Hunter Biden: Everyone Weighs In.

Is the internet's favorite failson actually serious?

From hookers and crack through the crucible of President Joe Biden’s catastrophic bungling of the 2024 election, Hunter Biden has emerged just sober enough to break Twitter. Now that he’s taking on Substack, everyone weighs in.

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Chaz (Not Nuttycombe) says:

While Hunter Biden’s Twitter posting may soon delve in to the realm of Krassenstein-ism (a.k.a, being an annoying reply-guy), his biggest strength is reflected in his pinned tweet: that few have ever actually heard his side of the story. As such, he is in a unique position to completely dispel nearly a decade of ferocious political smearing, and relate to an audience (in a rather humorous way) that once was a key component of center left politics – and bring them back into the fold.

However –and this should go without saying – we cannot forget that is still the scion of the president who presided over the worst of the genocide in Gaza, and his quips should be taken with a grain of salt and not just as a personal reputational rehabilitation campaign, but one for his now politically disgraced father.

Not Citizen Kane but says:

What else is there to say? While he’s technically an ivy leaguer, the guy is best known as a failson of a former president with well-documented substance abuse issues and family corruption accusations. If you were betting you’d have guessed his more serious brother would be president one day, but you’d obviously have bet wrong.

There is something to be said about how upfront he appears about who he is, though. That “have a beer with him” energy. People like feeling like they know their politicians, that there aren’t any hidden agendas with this guy (or at least it feels that way). But if you did corner him into talking about Middle East foreign policy in a serious way, he’d likely give some decidedly unpopular takes that would ruin his personable facade. I suspect that being out of any kind of office is the most popular he’ll ever be.

Still, name recognition certainly goes a long way in this country, and people too often subscribe to the idea that political leadership is genetic, or at least can compensated by a strong VP and cabinet. We can hope we’ve left his family in the history books but unfortunately, in American politics you never know.

This is unrelated to Hunter Biden btw, I just wanted to write about George W. Bush. 🤷‍♂️

jane madden says:

Hunter Biden has risen, at least in the form of a social media presence. Now, instead of the faceless jokes we made about his laptop, crack pipe, and penis size, you can directly subtweet him on X: The Everything and Payments App. Now, a big horde of anger is ready to cast the first stone at Hunter, but to ask the quintessential question: are those throwing stones at Hunter truly without sin?

Perhaps we should be more careful when rendering judgment upon others; living a perfectly ethical life in modernity according to everyone's standards. There will always be "opps,” haters, and doubters who nitpick your ESPN Not Top Ten moments and try to read negative qualities into your very essence.

Growing up in a family like mine, your word carried a lot of weight and tactfulness was valued highly. "Bite your tongue” - "Don't bring up abortion with Dad” - "Be careful around disclosing plans to your Aunt." You learned to live with all the various rules and constraints from growing up in an interconnected, multi-generational life. There are various people in my family who at times became our Hunter Biden. That is, the one who committed cardinal sins and transgressions that reflected poorly upon all of us. The ones who made a scene, had trouble with the law, were in debt, or had substance abuse problems. To be a "Hunter Biden" is to be a scapegoat. But the truth is, people can change for the better. When they choose to try to live a better life, I think they should be given more grace than the average poster grants them.

I think a lot about those who were deemed a "Hunter Biden" and never got the chance to turn things around. In 2019, my stepbrother passed away from alcohol poisoning. My stepfather, one of the toughest men I have met in my life, now carries the wound of burying his only child. That forever changed him. I am happy that Hunter chose the path of recovery and sobriety. He chose to be a better man and I cannot see myself criticizing his posts; what he does now is harmless compared to what may have been done in the White House by his father. But that's because I am separating the Biden family from the Biden administration, and honestly what that family has gone through resonates with me on a personal level.

Hunter and I share an ethnic background and religious upbringing, which admittedly give me a level of sympathy that makes me biased. Yes, I am happy that Hunter Biden is posting. I hope he baits and pisses off as many chuds as possible, and continues the path he is on.

Stretch (Swing State Voter) says:

Hunter Biden in politics is DOA. Not because of the drugs or any of the other salacious things he was up to, but by virtue of his name alone. I don’t know what exactly he is doing with this PR-sanitized, possibly AI-assisted, but still strangely honest Twitter posting he’s suddenly decided to do, but I know it won’t help him get rid of his name. So why? Why is he doing this?

This is a guy who has had his worst moments scrutinized and relentlessly made fun of by political opponents of his dad. A guy who has done genuinely corrupt things, and who – I cannot emphasize enough – has the last name of the biggest failure of a president in the public eye since Carter. What’s his endgame? Does he actually think he can have a career in politics? I have absolutely no idea, and while I think it’s pointless, I also think it will be very funny. So I’m in.

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Jon Neumann says:

In two weeks of unfiltered Twitter posting, Hunter Biden has connected more immediately and impactfully with the American people than all the speechwriters, image consultants, and messaging gurus the Democratic Party has wasted billions on over the past two decades. Hunter has become the beloved Prodigal Son of liberal American politics: taken for dead and therefore adored by his ailing father, all the while maligned by the pharisaical elites who are the self-appointed guardians of the whitewashed tomb that is the establishment Democratic Party.

On Twitter, Hunter speaks with the freedom of a man who has already failed every purity test the Democratic elites (and their legacy media cronies) are imposing upon upstart candidates like Graham Platner. Like the biblical Prodigal Son, Hunter admits to tarnishing his family name and squandering his wealth on prostitutes (and more anachronistically, crack). Hunter’s public reputation is already dead. He does not have to worry about committing political suicide when exposing the spiritual rot within the elite DNC circles that once welcomed him just to parasitize off the benefits that came with his family name. Hunter can point out that the Democrat pharisees who police the purity of anti-establishment candidates have only aided in the restoration to power of a Trump family criminal syndicate whose corruption and excess would put King Herod himself to shame.

For anyone who thinks the moral character of our political figures should be based more on their commitment to dismantling oppressive institutions than on their private personal indiscretions, the arrival of the Prodigal Son Hunter Biden on Twitter is a cause for celebration.

joe alter says:

I feel sorry for the guy. I don’t think he should have taken the pardon, but I can understand it.

Here’s what I think: he should be filing pro-se lawsuits against the Trump Administration for declaratory judgment, doing what I’m doing. I’m sure he’s a gifted attorney and can easily do it. He has really broad standing to file such cases. I think he could do a lot of good.

Michael E. The Thinker says:

The first thing that comes to mind are memes crafted from unfortunate drug-related photos that he’s since owned up to in their entirety. This is probably all Hunter is actually known for to those under the age of 25. Smoking crack, naked pics with girls, it’s all just whatever to me.

The second thing might be his interview with Channel 5’s Andrew Callahan, a man himself not free from scandals: a genuinely refreshing yet bizarre look into a man that was the punching bag of right wing media for years, to little real impact on anything but Hunter’s own mental health. If you haven’t watched it for some reason, go watch it right now. He speaks for himself better than I could here.

The third thing I think of at this point is actually his artwork. He’s pretty good! The style is distinct and thought provoking, and it’s clear from the detail and output on his portfolio that he likely spends the vast majority of his time painting. Reminds me of another one term president’s “failson.” This art is truly worth a look.

Now when I think deeper, I do eventually consider Joe, nepotism, potential (yet unproven) corruption and the “laptop” that bared no fruit (beyond those memes). But if I dig even deeper it becomes difficult to find anyone other than Hunter and his own family or friends that he’s hurt to any appreciable degree. I don’t know if Hunter is going to run for office. I know he won’t actually be the president, so I don’t care to consider it much. His social media frenzy has been fun to watch, however, and I hope he keeps clapping back at freaks online with some of the most spectacular ratios I’ve ever seen.

I think it’s good we all learn it’s important to have some outlets. Let’s call it retribution, revenge, or maybe realization of self. So keep on painting and posting, Hunter. It suits you.

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Hannah says:

It was very briefly funny seeing Hunter Biden, such a major figure of the last five years, so candidly shitposting. It soon became clear that he is trying to make something out of this. I don’t know whether it’s a political future or just trying to grift some money via rebranding, but either way it got dull very fast.

What I find so insidious is that he and his defenders are positioning the rebrand as him sobering up and getting his life together but the problem has never been drug use. He very much is a corrupt figure who broke the law due to advantages he gained from his father’s position. He had a role in the country’s operation and was a core figure in Biden trying to stay on for reelection.

In many ways Hunter Biden is everything wrong with our political system: that an unelected, incompetent criminal failson can have any influence over our country, especially in cheerleading the worst choices of his evil dementia-ridden father. The absolute meltdown that the right had over Hunter Biden compared to the similarly blatant nepotistic corruption of Trump’s children makes it easy to overlook Hunter Biden’s evils, but I do not want to see this man’s image laundered into the funny former drug addict meme guy.

Producer Zach says:

Can a man’s only legitimate claim to the throne be BIG DICK ENERGY?

We’re about to find out.

Leonardo Wassilie says:

How does a child live through the death of a sibling and their mother, wondering why they lived? How does a person recover from drugs and alcohol addiction and move forward? Can a society forgive a man with a past of consequences from unresolved trauma? How does a man find his way through life in the footsteps of his brother and father?

I pose these questions to prompt insight into how a man can decolonize their past of a colonial construct and try to find purpose and peace on Mother Earth in service to stewarding the lands we cherish so much. Maybe Hunter Biden has found a similar path.

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Demitria says:

I am not the first woman on Twitter (you’ll never get me to say X) to bring up Lana Del Rey in the wake of Hunter Biden’s searing arrival to the platform. He has burst upon the scene like an alien ship reassociating a stale terrain; he is essentially the only exciting thing to happen to the timeline in years. When asked by a user, “why the fuck did I just see a video of hunter biden getting a footjob on twitter wtf,” he gallantly replies: “I don’t know dude but you didn’t have to watch it.” When accused of being a member of the elite oligarch class, he attaches this photo and insists, “Do I look like I’m part of the elite oligarch class. This was taken at a super 8 motel off I95 by the way.”

I was raised by Lana Del Rey alongside innumerable women of my generation, including one of Biden’s lovers, @weed_slut_420, who also happens to be Addison Rae’s costume designer. After posting a string of my-old-man-is-a-bad-man-esque photos of the two of them, she invokes Lana’s Off To The Races with the caption: “It really waaaas glass room bathroom Chateau Marmont.” They are literally posing naked in a mirror together at the Chateau Marmont.

Each and every woman I love and respect is absolutely slutting herself out for him on the timeline daily. Sometimes he responds, sometimes he only exists as a medium upon which we project our private fantasies.

Del Rey deals chiefly with the singular yet universal experience of making art by engaging in a romantic relationship with an insane man. In Salamander she writes, “My life is my poetry, my love making is my legacy.” Perhaps her greatest artistic achievement is distilling, unlike any other artist I’ve seen, the sensation of giving yourself over to a man, of funneling the power from his cultural position into your own body, of taking his freedom and transforming it into your fun. She is making art –making life itself – through love making:

I only mention it ‘cause I’m ready to leave L.A.

And I need you to come

I guess I could manage if you stay

It’s just if you do, I can’t see myself having any fun, so

Let me love like a woman

Let me hold you like a baby

She seamlessly captures the moment in a relationship through which you feel freedom within proximity to unrestricted masculinity, even if that proximity in itself is a restriction, a containment, a boundary, unassailable.

In an age where “are blowjobs abusive to women?” discourse clogs our feed alongside incessant replies from Nazis, it’s particularly beautiful to witness a man imbue our sad digital world with real, unmistakable sensuality. Hunter Biden is unapologetic in his appreciation for women, in his awareness of their pertinence to his personal project. He is forging an arena in which the great artists of our time (women posting on Twitter) can create their art, namely sexual projection. To love Hunter Biden is to love this art itself.

Evan Stern says:

Hunter for President. I really mean that. Run Hunter, run. Run as far and as fast as you can. Get on the debate stage. Go on Rogan. Eat corn in Iowa and cheesesteak in Pennsylvania. Run for President of the United States, an office you will never, ever occupy. Run anyway. American needs you in the race. The Democrats need you in the race.

Donald Trump never would have won the 2024 election without the help of the demented Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. RFK’s campaign courted every shade of anti-vaxxing, conspiracist, beef tallow-bathing, raw milk-drinking weirdo who felt (fairly or unfairly) alienated by mainstream politics. Scorned by the Democrats, RFK took his voters into the Republican tent and forged a new coalition. The merger of MAGA and MAHA is the most underappreciated reason Kamala lost – whether a deliberate, elegantly choreographed kayfabe or a genuine stroke of electoral opportunism.

As we approach 2028, the universe of disaffected, distrustful, angry voters will only expand. They’re aggrieved, they hate the establishment, and the need a champion. Hunter Biden can be that champion. He can be their avatar.

Is Hunter anti-vaccine? Is he inclined to validate the most destructive attitudes toward public health, trans kids, and the very foundations of science and empirical reality? No, Hunter Biden is no RFK. He holds liberal values and believes in the pursuit of a more perfect union. But he’s a sharp contrast from every other potential Democratic nominee: he’s never held office, he’s got no consultants, he’s beholden to no constituency and no interest group. He’s just a guy on Twitter with an axe to grind.

Hunter must run for President to empower all those voters who cannot see themselves in the campaign of any other Democratic candidate. He must earn their trust, their support, and indeed their loyalty. Beating the Republican nominee requires mobilizing the outsider vote – first in a rogue candidacy, then ultimately with that rogue candidate pledging their support to the party’s choice to bring a winning coalition together. The Republicans understand the strategy. Hunter Biden is our man to counter, lest we lose the exact same way in 2028.

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Previously, on Certain Thoughts:

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