Hunter Biden called President Donald Trump an “existential threat” to the country during a two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson that aired Monday, marking the latest stop on a media tour that has taken him to conservative and right-leaning figures. “The one existential threat I think we face as a country is Donald Trump,” Biden told Carlson, according to the Washington Post. “I’m not this believer that Trump is merely the symptom of a disease. I believe Trump is central to why this disease has gone from a local epidemic to a pandemic in the USA.”
The interview, released on Carlson’s podcast, covered a wide range of topics including Trump’s leadership, addiction recovery, the controversial laptop controversy, and Biden’s financial situation. Carlson, who has sharply criticized Trump in recent months over foreign policy decisions, offered one of his harshest assessments yet, describing the president as a “flamboyantly corrupt leader,” according to Newsweek. “We’ve never had a flamboyantly corrupt leader like this,” Carlson said during a discussion about money, influence and political power.
Beyond Trump, Biden revealed financial details rarely discussed publicly. He told Carlson he still owes between $4 million and $6 million to the law firm Winston & Strawn and other attorneys who represented him through multiple investigations and criminal cases. Biden said he is now focused on writing, speaking, creating art and other projects to rebuild his finances and avoid bankruptcy.
The interview also included a lengthy discussion of the laptop saga that dominated the 2020 election. Biden maintained that many emails attributed to him were authentic but disputed the narrative that he knowingly abandoned a laptop at a Delaware repair shop, saying he has “zero recollection” of doing so. Carlson said he believed the laptop material was real but disputed how it entered public circulation, claiming that people connected to Benjamin Netanyahu—not Russians—had tried to share the allegations with him while he was at Fox News.
A Complicated Relationship Revealed
The interview drew attention partly because Carlson was one of Biden’s most prominent critics during the 2020 election and throughout Joe Biden’s presidency. Yet emails that emerged in recent years from material purportedly recovered from Biden’s laptop revealed a more complicated private relationship. In a 2014 email, Carlson thanked Biden for writing a recommendation letter for Carlson’s son’s Georgetown University application and expressed hope that their families could have dinner together. In a 2015 exchange, Carlson told Biden he had contacted an editor on his behalf and expressed sympathy for challenges facing the Biden family, with Biden responding by calling Carlson a friend.
Carlson acknowledged at the start of the podcast that he and Biden had not seen each other in 11 years but joked that he had “talked a lot about you….in the meantime,” as the two shared a laugh. Biden explained that his recent appearances on conservative podcasts—including shows hosted by Candace Owens and Shawn Ryan—were intended to break through years of caricature and misinformation rather than to persuade audiences to adopt his political views. “The things that connect us are more important than the labels we put on each other,” Biden said, arguing that long-form conversations allow for more substantive dialogue than traditional cable news.
Sources
- Washington Post — Hunter Biden’s “existential threat” quote and core interview details
- Newsweek — Carlson’s “flamboyantly corrupt” characterization, financial details, laptop discussion, and relationship history with emails
- Multiple outlets — Confirmation of interview airdate and two-hour duration
