Hunter Biden on addiction and 'the gift of being publicly shamed' | NPR's Newsmakers

Hi. Scott Simon here with a special episode. Conversation from our sister show, Newsmakers, home of NPR's biggest interviews. Today, Hunter Biden. I was on a plane once. Seven years sober, and nothing was going wrong. And somebody asked me if I wanted a drink. And ten years later, I woke up in a motel with a crack pipe. My dad got older before people's eyes, and and I think that made them very nervous. You were pardoned by your father? Yes. Thank god. Did that open the door for president Trump to pardon some of his supporters, including the January sixth gang? I think that that is, an insane argument. Hunter Biden has been all over the Internet lately. He's trolled president Trump and discussed his past struggles with addiction. But he's also made appearances with some fierce critics, including the conservative podcaster and conspiracy theorist, Candace Owens. When we sat down with Hunter Biden in NPR studios in New York City this week, he told us he had nothing left to hide. You've been speaking out so much in the past few months on lots of different platforms. I'm struck by your first post on x, though. Back in May was, I'm Hunter Biden. You've never actually heard from me. Yeah. Yeah. What do you want people to hear? Well, the the most important thing that I think I can do with, a platform that that I never asked for, is to speak to the millions of people, the over fifty million Americans who are still sick and suffering out there as it relates to addiction. The one thing that I know that I have a, a, a double PhD in is addiction and recovery. And, you know, the I have a I have a lot to say about a lot of other things, but the, but that's, really all bait to, to get people to start to have a open discussion about something that I am absolutely positive impacts all of us, and that's addiction. Looking back, how did that begin for you? You know, I'm a believer in the idea that, that people can be genetically predisposed to, to addiction. And so I think that that part, that that definitely, plays a part in it. But, for me, it began the way that it, that begins for so many is, you know, I was, I was a kid that had an incredibly loving and beautiful childhood, but also filled with trauma. Well, you you I mean, your family suffered an incredible loss. Yeah. I believe you were two years old. Yeah. Death of your mother and, and the sister. Yeah. And I never wanted to to associate because it feels like a like a loss of control when, something happens to you when you're two years old, just about three, and, that trauma, my brother and I being in the accident and and, being in that car with my mom and my sister, is I never …