We Sat Down With Hunter Biden For A 3-Hour Discussion On Macrodosing, And I'm Still Thinking About It
Earlier this week, PFT was kind enough to allow me to sit in on the Macrodosing interview with Hunter Biden, and I've been chewing on it ever since.
I'd never met the guy before he walked into the room. But within an hour we were somehow balls deep into the worst chapters of his entire life, which is a strange experience to have with a stranger, and I don't really know the etiquette for it. There isn't a card at Hallmark for "thanks for telling me about your rock bottom crack and hooker fest, twenty minutes after we shook hands."
I know a good chunk of you who clicked on this blog did so because you already have your minds made up because of his last name, and I'm not going to pretend I can talk you out of that.
But I will pose you this challenge- we've all seen public figures do the apology tour.
The carefully lawyered confession, that has the redemption arc with a publicist's fingerprints all over it.
This wasn't that. As much as everybody wants to attribute this all to some grand "Hunter Biden PR campaign."
This was a guy who drove to Chicago in his daughters 1997 Chevy pickup truck with the windows down the whole way because the air conditioning hasn't worked since she bought it. Zero security, zero entourage. No manager. No publicist who emailed us over the standard "talking points" they want us to push, loaded with softball questions.
In fact, it was the complete opposite.
When I texted PFT about setting up something with Hunter- he said he'd already got it lined up and asked if I would be a guest. I said "of course", and asked what was off limits from being asked or talked about.
"Nothing."
"Stop it. We can legit ask him about the laptop, the drugs, the hookers, Ukraine, his sister in law, his kids, the autopen, and if his dad is a clone?"
"Yup."
I couldn't believe my ears.
But as it turned out, it was legit.
If you listen to the interview, this was a man describing what it's like to have every private failure and demon he's ever had dumped into public view, involuntarily, at the worst possible moment of his life, and then telling us that it turned out to be the very thing that saved him.
His reasoning was almost counterintuitive.
Once everything was exposed, there was no ego left to protect. Nothing to hide, nothing to manage, no version of himself left to keep propping up.
Addiction, the way he described it, lives in secrecy.
It feeds on the gap between who you are and who you're pretending to be. And when the world tore that gap wide open for him, against his will, it accidentally handed him the one thing recovery requires- which was total honesty.
He rebuilt from zero because zero was all he had left.
As somebody who has lost loved ones, and has watched their childhood best friend battle an opiod addiction for the last 20 years, this hit especially hard.
And I've thought about that more than I expected to in the three days since.
Most of us spend our entire lives terrified of people finding out our worst stuff.
We organize whole personalities around hiding it. We wear masks, and never really show the people closest to us who we really are.
And here was a guy saying the complete exposure of his worst stuff- the exact nightmare scenario the rest of us all dread so much, is what freed him.
I still haven't figured out what you're supposed to do with that information, but I know it's worth sitting with.
Here's the thing about empathy, though. It's easy when it costs you nothing. Anyone can extend grace to someone they already agree with.
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I think that the actual test is whether you can hear a man's story on human terms when everything about his name, his family, and his politics is begging you to reduce him to a headline.
I'd ask you to try. Not because you owe him anything, but because listening to someone's whole story before rendering a verdict is a muscle, and most of us have let it atrophy.
Strip away the last name and what's left is a deeply flawed father, a son, and an addict in recovery, which is a category of person most American families know from the inside whether they admit it or not. (Sadly.)
A lot of people are already saying we went easy on him, and honestly, if we all sat down again it would probably go a bit differently.
We'd be more comfortable, and prepared. I'd be more prepared- not in the sense that I had what I wanted to ask him ready ahead of time, but that I wouldn't be caught off guard as much by his candidness and genuiness.
I'd challenge anyone to sit three feet from a man who is voluntarily walking you through the most horrific parts of his life story and start playing prosecutor.
It doesn't work like that.
When somebody is being that honest with you, the only decent thing to do is listen, and that's what we did.
Interrogation gets you some Nick Fuentes sound bites.
I think listening gets you the truth. And keeps mutual respect in tact.
Whatever you think of him, being that raw and that vulnerable in front of strangers with microphones takes real guts, and I appreciate him for it. Go listen to the episode as a human being first and see where it lands with you.