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For a while, the position of the Biden family was clear. Hunter, a misfit, lived in the basement. Joe, an occasional idiot but a successful and enduring politician, sat in the middle. Jill, a community college professor with a bright smile, was well-liked—even as some conservatives derided her as a “doctor.” (Everyone agreed that Beau, the great child saint who died of cancer at 46, was the best of the bunch.)
The Biden family is at the peak of attention since Joe left office in January 2025. Jill is on his visit. memory View From the East Wing; Joe spoke Friday night at the Best Western in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Hunter is on X, Substack, and the podcast. Something strange has happened in the midst of this: As they each try to publicly come to terms with their recent troubled history, Hunter has become a hottie, while Jill has turned heel.
The former president, for his part, is no longer relevant. In his speech at the South Dakota Democratic Party’s annual McGovern Day dinner, Joe Biden tore into his predecessor’s predecessor. “My God,” he said, “to tear down the East Room of the White House to make room for the more appropriate theater of Versailles?” The issue is not that he is wrong about Donald Trump, nor that he was in 2024. It is that few people like to listen to him, assuming they can. (New York Times information that Biden “was sometimes standing up and hard to understand, sometimes shouting loudly.”)
Jill’s handling of Joe’s apparent aging also explains why he has lost some of his luster. As the then president struggled for his term, the first lady was his staunch defender. He was seen as instrumental in his decision to run for a second term and strongly opposed anyone who suggested he back down. While many Democrats – including some administration staffers – claimed that the extent of Joe’s weakness was not visible to them or hidden from them, his wife had no such objections.
His book is partly an attempt to defend himself and clear the air, but it doesn’t go well. Political memoirs are rarely very good. They rarely reveal (at least not in the ways the authors intend), and any juicy material is quickly repackaged by the media, saving readers from having to wade through 300 pages to find it. His attempt to highlight the situation in print has been controversial, especially his admission. “slow down” during her presidency and her concern that her husband had a stroke during his ill-fated June 2024 debate. Her belated revelations are neither disappointing nor interesting; Democratic leaders may have ignored Joe Biden’s aging for a long time, but voters were never fooled. As Democrats scramble to shake off the 2024 scandal and look ahead to the midterms, many prominent party leaders wish Jill would just shut up.
For years, they hoped in vain that Hunter would keep quiet too. The president’s son was a consistent embarrassment. As I wrote when he was to be charged in 2023he sold his father’s reputation in ways that were outrageous even if they were legal (and Trump couldn’t hide the evidence of illegality despite his determined work). He was addicted to drugs, went through a series of relationships already prepared by the tabloids, illegally owned a gun, and lost track of a laptop that included videos of him naked with sex workers. Hunter needed help, but he was also a political liability. In June 2024, he was to be judged of three offenses; Joe, near the end of his term six months later, pardoned his son, despite earlier promises not to.
Now, at the same time his stepmother falls ill, however, Hunter wins unexpected praise. Last month, she appeared on right-wing lobbyist and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens’ podcast, which shows some questionable judgment—Owens is a font of false and offensive claims—but gave her a platform to talk about her recovery work. as my colleague Matt Viser wrote.
He continues to discuss it on X, which he rejoined on May 19. He’s been funny (denying the accusation that he left a bag of cocaine at the White House: “I would never forget my medication”) and self-deprecating (complaining about a photo that showed him with a meth pipe instead of his preferred crack pipe, he wrote“This is why we can’t trust AI. Please make an appropriate edit. Thank you for your attention to this matter”). In another case, he responded to a user who had described him as part of the “elite oligarch class” and a haggard selfie: “Do I look like I’m part of the oligarch elite class. This was taken at a super 8 motel off I95.”) His most famous paintings are even very good– certainly more interesting than those offered by George HW Bush’s son.
This has produced a rare item in the past: nice the media to Hunter Biden. He seems more harmless now in part because his father is no longer in office. Roger Clinton and Billy Carter had scandals when their brothers were presidents; right now it’s just amazing history. Hunter’s crimes also pale in comparison to the Trump family’s blatant corruption—as did his be eager to say. (It’s impossible to imagine the Trump DOJ charging Eric or Donald Jr. the way the Biden DOJ did Hunter.) But Hunter’s arrival has also been exciting because while he’s been belligerent and even defensive, he’s had little desire to reconcile his past. A sincere post about Johnny Cash and his story of redemption was very touching. Without the complications of his father’s political career and (one hopes) without his own political ambitions, Hunter seems to express something closer to his true self, warts and all.
That’s a risky move, though. The hunter has many warts; He has not fully accepted his bad business career, and, as Viser says, he has a morbid taste for conspiracy theories. He is also vulnerable to overexposure. Yesterday he posted a video in which he reviewed major initiatives, including launching Substack. Social media, like political careers and cocaine, can be addictive. But Hunter Biden still has a chance to learn a lesson from his father’s presidency: Get out before you wear out the welcome.
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Today’s news
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has stopped its attacks against Iran after Tehran stopped firing on Israel, although it stopped short of formally declaring a ceasefire and warned that any renewed Iranian attack would trigger a forceful response.
- The Trump administration said it has delivered 17 new cases of anemia against naturalized US citizens accused of concealing a crime, committing fraud, or improperly obtaining citizenship, as part of a broader effort to expand the use of revocation of citizenship.
- A federal judge waived the Trump administration’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications, ruling that the administration lacked congressional authority to impose a tax cap on skilled worker visas when it raised the fee in September.
Dispatches
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Evening Read
‘War Song’ Can’t Be Ignored
By Jake Lundberg
We often think we have one national anthem, but to me, we seem to have two. The first is the official one, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The second is the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The two are different on every level. Only one of them prompts us to reflect on our identity as a nation.
When we sing the first one, sometimes we forget that we are asking a question, and it is not very important. “Oh say you can see,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” begins, in search of proof about the flag: It was in the evening, when we saluted it; it was there all night, when we saw it in the flames of battle; is it still there now, late in the day?
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Read on. Last year, Bekah Waalkes proposed six books you will want to read out.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this journal.
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