How Hunter Biden Won the Internet

After Callaghan’s interview was published, producers of two other shows – South Africa-focused “Wake Up All” and Shawn Ryan’s podcast – reached out. Biden said yes. Aside from helping other addicts, she says she didn’t have a plan or a clear understanding of who she was talking to, but she felt she was ready to talk. Shawn Ryan, a podcast writer, former Navy Seal, and former CIA operative, has spent countless hours over the years attacking Biden’s father and adding to the laptop charges. “People told me not to go on. I’m like, look, they’re going to ask me anything, anything, and I’m going to answer it right,” says Biden. “Thank goodness I didn’t see anything he did.”

By January of this year, Mr. Biden is said to have begun to see the format as a form of reform and purpose. Doing this through mass media with a large audience is an obvious strategy for anyone paying attention. (“No one gives a shit about what anyone says on CNN,” he says.) It’s also a familiar Trumpian strategy.

“People have confused courage with truth. I don’t think Mr. Trump has ever had a real day in his life,” Biden says in comparison. “I think everything he does is well calculated and he does it without fear. It’s as cautious as a tyrannical person. He lies about everything.”

Biden, meanwhile, knows that the rest of the world has seen him down, meaning that certainty is not really an option. He sees the importance of an audience like Channel 5’s, which attracts more than 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube and appeals to the type of people who believe nothing. Biden’s most powerful person, whom he mentions at the beginning of our conversation, is Candace Owens. His reach is huge – he has 35 million followers on social media.

“I’ve been trying to think and see maybe where there’s an opportunity to get people who are, you know, MAGA-adjacent or MAGA to open their hearts a little bit,” he says. “I don’t believe this country is really as divided as we keep saying. I think we’ve all been manipulated by algorithms where a few oligarchs make billions of dollars and we need to start dealing with that before we go back to Thanksgiving dinner.”

Biden created the X account just two days before his Owens interview on May 21, and has been tweeting with the gusto of a former drug addict, sometimes more than 100 times a day. “Regardless of how I feel about X,” he says, “I think X was the best and most dangerous and dangerous place, just like going to Candace was not a good place to live.”

By the time his interview with Owens ended, he already had thousands of followers (and hired a PR guy). During the interview, Owens apologized to Mr. Biden, calling his past behavior “horrible” and his past views “confused.” He won over not only Owens but many of his confused sycophants, who a year ago had sworn that he was an open Antichrist. In an email to WIRED, the podcast host says he’s not surprised: “Amidst the politics we’re constantly being shaped by, Hunter admitting his mistakes and past habits came as a breath of fresh air,” says Owens. “I was confident that the interview would go that way, because you can’t fool people; Hunter was honest, so people were receptive.”