Skip Jill Biden’s Book and Read Hunter Biden’s Social-Media Posts Instead

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For some time, the Biden family standings were clear. Hunter, the ne’er-do-well son, resided in the basement. Joe, occasionally buffoonish but a successful and durable politician, sat in the middle. Jill, the community-college professor with a bright smile, was widely liked—even if some conservatives scoffed at her wanting to be addressed as “doctor.” (Everyone agreed that Beau, the saintly oldest son who died of cancer at 46, had been the best of the bunch.)

The Biden family is at its highest peak of attention since Joe left office in January 2025. Jill is on tour for her memoir View From the East Wing; Joe spoke Friday night at a Best Western in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Hunter is on X, Substack, and a podcast. Something strange has happened in the midst of this: As each of them has tried to publicly reconcile themselves with troubled recent history, Hunter has been oddly charming, while Jill has turned heel.

The former president, for his part, is simply no longer relevant. In his address to the South Dakota Democratic Party’s annual McGovern Day dinner, Joe Biden ripped into his predecessor cum successor. “My God,” he said, “tearing down the East Room of the White House to make room for a ballroom more fitting of Versailles?” The issue is not that he’s wrong about Donald Trump, nor that he was in 2024. It’s that few people are interested in hearing him, assuming they can. (The New York Times reported that Biden was “at times halting and hard to understand, at other times yelling clearly at the top of his voice.”)

Jill’s handling of Joe’s visible aging also explains why she’s lost some of her luster. As the then-president struggled through his term, the first lady was his dogged defender. She was viewed as pivotal in his decision to run for a second term and bitterly opposed anyone who suggested that he step back. Although many Democrats—including some administration staffers—claimed that the extent of Joe’s frailty was invisible to or hidden from them, his wife had no such deniability.

Her book is in part an attempt to justify herself and clear the air, but it’s not going well. Political memoirs are seldom very good. They’re rarely revealing (at least not in the ways that the authors intend), and any juicy material is quickly repackaged by the news media, saving readers from slogging through 300 pages to find it. Her attempt to navigate the situation in print has been awkward, especially her acknowledgement of his “slowing down” during his presidency and her worries that her husband was having a stroke during his disastrous June 2024 debate. Her belated revelations aren’t cathartic or interesting; Democratic leaders may have successfully overlooked Joe Biden’s aging for a long time, but voters were never really fooled. As the Democrats struggle to move past 2024 recriminations and look ahead to the midterms, many prominent party leaders wish Jill would just be quiet.

For many years, they hoped in vain that Hunter would be quiet too. The president’s son was a consistent embarrassment. As I wrote when he was indicted in 2023, he traded on his father’s reputation in ways that were highly distasteful even if they were legal (and Trump was unable to rustle up evidence of illegality despite determined work). He was addicted to drugs, went through a tabloid-ready series of relationships, illegally possessed a gun, and lost track of a laptop that included videos of himself naked with sex workers. Hunter clearly needed help, but he was also a political liability. In June 2024, he was convicted of three felonies; Joe, near the end of his term six months later, pardoned his son, despite earlier pledging not to do so.

Now, at the same time that his stepmother is drawing groans, however, Hunter is winning unexpected praise. Last month, he appeared on the podcast of the right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, which shows some questionable judgment—Owens is a font of false and outrageous claims—but it did provide a forum for him to speak about his work at recovery, as my colleague Matt Viser wrote.

He’s continued discussing that on X, which he rejoined on May 19. He’s been funny (denying an accusation that he left a bag of cocaine at the White House: “I would never have forgotten my drugs”) and wryly self-deprecating (complaining about an image that showed him with a meth pipe rather than his favored crack pipe, he wrote, “This is why we can’t trust AI. Please make the appropriate edit. Thank you for your attention to this matter”). In another case, he replied to a user who had labeled him part of the “elite oligarch class” with a haggard selfie: “Do I look like I’m a part of the elite oligarch class. This was taken at a super 8 motel off I95 by the way.”) His notorious paintings are even pretty good—certainly more interesting than those made by George H. W. Bush’s son.

This has produced something previously rare: good press for Hunter Biden. He seems more harmless now in part because his father is no longer in office. Roger Clinton and Billy Carter were scandalous when their brothers were presidents; now they’re just quirky history. Hunter’s sins also pale before the blatant corruption of the Trump family—as he has been eager to point out. (It’s impossible to imagine the Trump DOJ charging Eric or Donald Jr. the way the Biden DOJ did Hunter.) But Hunter’s appearances have also resonated because although he has been combative and even defensive, he’s been less interested in rationalizing his past. A heartfelt post about Johnny Cash and his redemption story was especially touching. Without the complication of his father’s political career and (one hopes) without political ambitions of his own, Hunter seems to be expressing something closer to his authentic self, warts and all.

That’s a risky move, though. Hunter has plenty of warts; he hasn’t fully acknowledged his unsavory business career, and, as Viser notes, he has a worrying taste for conspiracy theories. He also risks overexposure. Yesterday he posted a video in which he previewed big plans, including launching a Substack. Social media, like political careers and crack cocaine, can be intoxicating. But Hunter Biden still has a chance to learn a lesson from his father’s presidency: Leave before you wear out your welcome.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has halted its attacks on Iran after Tehran stopped firing on Israel, though he stopped short of formally declaring a cease-fire and warned that any renewed Iranian attack would prompt a forceful response.
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Evening Read

A paper sculpture of Lady Liberty's torch made of strips of the printed “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” with the lines of the poem forming the flames. — Illustration by Stephen Doyle

The ‘Battle Hymn’ Can’t Be Ignored

By Jake Lundberg

We tend to think we have one national anthem, but to me, we have always seemed to have two. The first is the official one, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The second is “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The two are different on every level. Only one of them provokes us to ponder our identity as a nation.

When we sing the first, we sometimes forget that we’re actually asking a question, and not a very important one. “O say can you see,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” begins, in search of an affirmation about the flag: It was there in the evening, when we saluted it; it was there through the night, when we saw it in the flashes of battle; is it still there now, as the day breaks?

Read the full article.