For years, Hunter Biden was treated as either a punchline or a protected species, depending on which cable network you were watching. This week, he complicated that neat little arrangement by doing something genuinely unexpected, telling the truth. In a marathon five and a half hour interview on The Shawn Ryan Show, Hunter Biden took a flamethrower to some of the defining policies of his father’s presidency, and the results were brutal.
Sitting down with host Shawn Ryan, Hunter did not mince words about immigration. “We need vibrant immigration,” he said, before adding the part Democrats usually avoid out loud. “But we don’t want immigrants that are coming here illegally, draining us of resources, and being prioritized above people that are actual, literal heroes.” That alone is enough to give half of Washington heartburn. It gets worse when you remember this is the son of Joe Biden saying it.
The numbers back up why this struck a nerve. During Joe Biden’s presidency, roughly 2.4 million immigrants entered the country each year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with Goldman Sachs estimating about 60 percent came illegally. That is not vibrant immigration. That is chaos with a press release.
Hunter also tossed in a revisionist history lesson that will not age well. He claimed the White House had secured Republican support for a sweeping border deal before it collapsed, then blamed Donald Trump for killing it by threatening primaries. That is a familiar talking point, but it conveniently ignores the fact that Trump enforced border policy through executive action while Democrats insisted for years that their hands were tied.
Where Hunter was most devastating was Afghanistan. He called the 2021 withdrawal “an obvious f—ing failure,” which is about as direct as it gets. He admitted the buck stopped with his father, even if he tried to spread some blame around to generals and advisers. That moment of honesty matters. Thirteen U.S. service members died in an ISIS-K suicide bombing during the evacuation at Kabul’s airport, and pretending that was just bad luck has never sat well with the public.
To be clear, Hunter still said leaving Afghanistan was the right decision. But he echoed the anger over how it was handled and admitted there was a better way to do it. That is a remarkable admission from someone who has spent years avoiding responsibility by association.
The irony here is thick. The left spent years insisting any criticism of Joe Biden’s border or foreign policy was partisan nonsense. Now those criticisms are coming from inside the family. Hunter Biden may not have meant to, but he just delivered one of the harshest indictments of the Biden legacy yet, and he did it without a single Republican talking point. Sometimes the most damaging truths come from the people you least expect to say them.
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