” Like guys, what is this?

The Laptop Narrative

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah, by the way, here’s the problem— Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani saved the quote-unquote “laptop,” which by the way is bullshit. If we can agree on that gaslighting, I will agree on the gaslighting of this— it was never a quote-unquote “laptop.” There was a hard drive of stolen and hacked material, wherever it came from, whether it came from a Delaware repair shop or whether it came, like Lev Parnas says, from Dmitry Firtash, who was trying to sell a hard drive of Hunter Biden’s in Ukraine, that they were looking for before the laptop repair shop guy was ever the twinkle in the eye. Just go back and look at the record.

So here’s the thing— you’re absolutely right. And the freedom of being able to say this is like, yeah, they should have let me go out and talk.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: But it was 2 weeks before the campaign, and then the election was over. Steve Bannon goes on with his buddy Gao, the Chinese billionaire that’s now in prison, who is like a Chinese spy or whatever, where he got arrested on his boat and all that. I mean, go listen to the recorded conversation in which they say, “The laptop— we got them. We collected all the salacious pictures and we put them out there.” And then Rudy went out and stood on the steps of the Newcastle County Courthouse with Bernie Kerik and said, “This contains child exploitation.” Pure bullshit, just bullshit.

So on both sides you have this reaction, which I don’t think was necessarily a coordinated reaction in the sense that— what do you do in 2 weeks? And so they come up with this. And I don’t get to go out and say anything. But you know what I did? Come April, I write a book and I tell everybody I was addicted to crack.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: And here’s my story and here’s what happened. And here are all of the rooms that no one would ever want to admit to being in that I was in. And it was like a blip on the radar because everybody was now fighting about whether there was a suppressed story on Twitter and whether there was this gaslighting. And by the way, I am not here to defend any of it.

CANDACE OWENS: But then it’s part of the political machine where they’re like, “We have 2 weeks to go to the election, we’re going to do this denial because we can’t afford this right now, essentially.” And then we’re going to table this, make it past these 2 weeks.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: And then by that time, first and foremost, your father won. So people are angry, they feel like the election’s been stolen and that there was this entire collusion to cover a laptop, which if it was on the other side, they may have done too. This is what DC is, it’s politics. But that is where I think the anger came from.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: And it was just like, “How dare you gaslight us?” And then people start making you this focal point of why.

HUNTER BIDEN: And it never had anything to do with me.

CANDACE OWENS: It was kind of bigger than you at that point.

HUNTER BIDEN: You know what the laptop proved?

CANDACE OWENS: That you were a crackhead.

Owning the Laptop, Addiction, and the Corruption of Politics

HUNTER BIDEN: There you go.

CANDACE OWENS: That you were deep in the throes of crack addiction.

HUNTER BIDEN: All this other bullshit, you know, bribery and all these other things that they investigated up and down during the Trump administration with a Trump-appointed US attorney. With the Trump-appointed US Attorney, the only US Attorney in the country to stay on and continue to prosecute me, who then became special counsel after I got a plea deal because I paid my taxes late and I paid them with penalties and interest. And I owned a gun for 11 days while they say I was addicted and checked that box.

That’s it. Everybody has all the information. It’s not like the Department of Justice has the digital, my digital footprint and every text message, every email. And there’s not a single one in which you find that would in any way support the really serious accusations of enriching, my father enriching himself somehow, or none of it. None of it’s there.

So I own whatever you want to call it. I own the laptop. Come, you know what? We can go through it together if you’re willing to avert your eyes to the tragedy of addiction. I mean, just the absolute tragedy of it. Yeah. But man, oh man, we have not— there is no space for that in discourse anymore. There’s no space for the nuance of, you know, well, that was addiction, that wasn’t corruption.

You know, I did not do any business through entire 4 years. I became a painter. You know why I became a painter? Because it literally saved my life. I painted my whole life. And Melissa instinctively knew that I literally needed to occupy my hands in early recovery, like 12 hours a day. Just, you know, to be able to focus on the, not the crushing weight of the consequences of years of addiction. And so I just sat and I painted and I painted and I painted and I decided to have a show in the gallery and, you know, and offer my paintings for sale.

And New York Post comes out and says, “Hunter Biden’s selling his paintings for half a million dollars.” I’ve never sold a painting nor offered a painting for half a million dollars in my frigging life. And by the way, everybody knows this because every painting that I sold, everybody that bought a painting had to pay about a quarter million dollars to defend themselves before an impeachment hearing. Go read the transcripts of people under oath.

But regardless, is this, is the laptop absolutely proved nothing, but it became this cultural touchstone. It was like, it embodied the Biden crime family. And if you wanted to be able to believe that, not wanted to be able to believe that, if you believe that because you’re being told that. By people that you trust that have told you that your election was stolen, that your democracy was thwarted, that the process was unfair, is that all you had to do, and I get this, is look at the pictures. It doesn’t look like a good guy to me.

CANDACE OWENS: Right. ‘Cause you weren’t a good guy in the pictures.

HUNTER BIDEN: No.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: Smoking crack in a motel room with a prostitute. Like, you know what I mean? Like they did, they come out and like they’re saying, oh, like this all— I admit it all. Not only admit it all, I own it all. I will own everything, the worst of it, all of it.

Gaslighting, the Epstein Files, and the Trump Family

CANDACE OWENS: And then being cute, like, I mean, now in retrospect, and things have changed, I mean, times have changed. I, like I said, I was one of the chief people that was really angry about it, and it did feel— that was the exact reason why when I re-examine it, it was the gaslighting. It’s the same reason why I’m angry with Trump over the Epstein thing. It’s like, I can’t come back from media gaslighting.

The Trump thing is worse because it came from his own mouth, the gaslighting. So it wasn’t like people trying to cover it up, it was like Trump being like, “What Epstein files? Are we still talking about the Epstein files?”

And so, but then things kind of changed, I think, with time also, because I was very— I would just definitely say I was close with Don Jr., traveled a lot with him through the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. We talked about it, this corruption, da da da, can’t believe they denied it, all these photos coming out. And then we get whatever this, you know, Trump family is now.

And it’s like, man, I think it was a historian that wrote on X exactly how I feel, which is I wish I could go back to the days where I thought like Hunter Biden’s art was the most corrupt deal that was done in politics. And now we’re going, okay, you know, we stood behind Trump, we fought, we shared the photos of Hunter Biden to the extent that we could, and now we have their family engaged in so many corrupt deals— the meme coins, the taking advantage of people.

And you go, okay, well, what we actually have is DC is corrupt, politics is corrupt. And I think it is kind of a unifying point, not to excuse, you know, the gaslighting of people for 2 weeks, which made people super angry. But I do think it’s just a different time where people are kind of going back and examining.

And I feel actually terrible realizing that you were finally clean and then it’s just this humiliation ritual over and over and over again of people putting everything out there and not realizing also your kids are facing this consequence as well. Which people do not think about a lot of times when they publish stories. Like, I even was reticent and didn’t cover the Kristi Noem thing because the first thing that came to my mind was, do they have kids? Like, these are kids that are about to go to college. And so, and why are they doing this? Because she’s in politics, right? And so this becomes— they don’t think about the children.

And yeah, I mean, I think I now— now that I have kids too, I think there’s just like, wow, they don’t sign up for what I do for podcasting. Kids don’t sign up for that kind of stuff.

Resilience, Meanness in Politics, and the Zero-Sum Game

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah. They, you know, number one though, kids are way more resilient than you think. They’re so much tougher. And my girls have got their stuff and they love me deeply and I can 100% accept that love now and return it with everything that I have to offer.

But you’re, you know, part of what you’re describing is politics in memoriam, you know, part of it. But something’s changed, Candace. There is a meanness, a willingness to adopt very, very un-American tactics against our opponents because it becomes a zero-sum game. It’s not just that I disagree with you, it’s you need to be punished. You need to be punished for what you believe.

You know, there’s this incredible show. I really want to meet them one day. You’ve probably, I don’t know if you’ve listened to it too, it’s called The Necessary Conversation. Have you listened to that? Incredible. It’s a brother and a sister who are progressives. One lives in LA and one lives in Austin or something like that. And she runs a bakery, the sister, and a mom and dad, and they are ultra MAGA. And I think they were like in, you know, Missouri somewhere. Okay. And I mean like, don’t take their caps off. Trump literally can do no wrong. He’s playing 4D chess on the Epstein thing. I know he said no war in Iran, but you know, he must have a reason for it and you can’t convince— like literally.

But they have this conversation and they have real issues with each other. Like the daughter gets really mad at the dad. Like, “Dad, you were a jerk to us when we were kids. You made me—” But then she has this conversation with her mom who loves animals and like taught her about empathy and they would adopt all, you know, these animals. And you find out like her dad coached all of their Little League games and she was a softball player and if a kid couldn’t afford the uniform, dad would quietly go out and buy the uniform.

And he’s awful on this thing, by the way. Like, he’s tough and “I don’t give a s*” and drop a bomb on ’em kind of thing. But it’s so informative is that before, that’s a normal family. That’s a thing.

Before you and I could meet at a restaurant in Georgetown and your husband and my wife and we could have dinner together. And like with Tucker, I knew Tucker, you know what I mean? And like you could have dinner together and think that what Tucker was saying was crazy and I don’t agree with half the stuff he would, but you know what it didn’t mean? It didn’t mean that I thought that he should be tried for treason and executed.

And that’s what happened to me. And I mean that not figuratively, I mean it literally. That’s what people were saying. And that’s what people of real importance were saying. Those were the words that were coming out of the mouths— and I’m paraphrasing— of people like Steve Bannon and people like Rudy Giuliani, people of authority.

And it changes everything. How can you even have a discussion? For instance, how could I respond? Was that cocaine mine?

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

Survival, Self-Love, and Finding Peace Within

HUNTER BIDEN: Like, what do you want? You want me to take a drug test? Because I’m taking a drug test almost weekly for the Department of Corrections and Probation. You know, I have a probation officer. You know, I’m on release until trial. You know, but what do you do? Do you, is that the statement that you make to the New York Post? It’s impossible. It becomes impossible.

So what do you do? You realize this. And I don’t know if you feel this way in your own life, is that, you know what the real problem is? It’s not out there. It’s not that person. If I could just get Steve Bannon to tell the truth. If I could just get Rudy Giuliani to stop lying about me. If I could just get Konstantin Kulak to say that he wrote the— like, it’s not there.

You realize in order to survive, it’s all inside. Every single piece of it is about figuring out how to love yourself, not living that shame. And in order for you to be able to be of service first, or, you know, to Melissa, to return the beautiful thing that she gave me, which was a chance.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: That to be of service to my dad. The return, the unconditional love, which is not love without consequences, not love without accountability. It’s just knowing that no matter what, even through the consequences and being held accountable, that that person still loves me.

The Threat of Doxxing and Political Disillusionment

CANDACE OWENS: I think that was also what came across in your interview with Andrew Callahan, where after I watched it, I think it sort of edited my opinion about that relationship between your dad. Because I think since the laptop scandal, my— in my mind, it was, I guess, a bit cartoonish, where it was like, well, you can do whatever you want, you had smoke crack, you know, we were just powerful, we’ll cover it, you know, we’ll do it. Like, that’s the— like, whatever, we have so much power, we’ve acquired so much power.

And then when I sort of saw you really defending your dad over this George Clooney thing, I was like, okay, this is just a normal father-son relationship. Like, people can’t apply that for some reason when you’re talking about a president, or somebody that has access to power. But he just loves his dad, and this is the way any normal person would defend their dad. If they said something about your father, if they said something about your son, like, this is so normal that I think that’s what was a bit arresting for me. I was like, this is very normal dynamic. He doesn’t care if Jake Tapper’s on his side. He doesn’t care if George Clooney is on his side. That’s his dad that you’re talking about, and he’s having a natural reaction that I would have if someone was talking about my dad, my grandparents, my sister, my cousin, even the one, even when they do something wrong, by the way, like it’s like, okay, no, but like, that’s my family member who did something wrong. And so you have no right. And I will breathe fire on someone.

And that’s kind of, and you’re right. And now it’s getting dirtier. The games people are playing are dirtier. And it is about wanting you to feel unsafe. And I think that is something that is so new when you have people posting your address, posting where you are, knowing that you have children. And I really do believe, and it is over perspective. Like for me, it was me changing my mind on Israel. And suddenly I’m getting the New York Post treatment and I’m getting all these people coming after me and I’m going, this is my perspective. You’re welcome to try to debate me on why I feel the way I feel about what is, because I have two eyes about what’s happening in Gaza. But to do these tactics where you’re trying to destroy people is, that feels very, very new to me.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah. And that, let’s be honest— not let’s be honest. I hate that phrase. Okay. From my perspective is this. I know where that started. And that started when Donald Trump from rally stages started the “Where’s Hunter?” call and response crowds. And then they printed t-shirts and then they made hats and then they made mugs. “Where’s Hunter?” And then they showed up at my door. I didn’t have any security. I didn’t have anybody. I can’t afford that in my life, particularly at that time.

And they literally showed up at my door with bullhorns and MAGA hats, and the way that they got there is the New York Post published on the front page, on its cover, an aerial view of my home with the address. And then in the thing said, and you could, if you stand here on this part of the street, you can see, and there are floor-to-ceiling windows. And so they showed up.

CANDACE OWENS: Wow.

HUNTER BIDEN: And Alyssa was, what, 6 months pregnant at the time? She got in the car because she was alone at the time and sped off and they followed her and they ran her off the road. She panicked and then she got in, they did it again and they surrounded her. And that’s new, man.

CANDACE OWENS: That is new.

HUNTER BIDEN: And, like, similar to you, before I sat down, I heard where you live, what the level of security that you have or didn’t have, and what your perimeter of your property is like. How the hell do I know that? And how is that even remotely safe? Because you have people who, you basically spoke your truth and they decided that you cannot exist. And so therefore, I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but for some reason I think it’s appropriate for me to say, tell you what, what Candace’s address is, who lives there, and the level of security.

CANDACE OWENS: Tim Pool doing that was one of the most— it was so obvious what he was doing.

HUNTER BIDEN: My dad said to me I have to stop saying the f* word.

CANDACE OWENS: But it was— no, it was like, seriously, that to me was like, it’s a declaration of war. Like, they know I homeschool my kids, they know, and he’s describing the security apparatus and he’s doing it in this rant trying to be impassioned about the fact that I don’t support Israel or I don’t support whatever. His— whatever his motivation was, there was zero reason that you would be describing the perimeter of my house outside of wanting someone to get harmed.

And like, first of all, I’m not like Tucker Carlson, and I say this to people all the time. That’s why I get so worried, because when Tucker gets accosted in public, he just has this like total happy warrior demeanor. I will claw someone’s eyes out for my kids. Like, I am not the property to try. We will shoot you. Like, I will shoot you and I will kill you and I will happily go to prison before you have one opportunity to even make me— I don’t want to even think about whether you’re going to hurt my kids.

HUNTER BIDEN: You sound exactly like the police.

CANDACE OWENS: And that’s just me. That’s just me. And I’ve said it over and over on my podcast, I will smile in my mugshot, okay? Because I did the right thing and I have no qualms about that. So when he did that, I was like, okay, this little beanie boy. Okay, little beanie boy. I see exactly what you’re doing. The whole world sees what you’re doing. And you are doing something because you want my children to get harmed. And then if something happens to them, you’re going to go, “Well, I don’t know how that happened as I was describing the perimeter of her home and talking about what her security is,” which was inaccurate.

HUNTER BIDEN: Candace, but that’s— but that’s like, what are we even talking about? That’s exactly why they do it, is that even if the chance is this small, the reason that they do it is exactly that, is to make you really afraid. Not for yourself, for your 4 kids, for your family. For the people that work around you. And by the way, I’ll tell you, I have the same approach that I think Tucker has to it, which is basically like, I can handle it. Like I can diffuse a situation. I can do it. Melissa, people kill you.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah. I’ll kill you. And I’ll ask questions later.

HUNTER BIDEN: And she did exactly the same. And you know what really worries me is that all of a sudden we’re all talking about violence. Like, you’re talking about violence. Violence is defense. But now you’re talking about the violence, and then they kind of like go, “Oh, you’re gaslighting us, this is bullshit, you don’t— you’re fine, you’re really rich, and you can take care of yourself.” It’s like, bullshit. Did you see what just happened to my best friend?

Charlie Kirk and Political Disillusionment

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah, like, I mean, we just watched Charlie get— and he had a full security apparatus. Yeah, we still don’t know what happened to Charlie Kirk. There’s zero interest. That’s another thing that just completely, for me, was like done with Trump whatsoever. Like, there’s just no way for someone who came from the inside and watched the work that Charlie did to get these people elected. Don Jr. was like a brother to Charlie, literally like a brother to him.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: And to see the Trump brothers, to see Donald Trump himself, Kash Patel, who Charlie pushed for him to leave the FBI, had him on his podcast. JD Vance, like, came out of nowhere. Charlie was like not sleeping to make that happen. And to see all of these people have zero interest in the obvious holes in the story, even if ultimately the holes get filled and there’s a picture that makes sense, which I put that at 0% chance. But the fact that they have zero interest and they’re just accepting the narrative— like, what this has done to me, and I’ve said this, I’m just done with politics. I’m just done with politics because I can’t even begin to comprehend it.

And again, that element of gaslighting that’s happening here, where they’re pretending that the people who are noticing that none of this is making sense are the crazy ones, and everyone else who’s like, “Nope, turn the chapter, a week later it’s all solved. And this is how it went down and none of it makes sense, but just accept this slop.” It is the most infuriating thing and it’s just fully removed the scales of my eyes and I’ve stopped with this left versus right, Democrat versus Republican. I’m like, this is sheer evil versus good.

HUNTER BIDEN: By the way.

CANDACE OWENS: This is like sheer evil.

HUNTER BIDEN: But by the way, for real, exactly.

CANDACE OWENS: Like, I’m like—

HUNTER BIDEN: Exactly. It is good versus evil.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: They have torn the mask off of this. I said to you before, I pray to God that by the end of this, you think of me as a friend, because if anything ever happened to me, I want you and Melissa to team up. You’d fix it. Like, oh my God.

CANDACE OWENS: It’s not happening with Charlie Kirk.

HUNTER BIDEN: And the criticism of you for asking the questions for someone who was like a brother to you, it’s like— what the eff are you talking about?

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah, that’s the actual— how dare you care?

HUNTER BIDEN: Coming from someone who you’ve attacked and politically, you’ve had all of your criticism, which I have no problem with, and we disagree on so many things, but I listen to you and I go, right on. Like Epstein, like you want to figure out why they don’t want to release all the Epstein files, all you got to do is literally look at a picture of Trump standing on his stage at his inauguration and look behind him. I mean, it’s like every single person.

CANDACE OWENS: He’s protecting his donors without question.

Waking Up to Corruption

HUNTER BIDEN: I mean, it’s crazy. Palos and Poli and this and that and the other thing and all of these things. It’s like, okay. And by the way, my point is, yeah. It’s like, when are people going to kind of wake up to the fact — and it’s not left or right — this is a really, really horrible group of people that are pulling strings that impact us all. And they make us think that because you and I disagree on the graduated tax rate or some social issue, that we are sworn enemies. Not just, you know, sworn enemies that I deserve violence.

CANDACE OWENS: And I could see them, and it does seem like both sides have woken up without question. My audience is now split and I still say what I believe. I haven’t changed my position on abortion. I’m Catholic. There’s nothing that has changed. I think they’re just hearing me for the first time. And I do think there was something about the Charlie Kirk assassination that everyone just sort of looked up, we just sort of all looked up at the machine and was like, wait a second. What is this? Because they expected Trump to be ride or die. They expected — I mean, wow, this is going to be solved in the clearest way possible because the entire political apparatus that has the power and the Department of Justice is in the hands of Charlie Kirk’s friends. Like, that was how I felt, right? This is it. Whoever did this is never going to get away with it because these are Charlie’s friends. And what did we get?

HUNTER BIDEN: They’re the people that Charlie Kirk made.

CANDACE OWENS: Charlie Kirk made these people. That’s exactly right. Led a youth revolution to get these people elected in power. He was ride or die to the level of disloyalty or fear.

HUNTER BIDEN: I don’t know what it is.

CANDACE OWENS: Disloyalty is loyalty, maybe guided by fear, but it’s so disturbing. It’s disturbing. And I cannot forgive Trump, the Trump family, what they have done or what they have not done for Charlie.

HUNTER BIDEN: Can I keep one of these?

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m full on — I’m like, call me a conspiracy. I’m like you where I’m like, oh, what is the shame tactic of the day? You’re calling me a conspiracy theorist? Great. I’m like, you’d be a fool to believe the stuff that they’re telling us today, the stories they’re telling us. I mean, it is something that is just so disturbing. And I think that the Charlie assassination — it’s just so crazy, because he was so Republican conservative. But I think it’s brought people together in a productive way.

The Corruption Is Out in the Open

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah. Look, I’m here. And you’re here. And I really think that we’re not unique. I think it’s very emblematic that I’m like, let’s put the past — not behind us. I’ll explain anything you want. I’ll talk about anything that you want to talk about that you still have questions about, or that anybody has. But like, this isn’t right. What we’re witnessing right now is not right. The level of corruption, the obfuscation — whether it’s Butler or Charlie or these things — it’s just not right. And it’s so glaringly not right, it’s almost as if they’re just saying, like, f* you. They’re not even trying.

CANDACE OWENS: Like, we don’t even get good psyops anymore. And that’s what I keep saying. It’s so disrespectful that we’re not even getting good psyops anymore. Like, we’re supposed to believe he survived — what do we have, 4 assassination attempts? The first president that’s ever survived 4 assassination attempts. They quietly lie to us about things. They make a big deal and then they want it to, you know, go away. They’re going to keep pretending and telling us that this is a totally normal grieving widow. Okay, no one’s buying that. Something’s just not right here. Everyone can see that this is not how you would react to your husband being shot, and this sort of just, “I’m fine,” and 2 weeks later, “I fully accept the narrative. I have no interest in anything else. It’s over. I forgive him. Let’s move on.” You’re asking us to abandon our common sense and our humanity is what you’re asking us to do.

And that kind of seems like where we’re at. They’re insisting on this, and I’m going, where is this going to go? Because we’re not doing the thing they want us to do. They are just constantly giving us slop all the time. I mean, even the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner, there was so much theater to it after, so much theater. And now it’s kind of, okay, Secret Service maybe shot each other and we’re just going to kind of quietly move on. But Trump needs a ballroom. Like, that’s a normal reaction. Hey, there’s a shooting. Hey, well, we better get that ballroom.

HUNTER BIDEN: By the way, it’s going to cost a billion dollars now. And by the way, it’s not from donors. And by the way, we’re going to do it. It’s just the constant — like, talk about gaslighting.

CANDACE OWENS: It’s been just this. And we’re not even — are we even a year into Trump’s second term?

HUNTER BIDEN: We’re a little over a year, a little over a year in a second.

CANDACE OWENS: And I don’t think — I’m like, how are we going to deal with 4 years of just being gaslit every 5 seconds and told that MAGA, literally MAGA, is not MAGA anymore? And what was actually never Trump — which was actually pro-Hillary Clinton if you think about it — that’s now MAGA. It’s literally people who have been against Trump the entire time who are lecturing us about this stuff, like the Mark Levins and the Ben Shapiros. And like, where MAGA and the Laura Loomers — where’s MAGA now? Okay, great. Then I’m not MAGA. I’ve never agreed with these people. I am opposed to these people’s ideas. I am opposed to unleashing an actual lunatic who has had to be Baker Acted and put on psych 5150 holds by her own parents who fear her. I’m opposed to that actually being unleashed upon the population.

HUNTER BIDEN: Melissa always uses that 5150. She’s got — that person’s going to get 5150. What are you talking about? What’s 5150?

CANDACE OWENS: You’re telling us this is MAGA now, like, this is what we do. And yeah, so it’s been a challenging time because you do have to have the humility to admit that. I’m quite embarrassed about it.

Kings, Cocaine, and Gaslighting

HUNTER BIDEN: The president of the United States of America has posted images of himself as a king, I think, half a dozen times now. Like, when are people going to wake up and go, okay, if that’s what you want? And by the way, if that’s what you want, then you know what? I know that there is a vast majority of Americans, but some that are really going to have a problem. Really have a problem.

CANDACE OWENS: I am, Iga.

HUNTER BIDEN: God forbid. And this whole thing is that we all need allies now because they do have an enormous amount of power. One of the things that I always think about is that it’s so easy to silence people. But it would be particularly easy, for instance — like the whole cocaine in the White House thing. By the way, I look at — your premise is that I — you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I know my truth, and that’s all I can do.

CANDACE OWENS: And you’d preferred crack anyways.

HUNTER BIDEN: 100%.

CANDACE OWENS: Okay.

HUNTER BIDEN: And I would not have forgotten it in a cubby.

CANDACE OWENS: Not if you’re crawling on the floor.

HUNTER BIDEN: To go into the Situation Room, which I’ve never been in before. Okay, exactly. I mean, Jesus Christ. Anyway, but my point is, what if they — what if I’m flying back to LA and, or when I go through security and they find drugs in my bag? Who would believe me that I’m so clean and sober? Who would possibly believe me?

CANDACE OWENS: No one.

HUNTER BIDEN: No one. No one. And I could take drug tests and I could prove it and I mean, literally I pack my bag in front of a witness everywhere I go so that at least I would be able to say that. Here’s the crazy part — the idea that I would think that there is a government in power capable of doing that says everything anyone needs to know about where we are.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: The idea that you feel unsafe in the United States of America because you disagree with the current administration on an issue that 70% of Americans agree with you on?

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: Like, I think we all can agree that we need to stop the wholesale murder of a population in Gaza.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: Whatever you think about my father’s policy as it relates — I always say to people, you know one thing he didn’t do? He didn’t greenlight turning Gaza into a Trump golf course with the maitre d’ being Jared Kushner with $4 billion in Saudi money.

Gaza, Corruption, and the Trump Family Business

CANDACE OWENS: It’s despicable.

HUNTER BIDEN: Despicable.

CANDACE OWENS: It’s just like they did the deal before. I mean, when he posted that — I’ll never forget that — posted the Trump, like, “Here’s what Gaza could be.” And like, I could have my name on a building.

HUNTER BIDEN: And I was like, but literally that’s what they’re doing.

CANDACE OWENS: This is dead children. Like, you’re literally saying this is all going to be fine because we’re going to put up a Trump resort or something. Positively despicable. I mean, just positively despicable, tasteless, indefensible. And it’s not a joke though. It’s not a joke. It wasn’t a joke. And that is the deal.

HUNTER BIDEN: And that’s what they’re doing.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: Literally doing. And by the way, they’re doing it out in the open. I mean, it’s not as if they’re hiding it in any way.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: They are making deals as they go through. I always say to people, it’s like, you had such a problem with me. I didn’t do any business.

CANDACE OWENS: I’ll take the paintings.

HUNTER BIDEN: I didn’t do a single business. Every single person that bought a painting from me during the time my dad was in office — I had 2 shows and probably sold a total of 20 paintings and 13 of them to my best friend, and that’s it. That’s it. And you had a problem — not you, well, you too — but they had a problem with me as being this emblematic emblem of corruption.

These guys — okay, Don Jr. got the single largest loan guarantee from the Department of Defense ever handed out, of over $600 million, for an energy company, a fusion energy company, of which he has zero experience in. They have gotten Jared Kushner, who’s never run a private equity fund, a $4 billion private equity fund with 80% of the money coming from the Middle East, of which he continues to raise as he is the ambassador at large on behalf of the Trump administration — not as a political appointee, but simply as a son-in-law of the president.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: To come to a peace deal of a war in Iran that they started, that has cost the economy billions and billions of dollars, for a war nobody wanted — that every president before him was pressured by the Israelis to get into. And every single one, regardless what you think of them, from Jimmy Carter through President Reagan, through both of the Bushes, through Clinton, through my dad, said, “You’re out of your damn minds, and here’s the reason why. This is what’s going to happen.”

So who benefits right now? You know who benefits? The people that are making trades of billions of dollars on market manipulation that occurs. It’s literally out in the open. But who’s going to — who’s going to —

The Corruption of Power and the Biden Legacy

CANDACE OWENS: You will not get a scream out of me. I am so far off the Trump train piece. Oh no, by the way, and I’m not even saying it’s embarrassing, but it is embarrassing. It is embarrassing because we got behind him as the answer to corruption. We thought he was going to be this outsider, you know, he’s going to go to DC, he’s going to drain the swamp, and then he became the Loch Ness Monster, you know.

And so it’s like, I don’t know what it is about that swamp, but you get swimming in it and it’s like people do this. And yes, it has been for Israel. Not to say that Trump wasn’t pro-Israel. Most presidents actually are pro-Israel when they go in there, and they go anti-Israel, they kind of end up dead. Or they sort of get kicked out. If you want to talk about Nixon and the scandal of Watergate, which I’ve revisited — I did think that that had a lot more to do with his shifting viewpoints, but that wasn’t the issue.

I was pro-Israel, generally speaking, not very educated about the topic. It’s this level of corruption that you’re talking about, when you are willing to let real Americans be harmed, their day-to-day lives be harmed, they’re suffering at the gas pump, their groceries are expensive — all so that you could further enrich. How much more money does the Trump family need? I was just like, literally, how much more money do you need, that you’re going to allow this to happen? Don’t you just want to have now the legacy of being a good president? I mean, this is—

Cryptocurrency, Conspiracy, and the Chessboard

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah, I was saying to you about the cryptocurrency thing. I think there’s incredible promise in cryptocurrency. I believe in the meme token. I want to — I’ll do something one day to create a community, and there’s really good reasons to do it. There’s really interesting ways. And I know people can disagree. I just happen to be kind of like a crypto person. I mean, just because of my understanding — I think there is incredible freedom in a world in which we’ve been controlled by banks.

So if you have the same problem that I have with Big Pharma, banks, the Fed, and these “where does money come from” kind of things — I truly believe in what Satoshi, the manifesto of Bitcoin, represents. But that’s just me.

Regardless, my point is that they had such an opportunity. They had such an opportunity. I’ll give you this — I want you to look at the conspiracy theories. Go look up Gal Luft and Alexander Smirnov. They’re the two principal individuals that made the only claim that people hung their hat on, in Congress and elsewhere, as it relates to my dad in corruption, bribery, and stuff like that.

One of them is a fugitive from justice wanted by Interpol and the United States government — Gal Luft, who is a former IDF officer who is believed to be living in Israel as a fugitive, which the Israelis will not help us locate. And the other one is Alexander Smirnov, who is a known Israeli intelligence agent. Those are the two people. One was in a prison in the United States, serving 6 years, and they can’t find him. The Bureau of Prisons can’t find him in his prison. He is on furlough, but no one knows where he’s been furloughed to. And the only passport that he has is an Israeli passport.

There are forces that I used to say, “Oh, this is bullshit.” Have you ever read The Devil’s Chessboard?

CANDACE OWENS: Yes. Alan Dulles, looking into the CIA — I read this book Chaos that then led me to The Devil’s Chessboard. It’s actually on our list for books to read for the book club.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah. It’ll knock you. Chaos. CIA, the Manson stuff. That was the one that knocked me and I was like, “What the heck is our government? What is going on?” And you realize what the CIA is capable of, and you think it’s all a conspiracy. And I think that’s what they’re fearful of — that people have awakened to that. And so when they’re kind of trying to throw red meat now, which you see them doing — the left, the right — it’s just not landing the same anymore, because we just realized that there is a chessboard.

The DC Elite and Joe Biden’s Integrity

HUNTER BIDEN: That’s why, in terms of the left — you think I’m going to defend the DC elite of the left? They crushed my dad. When they saw their chance, they did everything in their power to push him out. You know why? Because he was never part of that club. He was never part of the Epstein class. He lived in Delaware.

Everybody — you can think whatever you want about my dad — but literally, my dad never bought a stock or a bond because he made a commitment in 1972 when he was 30 years old, after Watergate, never to own a stock or a bond. And he didn’t. My dad was the poorest person ever to enter the presidency — not poorest, I mean, he had money, he’d written the book, and he’d done well, but he had the least amount of wealth entering the presidency in modern years, and since 1900, than anybody.

And when he was in the United States Senate, he was not only the poorest man in the Senate — not poor, again, he made over $170,000 on average over the course of 45 years — but not just the Senate, but among all 535 members of Congress. He was never a part of that club. And that’s what I wish you knew. That’s what I wish they knew. And I am not here in any way to defend the DC elites of my own party. I think that they’re just as complicit in all this bullshit.

On Kamala Harris and Living in the Shadows

CANDACE OWENS: No, without question. Like the Nancy Pelosis. What’s your opinion on Kamala then? Did you like her?

HUNTER BIDEN: Look, I—

CANDACE OWENS: I feel like you didn’t.

HUNTER BIDEN: No, you know what? I did. And I don’t want to say anything. I didn’t know the vice president that well.

CANDACE OWENS: Okay.

HUNTER BIDEN: I mean, she was always nice to me personally. And so that was my experience. But I didn’t have the other thing that people think — that I was like living at the White House. I literally didn’t leave my home because it was really hard to leave. I stayed on the hill that I lived on until the fires came. That’s where I was. I was with Beau and Melissa, trying to make it through — and not trying to make it through, thriving, making it through what would otherwise have seemed like a horrible, horrible life from any outsider’s perspective. So I’m not judging the question, but I don’t want to sh on the vice president because I have no reason to necessarily.

CANDACE OWENS: She did nothing personal to you. She was nice to you.

HUNTER BIDEN: Never did anything personal to me. I think that she is, you know, kind of machine stuff. Yeah, exactly. And in terms of all of that stuff, I think I’m tough enough to realize that that’s part of politics at that level.

Low Expectations and a Misunderstood Resume

People kind of have this misperception of me — that for 50 years I was a crack addict and I was that picture, you know? I mean, I went to Yale Law School. I served in the Clinton administration. I was chairman of the board of the US-UN World Food Program, which is the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I served on 16 boards before I ever joined the board of Burisma or anything. I taught at Georgetown — I was in the master’s program at the School of Foreign Service for 4 years.

CANDACE OWENS: I actually didn’t know that.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: And that was something that surprised me too — not to be rude, but I thought you were dumb.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: Because, I don’t know, maybe because Meghan McCain was on The View for too long or something. And I was like, “Here we go. Just like rich political kids.” She is just so dumb, and yet she’s just always there — they’re just giving her stuff. And so I think there’s also that perception where rich kids don’t work, aren’t smart. And so I was kind of expecting you to be sort of a Meghan McCain. And then when I watched it, I was like, “Oh wait, he actually has brain cells,” which is, by the way, remarkable that you didn’t kill them all off when you were on crack.

HUNTER BIDEN: I told you before — I think they got pickled, all the vodka.

CANDACE OWENS: So I was like, “This is interesting. He’s not a total idiot.” So there are the stereotypes of rich kids who just keep getting handed all of these awards in life.

HUNTER BIDEN: I say to everybody — if there’s ever anybody in the history of America that benefits from low expectations, it’s me.

CANDACE OWENS: I—

HUNTER BIDEN: People are like, “Oh my God, you’re not a complete moron. You haven’t pulled out your crack pipe yet,” which is really crazy. But that gives you an idea, by the way, of the level to which I was muted, because they didn’t want it. You have to subvert yourself to a machine to a certain degree. And it wasn’t up to me if I wanted to go out and rail at the machine, or go on and argue with Jake Tapper, because it would harm your dad. Then I become even more of the story. But you give up your voice in that way. And it’s incredibly emasculating — particularly when the portrait that is being painted of you is of a ne’er-do-well that never did anything in their life.

If you want to talk about experience, go look at my goddamn resume. I have 10 times more experience in 10 times more things. And I know I am 10 times more well-read than either one of the Trump boys, regardless of what you think about them. Now, you know what I can’t do — I’m not a great shot, and I don’t know anything about real estate.

CANDACE OWENS: Mm-hmm.

HUNTER BIDEN: And I don’t know anything about making money. And that’s why I’m about a few million dollars in debt. And I need to change that one around in some way at the age of 56. But the portrait that was painted of me has given me this incredible gift. I can walk into your house, into your studio, and I guarantee that people afterwards are going to go, “I still think he’s an asshole, but my God — can you believe it? He didn’t go do lines in the bathroom.”

CANDACE OWENS: No, that was my reaction when I watched Andrew Callahan. I was like, “Wow, he’s actually thought through his addiction. He’s talking about the ritual. This guy’s not an idiot.” And you’re right — I guess you do benefit from having exceedingly low expectations. But it’s sort of like you said, the first time you spoke, and of course you did sort of have to be quiet because otherwise you would’ve definitely hurt your father. And there’s a machine that’s kind of bigger than you that you have to sit yourself at.

HUNTER BIDEN: But the rage was there. You could tell. I even went back — my dad just said, “Honey, that was really beautiful. Parts of it — did you have to use the F word that much?” I was like, “Coming from you.”

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: But the thing about my dad though is he, at least from a different generation, never talked to us that way — ever. Not around my mom or anyone. But anyway, so I’m trying to curb the F word for my mom and dad.

Apology, Addiction, and Authentic Connection

CANDACE OWENS: What, how old were you, by the way, when your mother died in the car accident?

HUNTER BIDEN: Just about 3. I was a month away from 3. Beau was a month away from 4. My sister, Caspi, was about 18 months. And who my oldest daughter’s named after, Naomi. And, yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: Do you have any memory of her?

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah, I don’t know for certain whether the things that I have, which I believe are memories, are memory, because it would be very rare at that age. I have distinct memories of my mom carrying us around in a picnic basket. And I even have a distinct memory of the car, not the accident. Of the car.

But I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been steeped in stories. You know, the beautiful part, like everything — have you ever read any of the Gnostic Gospels? You really should because I know you talk about your Catholicism and your faith, and I’m like a toddler in the faith and there’s so much, it’s like so rich. It’s really cool.

One of the things that I’ve always been a student of — when I first went to Georgetown, the two closest people after I graduated Georgetown were two Jesuit priests. One was named Ted Dziak and another one was Bill Watson. And both Father Watson and Father Dziak led me into this idea of service. I started a thing called the Jesuit International Volunteers with Father Dziak. And then I went to the JBC because of Father Watson, which is like a domestic Peace Corps. I did that for a year.

And then when I opened up my own law firm, all my clients were Jesuit universities because I was friends with presidents of universities that were just like 5 or 6 years older than me. They were now becoming presidents of St. Joe’s and Granton and Loyola and all these Jesuit universities, Detroit Mercy.

But anyway, the Gnostic Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels were found in Nag Hammadi, and they were written in the period between Christ’s death and the first 2 centuries. There’s the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip. And Constantine — and now I’m going to do this boring —

CANDACE OWENS: No, I’m very interested in this.

HUNTER BIDEN: Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.

CANDACE OWENS: Yep, the end.

HUNTER BIDEN: But what he did, and really what it was about, was not a true transformation of faith. It was a way to consolidate power. So he made the Christian bishops — who were, 200 years into the very, very early church — he made the Christian bishops his lieutenants and enforcers as it related to the religion, so that he could control the more radical elements of it. And so that is when they came to an adoption of just 4 gospels, because there are all of these other writings that you could get excommunicated for promoting.

But it’s really beautiful, really beautiful portraits of like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s relationship with Mary Magdalene. But anyway, it’s not a gospel, but it is one of the texts. I think it’s called the Acts of John. There is a thing that Christ says, and he says — I’m paraphrasing — “You must learn to suffer as I do in order to be able not to suffer.”

And that is the greatest lesson of everything. It’s not having gratitude for all the good things in my life, but having immense gratitude for all of my life. Like, I wouldn’t be here. We couldn’t have this honest conversation. I couldn’t get to know you as a human being if every single thing didn’t occur behind it.

I would not feel this gift of being alive on a daily basis the way that I do if I hadn’t overcome committing suicide dozens of times in motel rooms, in places that I could never afford to be found dead. And it’s that piece of life that — the only way I got it is when they just tore off all my clothes, tarred and feathered me, and put me in the center of town and said, “Look at him.” And I survived.

When you survive that, you kind of go, “What am I going to do with my life?” Well, the number one thing I want to do with my life is, number one, take care of me.

Candace’s Apology

CANDACE OWENS: Take care of me. I feel like I have to say, I’m really sorry that I contributed to that. I feel really sh*y. I feel guilty because hearing you talk about basically having the worst moments of your life — I always speak about on my show how a lot of these kids growing up aren’t going to even know what it was like before social media, where you could just make a mistake and have that be over and you got to grow up.

And now it’s like they’re digging and they’re finding people’s tweets from when they’re 17. They’re an idiot, they wrote the N-word once, and they want to hang them when they’re 40. And I just saw you as a caricature. It was, like I said, feeling gaslit by the political machine, convinced that it was just the left that partook in this political machine.

And I just really want to say, like, genuinely, I’m so sorry that I just didn’t even consider, “He’s a crackhead.” Like, that’s actually a very relatable thing, and he shouldn’t be — you know, to have that is just unbelievable to consider, every worst thing you’ve ever done.

HUNTER BIDEN: I’m, like I told you before we started, I cry very easily.

CANDACE OWENS: But I do, I just feel like it’s not who I want to be. And I think I’ve come a long way from that in general. But I did partake in just the inhumanity of, “Just look at this guy at the worst moment of his life — with prostitutes, he’s on crack, he’s on drugs — and we should make fun of him because it makes us feel good.” Or it makes us feel like we’re somehow beating the machine. And that was, I think, a really warped viewpoint. And hearing you speak about it today, I’m just like, wow, that is so gross that I partook in that.

HUNTER BIDEN: You have so much — and I mean this in a good way — so much power, because I think your audience absolutely trusts you. And the reason that they trust you is because you’ve shown an enormous amount of courage in speaking your mind, particularly as it related to someone that you loved like a brother and everything that has transpired since then, which is an immediate rejection of power and knowing that you were just going to get the sh beat out of you.

And for you to say that to me — I truly mean it, just from a purely selfish point of view — it means the world. And I truly didn’t come here for that. I came here because, you know what, I ask forgiveness every day without any expectation that I will be forgiven. But I know the people that I hurt. And I still do. And I’m not even remotely perfect. And I still screw up.

But, God, if we could have this conversation and genuinely, authentically believe that — I think it just opens the door for, with all humility, maybe a few other people.

CANDACE OWENS: And there is a freedom in it too. Like, there’s a freedom that your worst moments have just been — yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: There’s nothing else. What are you going to say? You know what I mean?

CANDACE OWENS: Like, “You got me butt naked with a crack pipe.” I mean, I survived it. And so you have it, and it allows you to kind of return to who you are. Because addiction is —

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: I wouldn’t wish it. I always say, people growing up and seeing what it’s done to families — seeing a lot of stuff when I was younger really made me like, wow, I can’t even imagine.

HUNTER BIDEN: Imagine if you could talk about it.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

Aftercare, Art, and Moving Forward

HUNTER BIDEN: Imagine if you could have openly talked about it, and the person that you were confronting or dealing with was able to say, “This is, we’ve got to do something about this. Come on everybody, let’s do something about it.”

I want to start an aftercare program for people for free, because the biggest thing that happens is people go to detox and they go to a recovery center, or rehab. And they get out after 30 days and they’ve got nowhere to go. So one of the things that I’m trying to do is start a free aftercare program. There’s one in Kentucky that is a really beautiful model.

But if I could do that — I work with an organization called Basta Universal. I’m the development director there and they do tenants’ rights and homeless prevention. I know what we can all agree on. We can all agree that people can’t afford to pay the rent and need to be able to figure out a way to stay in their houses before it becomes a mother with 3 kids who are homeless. We know where that leads.

But these kinds of things are what I want to use what I’m doing for. I want to do that. I also want to make a living. I also want to do well. I also want to be able to pay my debt. I also want to be able to do the things that — I also still want to make art.

I started — finally — and you know what, I’m going to put all my art on my website and people can come look at it. If they want to buy it, they can buy it. Because I don’t really believe art becomes art until you share it with somebody, until there’s an observer of it. So I can sit in my studio, which is my garage.

But I want to do all of those things, and I want to be able to talk to you. I want to be able to talk to the people. I want to talk to that family — that necessary conversation — and say to the mom, “The stories your daughter tells you about the way that you adopted animals, it really moves me. The fact that you think I’m the spawn of the devil — can we maybe have a discussion about it?”

CANDACE OWENS: Right.

HUNTER BIDEN: You know?

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah, it’s a caricature.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: And I have a caricature of me that’s been built up for years, so I should have been more empathetic to it, honestly. But when you’re in it, you kind of don’t really know that you’re in it, I think.

HUNTER BIDEN: Well, not only in it — you’re in it to win it.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah.

Faith, Hope, and Redemption

HUNTER BIDEN: And once everything is put in a political lens, and life or death, and, you know, if we lose this election, this is over. Now I will tell you this, that we’ve never had somebody that has proposed staying longer than they’re supposed to. But regardless, I think that we all have a tendency to look at the time that we live in and say that it’s worse than ever. Absolutely worse.

And the fact of the matter is, if you know your history, this is a cycle. There will always be really bad people. We will always be disappointed in the end with leadership. We will always have corruption. It doesn’t mean that we need to accept it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to fight against it. It doesn’t mean that sometimes really good people make the wrong choice.

But what it does mean is that I have absolute hope. I really truly still believe in America, even with all of its faults. I mean, even after reading The Devil’s Chessboard, you read that and you go like, what is this? And that’s not about Democrats and that’s not about Republicans. And if you go back to Reconstruction, you go back to Andrew Johnson, you go back to the fact that the United States of America has not been truly the United States of America until 1964 at best.

But I still really believe in the illusion. And the thing that makes me so mad is they have completely torn away that illusion and people feel hopeless. They feel like there’s no chance to change it. They gave this guy the Marines to do it and he was the one who was going to blow everything up and make it better for everybody. And they’re kind of like, wait a second, what happened to Charlie? Wait a second. Why are we at war again? You know?

Faith and the Final Question

CANDACE OWENS: I think this is actually the most important question, and I will make this my final question I want to ask you. I’m really interested about your faith life. You’re Catholic, you’re raised Catholic, you went to Catholic school, and you’re talking to me about the Gnostic Gospels.

HUNTER BIDEN: Okay, let’s you and I go see the Pope together.

CANDACE OWENS: I’d love to do that.

HUNTER BIDEN: Seriously.

CANDACE OWENS: I think he’s a little mad at America right now.

HUNTER BIDEN: No, but you and I could go see him.

CANDACE OWENS: He’s been— I was tweeted the same day as the Pope, by the way, by Trump when he said bad things about me.

HUNTER BIDEN: For real, let’s go to the Vatican.

CANDACE OWENS: I would love to. I would love to.

HUNTER BIDEN: It’s the coolest place in the world. I love it.

CANDACE OWENS: I just got back from Italy. I was there two weeks ago. Oh, were you?

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: I did my confirmation.

HUNTER BIDEN: Oh, you did?

CANDACE OWENS: I did. It was just the most beautiful.

HUNTER BIDEN: Oh, that’s so cool.

CANDACE OWENS: Unbelievable.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: It was literally the same day that Trump posted the Time Most Vile Person of the Year. So I felt like there was, even in that, something divine, because it was like looking at fake power and then the real power of having, a cardinal getting confirmed, being in Italy, the deep history — like what outlasts that. There was something so fickle about it, like posting this photo of me when I was sick. Okay, great.

HUNTER BIDEN: Wait, hold on.

CANDACE OWENS: Talk about humiliating people for sport.

A Prayer and a Personal Faith

HUNTER BIDEN: Somebody literally sent this to me right before I came in to you. They knew that I was going to talk to you, and I promise you I did not plan to do this.

CANDACE OWENS: No, you’re so fine.

HUNTER BIDEN: It was a prayer.

“If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life. Do good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying, for jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.”

The whole first piece of that — what’s my faith? “If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life.” And the thing that I recognized is that quote from Mother Teresa. I don’t go to Mass as much as I used to. Grew up going to Mass every Sunday. I never would miss a Mass. I went to Georgetown. I’m Catholic. But what I realized is that my real faith is in that belief — just do the next right thing. Whether it’s the golden rule, and that doesn’t mean you have to be weak in your empathy, but always be compassionate.

I believe in the perennial philosophy. I believe that the same exact message from the Upanishads to the Gospels of Jesus Christ are all, at base, in terms of the red letter words of each of them, saying the same thing: love your neighbor like you would want to be loved. And it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. So hard. But that’s my faith.

And I think that there are certain people that arrive at certain times that are messengers of that. I certainly don’t agree with the Catholic Church on a lot of stuff, but I tell you what, I really am so proud of Pope Francis and now Pope Leo in terms of just the notion of social justice.

I think that there can be a practical application of that in terms of our leadership. I really do. I think that faith that is used as a cudgel is really, really dangerous. I know a lot of people that I personally love and am very close to that are part of an evangelical church, particularly in the African American community, that are horrified by the complicity of a certain section of the evangelical church in what’s happening in the world today.

So to me, my faith is very personal. Rooted in Catholicism, and rooted in the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit Church in particular. They used to always call it the Black Pope until we finally got a Jesuit Pope. And with eyes wide open too, that the church as an institution is incredibly flawed and has been. But it has given me an enormous sense of community and belonging just from a cultural perspective.

Confession and Community

CANDACE OWENS: Well, what I’m going to say is I really think you should go to confession.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: You should do that.

HUNTER BIDEN: I don’t worry. I’ve been to confession. Yeah.

CANDACE OWENS: You should go to confession and get, you know, and yeah. Just 100%.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah, don’t worry.

CANDACE OWENS: Go back to the root.

HUNTER BIDEN: I agree.

CANDACE OWENS: Go back to the root. And here’s the other thing — there’s so much there and it’s like, you’re just not enough. Your brain’s not enough. I mean, hearing you describe that, there is just something about, for me, the submission that every Mass brings, and just remembering the beautiful thing. Yeah.

HUNTER BIDEN: The beautiful thing is this. The beautiful thing is that I have been going to confession for 6 years. Right here. That’s me. I like that freedom. You know what you feel like — the only person that you could say this to. And I’m not saying that there are not impure thoughts that are between me and God, but I am saying that that feeling of release that the confessional is there for is the feeling that when I was finally able to see beyond all of the noise that I received by just existing and getting up every day and looking, turning over and seeing that my wife, who saved me, and Bowie, and my dad — as a dad, not as president, but just as a dad — and my mom and my sister and my aunts and uncles and everybody else, and then the wider circle. My friend George, my friend Franny, my friend Bobby. People that came into my life and never left. And despite it all, when there was nothing in it for them but just grief and ridicule. Pretty cool.

CANDACE OWENS: It’s everything.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah.

Closing Remarks

CANDACE OWENS: Ladies and gentlemen, Hunter Biden. Never thought this conversation would happen, and it just — stranger things have happened. And I’m just — this has truly been one of the most powerful discussions that we’ve ever had. And I think it’s because of your journey. You know, you’ve lived through a lot. You lost your mother, your sister in a tragic accident. You lost your brother to cancer. Maybe for a while lost your dad to politics, the political machine, lost yourself to crack cocaine. And somehow—

HUNTER BIDEN: I gained everything.

CANDACE OWENS: Yeah. Gained it all back.

HUNTER BIDEN: Yeah, I really did. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you would invite me here into your home to be able to have this discussion. I really, really mean it. I’m really, really honored.

CANDACE OWENS: And I’m grateful that you took it and that you’ve accepted my apology, because I just feel really sh*y about it. But guilt is good, like we said earlier. Thank you so much for joining us. Amazing.

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