Biden keeps mentioning his presidential hopes. Is he joking? Or could he be serious?
Hunter Biden wants everyone to know that he is not running for president.
He also seems determined to keep everyone talking about the possibility.
During an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time,” Bill Maher asked Biden whether he had considered seeking the presidency. “No, I haven’t,” Biden replied, before joking that if he ever announced a campaign, someone should check whether he had relapsed.
That sounded fairly definitive. Then, only weeks later, radio host John Catsimatidis asked him essentially the same question. This time Biden answered, “If I get your endorsement, I may have to.”
Catsimatidis is a billionaire businessman, Republican donor and ally of President Donald Trump. Hunter’s answer was almost certainly a joke: If someone from the other side endorsed him, perhaps he would be obligated to run. It was not the language of a man preparing to establish an exploratory committee.
That does not mean nothing serious is happening.
Hunter Biden has become remarkably visible of late. He is appearing on podcasts, giving interviews, criticizing Democratic leaders and offering opinions about where the party should go next. He has attacked those he believes betrayed his father in 2024 while presenting himself as a voice for Americans suffering from addiction. He is not behaving like someone who intends to disappear quietly from public life.
In the Catsimatidis interview, Biden initially directed attention away from himself. He praised what he called the Democratic Party’s “incredible bench,” mentioning Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. That was less a campaign announcement than an endorsement of the party’s center-left governors.
His choices were revealing. Biden did not highlight the Democratic socialist wing of the party. In the broader conversation, he emphasized patriotism and suggested that candidates who do not love America do not belong in his Democratic Party. His emerging political identity appears economically populist but culturally more conventional: concerned about inequality, supportive of constitutional government and resistant to the anti-American tone found on parts of the activist left.
Biden also identified addiction as a central concern, pointing to tens of millions of Americans still struggling with it. That is one subject on which he has undeniable personal experience. He says he recently marked seven and a half years of sobriety, and he could plausibly build a public role around recovery, treatment and reducing the stigma surrounding addiction.
His other proposed theme — adherence to the rule of law — is considerably more complicated.
For him.
Hunter was convicted on three federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to federal tax offenses. Before he could be sentenced, President Joe Biden granted him an extraordinarily broad pardon covering federal offenses committed, or potentially committed, over roughly a decade. The pardon protected Hunter from federal punishment, although it did not erase the fact of his conviction.
A candidate who made the rule of law his defining issue would therefore face some difficult questions. Voters would reasonably ask whether the president’s son received treatment that would never have been available to an ordinary defendant. Hunter would also confront renewed examination of his foreign business activities, personal conduct and the Biden family’s handling of his controversies.
These liabilities would make a Hunter Biden presidential campaign extremely unlikely to succeed. He has never held elective office, lacks an independent political organization and remains unpopular with Republicans and many Democrats. A campaign could also reopen precisely the controversies the Biden family is now trying to place within a more sympathetic story of addiction, recovery and political persecution.
Yet Hunter may not need to run for president to accomplish what he is attempting.
The jokes attract attention. The attention gives him an audience. And the audience allows him to rehabilitate his reputation, defend his father’s legacy and establish himself as a participant in the Democratic debate.
The presidential candidacy is probably not serious. The political reinvention almost certainly is. Hunter Biden may never appear on a ballot, but he is unmistakably auditioning for a place on the national stage — and discovering that joking about the White House is an excellent way to keep the spotlight pointed in his direction.
(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)