The Daily Beast Podcast - Hunter Biden on Burisma, Don Jr., and Cooking Crack!

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

On a special edition of our hit podcast The New Abnormal, the president’s son opens up to Molly Jong-Fast about … well, about a lot. Why the Trumps continue to go after him so hard. Why his wife won’t let him have a laptop. How easy it is to cook crack cocaine. How hard it is to live in fear of a relapse.  But Hunter Biden also gave some hard-to-swallow answers about the emails he traded with the bigwigs at energy companies in China and Ukraine—answers that could come back to haunt him. It’s all part of an absolutely gripping episode that you absolutely have to hear. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how we get our out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure everything doesn't go too far off the rails while we have fun discussions about our world gone mad. And while I take that

duty seriously, ourselves, not so much. Today, well, let's just say this is a big one. We are joined today by Hunter Biden, author of Beautiful Things and son of President Joe Biden. And he'll talk to us about addiction, as well as answering some unanswered questions about his time in the private sector. But first, we have New York Times media columnist and former BuzzFeed News Editor Ben Smith. Hi, Ben Smith. Welcome to the new abnormal. Thank you for having me on, Mollett. I'm excited.

You've, like, broke a lot of scoops lately, too. In fact, that you wrote this substack piece, which had, like, a bunch of, like, little clandestine scoops in it. Clandestine scoops are the best scoops. That's right. It's all about it. Can we talk for a minute about substack? do you think Substack is creating a newspaper? No, I mean, I think the big thing that's happening is that like across the kind of media industries and all sorts of industries,

like there are these platforms where individuals can make money directly from their fans. Like it's true, you know, musicians can do it and porn stars can do it and journalists can do it. And I think Substack is where that's happening in media. And it's not the only place. I think in a way, it's kind of part of a broader trend across really the whole economy. There's this sort of shift, which is there's like a kind of a group of technology writers are putting together a substack together, right? Yeah, they're doing something called Side Channel, which is a Discord server connected to all their substacks. And not even all subsstacks.

One of them is using a different platform, but a kind of alliance of individuals. I mean, it's interesting. It's like the sort of power and media shifting away from the big central company and toward the individual writers who can then put together some sort of central thing, but that they still control. Do you think that is the future? I mean, I think it's a future, right? I make these pendulums always swing, and there are things that you would only want to do. You know, you sort of need to be at the New York Times to do.

But if what you want to do is block all the time and collect, and there's certainly people for whom it's just going to be much, much more lucrative and in some ways more satisfying just to talk directly to readers who really interested in their stuff without dealing with the sort of politics and dynamics of a big republication. For some writers, there's going to be a dynamic where it just made, it's more satisfying and certainly more lucrative to speak directly to readers who care about their work rather than dealing with kind of the politics and the dynamics and the economics of being

part of something bigger. So that's sort of amazing, right? Because that never existed before. There were people like I.F. Stone who mailed out newsletters. It's not totally unheard of. Ron Paul, in fact, did a pretty good newsletter business. And I think in other industries, like in Hollywood, the power of talent has been pretty clear for a long time. But I think, social media has allowed journalists to become talent in a way that, I don't know, that drives their boss is crazy and among other things. Do you see that at the New York Times? Yeah. So, I mean, I think like it's this, you know, at every one of these publications, the stars have more leverage than they used to to kind of do what they want to define their own relationships with the publication.

And I think there's, you know, I think that's only going to get more complicated, but also it's big opportunities for the publication if they kind of use it, right? That's kind of amazing. Do you think they'll use it right? I don't know. I think it's actually pretty tricky. Yeah, that's what I think, too. It'll be really interesting. So let's just talk for a minute about Republicans, like, leaning into culture war stuff. Are you seeing that? I mean, you cover media, so you cover this right-wing media, which feels like its own siloed ecosystem.

Yeah, but I do think that, I mean, it's just remarkable the extent to which the, the Republicans just haven't gotten kind of traction on Joe Biden. I mean, one thing I was just thinking is, you know, there were huge protests after Obama's election in 2008, there were huge protests after Donald Trump's election. Nobody's in the streets about Joe Biden, you know? It's just, and I honestly, like, I don't, it's actually sort of a strange thing because it's not, I doubt it is boring in the White House. They've managed to create this perception that it's boring.

And also that, you know, this perception that Biden is this grandfatherly figure that who has everything personally totally under control. Like, I actually haven't really seen any reporting to confirm either of those things. It's pretty amazing. And conservatives just haven't been able to sort of find the right polarizing traction around what I'd consider kind of like normal politics and policy, like health care. And instead, it's just 100% Dr. Seuss and cancel culture. Yeah, and sneakers.

I think the most interesting thing, though, is that thing that Dave Weigel said from CPEC that they can't move the anti-Biden merchandise. that's still just all Hillary and Obama. Right. And so, well, let's say, you know, but Biden isn't on the ballot next year. A bunch of, you know, members of Congress are. And so I think they'll try to, try to project these issues that are about, you know, cultural change and about race, you know, into these, into the midterms.

Rather than trying to say that, you know, that we wish you had less money or something, which is probably less good appeal. Which is what Tucker Carlson has been doing, right? because he was like, Democrats want to win on changing demographics. Let's go cut to the Great Replacement Theory. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's right. This stuff sort of bleeds right into really terrifying, fringy racism.

Right. I mean, I think that Tucker Carlson is a white nationalist, but what I think is, and I think this is, I mean, maybe he's gotten a little bit worse, but this has sort of been going for a while. But I think what's interesting is Lachlan Murdoch, this seems to reflect the views of Lachman. and Murdoch more and more.

I mean, I haven't written quite a bit about Fox. I think it's very hard to know what the Murdox think. And the inmates fully run the asylum. Lachlan has moved to Australia, which is a strange place from which to run a U.S. media company. I don't think anybody's telling Tucker Carlson what to say on any given night. And I think he has this very clear grip on what people want to hear. I mean, the line inside Fox that they always say is that, you know,

we have to respect our audience, which basically means we have to pander to our audience, and we can't ever tell them something they believe isn't true. And they were very freaked out by the challenges from Newsmax in particular from their right. And so they've been totally focused on kind of protecting their right flank. And these cultural issues are driving ratings for them. And so they're doing it. I mean, I do think it's real. I mean, I think their viewers are responsive to, you know, things like the Dr. Seuss story

and that like while there's an impulse just to laugh at it, that it's real politics. It's not fake. It's not something that it's going to, that, you know, Democrats in the midterms aren't going to have to deal with. It's culture upstream of politics. Yeah, I mean, it's just as politics. But, I mean, it's not policy. Right, yeah. What I've seen, and I think since you know a lot more about Fox,

I'm curious to know your take on this, but what I've seen is that Fox, they, you know, try to, like, go real news and by real news, I mean that in quotes, but they tried to, like, call the election the way it actually happened. And the viewers didn't like that. So, and they, and, you know, Newsmax came in and started, like, taken over. And so, or not taking over, but taking some share of their market. And then they just were like, forget it. Let's have Tucker Paulson do more hours of programming.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. In particular, they called the election, like, very aggressively. Like, that Arizona call actually was kind of nuts. And we're first out to sort of break Trump's back. In the nonsense narrative in which the calling of elections gets confused with who voted for whom and who won, right? It was just in the television show of the election that the call matters at all. Like in the actual election, what matters is who voted and who won and the votes all get counted. But Trump was furious at them and his people sort of saw it as a betrayal.

And Fox has been trying to sort of make up for that ever since. And they did really fire everyone who... Yes. Who did, like, actual newsy stuff? Well, I mean, they've never had a big reporting operation, but they did fire the political director, and the sort of polling guy who were involved in that call. They haven't fired the guy who runs the decision desk. He's on contract, so it's a little dicey right now. I would not. I think it's, I don't know. I think he's in a tricky place. And they hired Ben Dominic from the federalist. Indeed.

Which, I mean, that's a, I feel like that's a choice. Yeah, I mean, the idea that they were going to sort of like moderate for the Biden era was never really in the cards. But I do think that, you know, if there was. was a choice to say, you know what, Trump did lose the election, we're not going to, we're not going to just, yeah, that we're not going to do the craziest possible thing at every point. They have, in fact, done the craziest possible thing at every point. So, speaking of the craziest possible thing at every point, let's talk the mayoral race. Yes, so in New York. Right?

But you didn't have to mention it because it's the only important city in the world, but I figure we should just for a couple of your viewers. If there are any of your benighted listeners out in the provinces, they might want to know that's what you're talking about. You and I both grew up in New York. Yeah. I mean, there are a couple of things happening. One is that there are spending limits in New York.

And basically this is a very generous public finance system if you agree to limit your spending. And the effect of that is that you don't have this thing that dominates national politics where the more money you spend on television ads, the more money you can raise. And you're in this infinite cycle of trying to get people mad to raise money to spend more money, to spend more money. And you're doing it for years before a campaign. Here, you save your money until the last month, and so all of the public major communications will happen in the last few weeks. In the meantime, what's happening is sort of, you know, town hall meetings and community board

group meetings and ridiculous Andrew Yang Twitter stunts. I mean, basically, like, standing at subway stops. And Yang has really, you know, obviously walked in and emerged as sort of, you know, the most wide. Yeah, I would say so, but certainly like the most widely. known candidate, the one who's popping in polling. Do you think there's a chance? I mean, it seems like it's Yang, and then way down is like Wiley, Eric Adams, and then below that

is everyone else. I mean, I would say Scott Stringer is in that sort of first tier as well. And let's see, I would say a couple of things. One is that people really aren't paying attention. It's not clear that it's rank choice voting, which means that you, you know, that being people's second choice is very powerful, which could be really good for Yang, could be bad for Yang, if there's sort of a deluge of negative attention over the next couple of months, which I suspect there will be. Like, he has a huge target on his back from all the other candidates and from the

press because I think he's never really been covered in any serious way. Yeah. Like his career, I think there's this sort of, I mean, I think the danger for him is that there's this sort of hazy thing out there that he was sort of like a wealth, he's an entrepreneur who made his own fortune and then ran for president. That's a thing that people have said to me. It's not true at all. He was, you know, a test prep. He was a tutor for a test prep company. who then became the CEO, like an employee of a test prep company. I don't think test prep is a particularly attractive industry, right? Like it's like if you want to think about like how does it, you know,

if you want to sort of have an industry that's emblematic of inequality in America, it's test prep. And that's it. Yeah, I'll say. Like that's his story. Test prep employee runs from air. And that's a much less, I just think when people sort of focus in on him, he's done such a good job of shaping this kind of image in a hazy way that I think there's

some danger that his people focus in. they're like, wait, wait, he's not, he didn't ever, he wasn't really an entrepreneur. He was a test prep guy. Like, what? I just think that's a problem for him. But the big bet he's making is also that, that, like, most of the candidates have been kind of seduced by Twitter into being a more left-wing than the Democratic primary elector, which doesn't want to abolish the police, which cares more about crime, in fact, in Poland,

than they do about police reform. And, you know, and more about the economy than they do about, like, more about jobs than they do about inequality. right? Like that it's just either in Democratic primary, a less kind of activated progressive electorate, then you would imagine if you spend your time on Twitter, which a lot of these folks do. Well, I also think that New York, I mean, I don't know about we live in different neighborhoods,

but like my neighborhood feels like it's on the brink of not existing anymore. Like, there are no more restaurants. Like, all the stores are closed. Like, it's hard to live in New York and not think we're in a lot of trouble here. Yeah, the people's biggest issue are COVID and the economy. And so I just think it's easy to get sort of just, I think, and I think Yang's point of view is that if he just stays big picture, says, I'm like, convinces people that he's the guy, he cares about the jobs and those things. And then frankly, just sort of signals that he's not as progressive as everybody else, that there's more space there than you would expect. But I think there's other strong candidates.

I mean, I think Maya Wiley is really like a, like an interesting person who is connecting in the polls and has a pretty important labor endorsement. Stringer, you know, has done it. I think, you know, if the goal is to be everybody's second choice, I think he's done a pretty good job at that. What do you think about Ray McGuire? I think he's a real, he's in a really difficult place because he's sort of running, you know, he is, you know, I think there was a headline that called him the Black Bloomberg. But the thing with Bloomberg was he had unlimited personal resources that he dumped into

politics on just an unprecedented scale. And McGuire is a rich guy, but rich people don't have a billion dollars in liquid assets that they can drop into, you know, a television campaign that dominates the airwaves. Like, he doesn't have enough money to, you know, make a meaningful impact in the incredibly expensive and noisy politics of New York. And then people don't really want to write him checks because there's an, there's an illusion that he's Bloomberg. So I actually think he's sort of stuck in a weird play.

Sort of he's not, he's not really rich enough because nobody is to be, you know, almost nobody is. Except Bloomberg. To be the self-funded. And Hoover's the richest man in New York. He wasn't just some rich guy. And I think that, like, he's not. Like, yeah, in this age of inequality, it's like you sort of have to realize the difference between the 1% and the 0.01% and just being, even the 0.1% where McGuire is, doesn't, isn't Bloomberg money.

And so I think he's, he's not, there's not really, I don't really see what, what lane he's running in actually. Yeah, I mean, there is so much. It does seem to me like there is so, I mean, there are just so many people running in this, uh, in, this mayor's race that it seems to me like kind of impossible for him. Yeah, there's also a really interesting candidates who are a real following. Sam Morales has like really galvanized the sort of DSA folks.

You know, I think people like, you know, there are candidates like I think you know, Catherine Garcia probably more than Sean Donovan has like people who have been like, oh wow, like this person's like definitely not going to win. But I think she'd be good at being mayor. You know, there's a couple of people who sort of run agencies in Donovan as the other, you know, who show up in these debates and

You think like, huh, this person has no chance, but surprisingly seem like they've thought about being married would probably be pretty good at it. So I don't know. It's a weird year. And I think, you know, if you look at the history of New York Merrill politics, the last two of the last three got elected as Republicans. And de Blasio, you know, benefited from Anthony Wiener's implosion. So it's a very, I don't think there's like sort of recent history that's particularly useful in telling you who's going to win this primary or how people are going to pay attention to it or not. And it's also like a lot of these candidates sort of shaped their platforms during this like incredibly dark winter. And people, and now like all the voters are going to be showing up like hung over and, you know, like they're going to be coming like straight from the club to the polls on a Tuesday morning. Right. Like the vibe in New York City this summer is not going to be the kind of like dark kind of. kind of, I mean, I think, you know, the momentum could stall, but like a lot of those

restaurants in your neighborhood are going to be open come gym. Yeah. And so I don't, and I think there will be a sense that there's huge pressure on jobs and all sorts of things to worry about. But also, obviously, there'll be a sense of recovery. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. Thank you so much for joining us. This was really great.

Yeah, it's fun to talk to you about this stuff. Thanks for having me out. Hey, folks. If you haven't heard, every single week, we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien.

Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to Newcast. New abnormal.

Dot the DailyBeast.com. That's New Abnormal. Dot the Dailybeast.com. Hunter Biden is the author of Beautiful Things and the son of President Joe Biden. So I read that book. I, you know, I'm sober 23 years. So, first of all, my first question is,

you don't have a laptop. Yeah. Nope. No. Milia took all my electronics away when I first got sober, which was a blessing. But no laptop.

Amazing. It's like right from VEP. You say your superpower is, finding crack anytime, anywhere. I, as someone who did quite a lot of drugs in my misspent youth, am like beyond impressed that you learned how to cook your own crack. We're not glorifying the lifestyle in any way, but you learn to cook your own crack. Yeah. Well, you know what? It's not, it's not rocket science. And I tell you what, it didn't take, you know, a physics degree to be able to figure out how to do it. And once you do it, it's unfortunately, pretty simple.

No, I mean, I could never do it, but I have to say, I was like, wait, what? Oh, you just didn't have the determination that I had. Well, you also went to Georgetown. I did not. This is the thing I always think about it. It's like, why do you think Don Jr. is so obsessed with you? I don't know, God Almighty, but it seems like they all are. I don't know. I think part of it, and I really truly try not to think about it very much, is that I don't know about them,

but I just know that, I mean, the relationship that I have with my dad is, I think, the most special, most beautiful thing. I always say, if I can be half the dad, my dad has been to me and my brother and my sister. And I will have lived a incredibly valuable life. And so, but as it relates to them, I don't know, but God Almighty, they really are. It's amazing. And it, I thought it would subside a little bit, but they still just, you know, I don't know what it is. It's so weird. I wonder, like, do you remember the moment that they decided you were the most important member of the Democratic Party? The most important, but I do. Actually, I don't write about it in the book, but I do talk about it with Adam Entos, at the New Yorker.

And there's a little bit of a scene. There's like the beginning of a scene that might have gotten cut out in the book. But the time that I was realized that was right around when I started to get sober and green. I guess that it was only then did I realize the level of their obsession because long enough to look up from whatever drink or drug I was pursuing at the moment. And it seemed like that every word out of President's mouth was some kind of demeaning or just horrible insult towards me. But it was, it's interesting. I didn't, I didn't think that it could have possibly grown and they just kept digging that hole, which was a dry hole, in my opinion, politically. Do you think they did it because they wanted you to kill yourself?

Well, first of all is this, is that as a person in recovery, one of the things that I have truly tried to come to grips with is that the world actually does not revolve around me. I know, but this part does seem to. Yeah. I mean, usually it doesn't, but on this, I feel like it does. I do feel like sometimes in meetings when people say that, I go, let me tell you a story. I think that the reason that they did what they did was because they know this. I don't think that they thought that they would necessarily convince anyone not to vote for my dad because I'm an addict. I think there's far, far too many people.

I mean, everyone, everyone I know knows someone that they love that it suffers from addiction. And I think, though, that they knew that there literally is nothing more important to my dad than his family. And if they could, whether it was, end up in some horrible death or whatever it was their intention and the way in which they pursued me, I think that they thought that they would be able to distract my dad enough that he wouldn't be able to focus on the campaign in the way that he did. But it had the exact opposite effect. Literally the exact opposite effect. They obviously don't know what it's like to be a part of at least this family. The family stuff is really, really, really moving. And but the thing about your story, which I feel as someone who's, I'm 23 years sober, I got sober when I was a teenager and I live in mortal fear of the relapse.

So I feel like nobody knows the story of which is you were a lobbyist and then your dad became vice president and you couldn't stay as a lobbyist. Yeah. And so what I was, I lobbied for Jesuit universities. It was 90% of my business was I'd work for like Detroit Mercy. All Jesuit universities, almost all of them in urban environments. And so the mobile dental clinics in Detroit or a after school program who send teachers into the roughest parts of Philadelphia. So those are the things. I was really, really proud of what I did. But both McCain and the Obama administration had the lobbyist, you know, you had to wear a scarlet

L. I had to reinvent my business. And I did. And I did actually really successfully. You know, I mean, one of the things that people don't get is that at least people that don't have a direct, which I think is so few. You can be in recovery and do incredible. thing. You can be an addict and do incredible things. And I can go, you know, we both could go through the list of

the cultural achievement of people that have both been in active addiction, but more likely when they're out, when they're in recovery, have done just amazing things with their lives. And my story, which I hope the book imparts, is not one long slog from the time of my mom and sister death to, I'm really proud of this stuff that I did. I'm really proud of the things that I did. But at the end of the day, the struggle that was the most difficult and the one that I'm most proud of is that I'm coming up on two years clean. But relapse, like you said, because they tell you when you go into the rooms is that it doesn't get better. It only gets worse. And that's, I can tell you the truth. That is the absolute truth. I mean, that the book could, is very convincing. The story is

you're flying home from Spain and you're exhausted and they offer you a bloody marry. Yeah. And, you know, it's so funny. Not funny at all. But my first rehab was in 2003 and I stayed sober for close to seven years. And I think I've been telling people that it was eight years, but someone corrected me. In the book, it's seven. Yeah. So it's seven. I think it's about seven. And so in that time, you think you'd have better comprehension of that. But anyway, I'm on a plane and literally the thought that pops into my head is that, I had a counselor in my first rehab who told me the story of his relapse when he was 70 years sober and he was on a plane and he was doing incredible things and life was great. And the flight attendant came by and offered him a drink and he took it.

And he was on his way to New York and he woke up in like Tim Buck too. And, you know, mine was not that dramatic in terms of what happened. What happened was is that when you relapse, then the shame that you feel, you just feel so defeated, So absolutely defeated and you don't want to tell anybody. You don't want to tell people in your home group and you don't want to tell the people that love you the most, your wife, your kids, your parents, my brother. And I felt such amount of shame that then you hide it and then you feel more shame and then you feel more guilty and then you have to drink more and then you have to do.

I mean, it just becomes a never-ending cycle. But, you know, I always had both that I could get honest with, which was one of the things that I know not only saved my life when he was living, but saved my life even. now that he's going. The book is candid in your descriptions of your struggles with drug use and sobriety. But the thing I keep thinking about is that there are so many people who have shared your struggles and experiences, but who are currently incarcerated for those same struggles. You're in a unique position to influence policy. Will you and can you? And do you feel like you have a voice in this administration? Well, I sure hope that I can influence a national

discussion. One of the things that I say every time I can get is that I don't work, and I know you know this, Molly. I don't work for the administration. Lo of the whole, oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, or any of these guys. But I don't work for my dad. But what I am is I'm part of a family. And I'm a family that is understandably at the center of every national discussion. And what I hope, Patty Davis wrote this and I want to be able to reach out to her and thank her, this beautiful piece in the, I think, USA Today about her own stroke and while she was in the spotlight with her mom and dad. And I think we're at a time now, largely this is what I say, their efforts have backfired in which they thought that they would

drive me further into the shadows. What I decided to do was go further into the light. And so many people, particularly right now, were suffering not just from a, pandemic as it relates to COVID, but we're suffering from a pandemic that is due to addiction and grief in a way that people really want to have some hope. And I hope that in terms of policy, that a more honest discussion about addiction may lead to some shifts in the way in which we treat, not just addicts, but the way in which we view, the difference between alcohol, which I think is the most dangerous drug. And I know in terms of it's the science of it, that it's the most dangerous drug anyone can engage in women to excess.

But maybe we have a real honest discussion about that. It's funny because I read the book and I think about your brother dying and there's such incredible writing about how your brother, what happened with your brother and like living in that hotel with him. I mean, it's just unbelievable. But I'm curious to know when your brother died, it felt like you were trying to protect your father. Yeah. I don't know if I was when my brother died, was I was... And your relapse, too. Like, it just felt like there was a lot of, like, trying to protect your dad.

Yeah, I think that it was really hard. I would say to people that when Bo died, although it was slow, and I knew that it was inevitable, like so many people that... And that's the thing is that this is not unique in any way. But when Bo was gone, it was like I lost half of myself. And I know that my dad was feeling the same way. And it was really hard to find the vocabulary. again for us to be able to be there for each other. But I always feel, and I think he does too,

and I know that my sister feels the same way, is that I think we're always trying to protect each other. Yeah, I mean, that sounds right to me. Vatim Poslovsky, the Burisma executive, thank you in an email for giving me the opportunity to meet your father and spend some time with him. Did you, in fact, introduce the two? Did they meet? And what was the purpose of the meeting? No, 100% not. And as you can see, like, I truly don't, look, I truly don't know the origin of a lot of this stuff. I truly try to not engage in trying to figure this stuff out. But I do know this, is that there is literally nothing that any investigative body, but when it's been investigated up and down across the globe, has found that either my father or myself had did anything that is wrong, that is unethical. And I really did, as I said in so many times, times. I made a huge mistake in my calculation about how far they would go to smear my dad through by using me. Okay. In spring of 2017, you sent an email titled Expectations, which involved China's largest private energy company, and it discussed details of remuneration packages. Does this ring any bells?

And there was a line in the email that said, interesting for me and my family. And then your pay was set at 850. Do you remember this? And does this ring any bells? I literally don't know what you're, what you're even referring to. Is it from me? This email is sent by you. And it does refer to these things, though. Yeah, I, guys, I don't have it in front of me. But I do know this is that my dad was never involved in any of my business, period. 100% not never even a considered to be a part of anything that I've ever done in business with complete certainty. And, you know, I am 100, I welcome the question because that's the answer. The narrative that has been created has been one that I think over time is not going to hold up very well.

What you can see is I don't spend a lot of time on it. But, you know, I mean, there is an intelligence report from all of our intelligence agencies that has come to the conclusion that this was a Russian operation from the get-go. The thing I'm always struck by is like they go after you in this way and then you have all these, like, Like, you know, Don Jr. is in the meeting for Trump Tower. And Robert Mueller's like, well, it was too stupid to collude, so it's okay. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, is that John Hingeman, I think, has the best line ever. It's all projection or confession. And it really is.

It is all projection or confession with these guys. The things that they were doing that they accused me of that aren't even close to being in the scope of reality are literally all things that we're now finding out that they were. engaged in. When you decided to give that New Yorker interview, were you like, what was the thinking there? And were you freaked out and you weren't sober yet? No, and there wasn't much thinking other than this. Is that

I am a, since I was a kid, a huge fan of the New Yorker. And I got an email from a good friend who was also working to help me as my lawyer in fielding a lot of the media request. And he sent me one from

Adam Entos at the New York. And I looked at him up and he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and writer, staff writer for the New Yorker. And just literally because of that, I thought, you know what? I want to talk to that guy. And I did. It started off, you know, just answering questions and I'm in the worst place in my life. And I just basically, I don't know where there was any necessarily rational thought to it. But I just, Adam is a really fair and honest journalist that, and I decided that, look, if you want to story, Adam. Here's the real story. And I credit Adam actually with those hours that we would speak on the phone, literally opening up my heart just to crack enough to be able to see Melissa ended up being my salvation.

Do you go to meetings? I mean, there are meetings anymore now. No, and I only have not, because I can't stand Zoom, but I talk to somebody in the program at least literally three times a day. That's really good. And we'll go to outcome. Are you a meeting goer? Oh, yeah. I'm like a crazy meeting goer. I am a huge, huge. believer in meetings. And I mean, this is the only period of time in my life where I have not gone to meetings when I've been in recovery. Yeah. So I'm just going to ask you one last thing. With the divorce stuff, it's funny because it's like you don't realize how long you guys were married, you were married since you were in college. Yeah, well, I got out and I did the thing called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. And we met there

in Portland, Oregon. And we got married. I was 23 when I got married. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. So 22 years. And it was awful. You know, I mean, what addiction does to a relationship is just awful. Divorce is awful. And particularly, you know, I mean, I have three incredible girls that are just like the most amazing thing in both of our lives. I tell you what, I don't blame anyone but myself for the collapse of my marriage. But you were so honest in the book when you talked about, like you talked about the text

messages. Yeah. If I were writing a memoir and something like that happened to me, I would write it too because it happened. But I do feel like you don't get credit, you're not getting, you don't get credit for like, this is really, a lot of people are not this honest in the world. In fact, most people. Well, one of the things that I know is this is that I can't afford to not be. And I think that I not only owe it to the people that have, that love me and that have loved me and that work their asses off. and sacrificed so much so many times, whether it is in my marriage or whether it was my girls,

mostly for anybody. The truth is that I can't afford not to be honest with myself. Marriage is hard enough, but then marriage with someone that is going through a cycle of relapse and then do it in the public eye, wow. It's a dangerous mix. I mean, your story is so powerful and as someone who's so powerful. And as someone who's sober, like that relapse and then not getting, being able to get back, I've seen that so many times. Like, that is, I mean, fundamentally, I know that's what would happen to me if I started drinking again because, like, I just see that, you know, I mean, I've had Sponcy's die. Like, I know, you know, that's how it works. I mean, once you have a lot of time, I mean, seven years is a long time.

And then you go out. Like, it's very hard. It's almost impossible to come back. Yeah, well, you know what? Here's the thing. It's not impossible. and I'm proof that it's not impossible. And hopefully I know, at least today, I'm succeeding at it.

And one of the reasons I'm succeeding at it, I believe, is because I wake up in the morning and what I think about is immediately, I force myself, even if I have that like pit in my stomach of what some tabloid is going to say or do, or what somebody's going to tweet or is that what do I have to be great? And I know it sounds trite to anybody who hasn't lived it, But my God, it is literally like that, if you can set the table for the day with that, and there are so many things to be grateful for. And it's little, my brother gave me the key to get out of my own prisons.

The title of the book, he would say, beautiful things, what he couldn't talk, literally. He could get out like code words. One of them was beautiful things, beautiful things. And what he meant. And I knew what he meant then. And it became even more powerful now is that he meant, buddy, you have. so many beautiful things. We have so many beautiful things. Just focus on that, live for that. And that's what I'm doing. And it has been a, I told someone that I was talking to do a week before the

election. They said, maybe this story is going to have a happy ending. And I didn't even have to think about it. I didn't hesitate. I said, it already has it happy. This is before the even election. It already has a happy ending. I'm sober. I have a beautiful baby boy, big beau. I have, I'm in a relationship. My daughters are brilliant and safe. And I'm in, and love their dad as much as their dad loves them. And it had a happy ending then. I love the story and I appreciate it. I hope you'll, are you going to write more?

Yeah, I hope the coolest thing has been is that everything that everything that everything that's because of the constant like attacks. And I love the saying is that getting sober, cleaning it's over is easy. All you have to do is change everything. It's the first time in my life. I've truly changed everything. I write it every day. I paint every day.

And I have always painted and wrote. But I've never been able to. bring together more than a few, maybe a month at its time in which I do it religiously, but it's been close to years now and a lot more to say, hopefully. It's really cool and I think it's a really important message. And I mean, I'm sorry that this, thank you so much for giving us so much time and for answering all our questions, really appreciate it. Oh, thank you guys.

I'm really, really honored that you want to talk to me. I really mean that. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers,

orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Tsubisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams,

which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcast. podcasts. Hi, Jesse Cannon. Hi, Molly Jungfast. So, we're so excited to say negative things. You know, it was a very serious episode and it's time to get a little wild. That's right. You know, since we tape all these things, I never know which, what order they go in. I guess it's at the end, right? Yeah, yes. The segment is at the end. Yes, yes. We all know you listen to the podcast after it's done. We all know. I'm very into, like, doing my homework. Just kidding.

So today, I have, like, a plethora of fuck that guys. I like to think of them as a triumphant of shitty Republican senators. And they are the six Republicans who voted against an anti-Asian hate bill. Okay. and I mean, I'm not, I'm going to go through them because they're, they are the people that I would like to say fuck you to today. And you will recognize a lot of them as frequent, frequent fuck that guy, inhabitors of the space. Number one, Tom Cotton, who thinks he's going to be president next. Number two, Cancun Ted.

You'll remember him from his trip to Cancun. while his constituents were freezing to death. Josh Hawley, who is big on insurrection, and pretty much that's it. Roger Marshall of Kansas, I don't even know who that is. I actually do know who it is. I pride myself on knowing every senator that I was like,

that's a senator? Yeah, he's the worst one. No, actually, he's not the worst one. And of course, everyone's favorite, Rand Paul, who never votes for anything because he wants to destroy the government. And Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Who doesn't think anything because he doesn't have a brain.

Right. In Tommy Tuberville's defense, I don't think he knows how to vote in the Senate. So I would say that he probably didn't know what was happening. But the rest of them, they can go fuck themselves. Well, my fuck that guy fits right in with this crew of assholes. And it is one congressman Jim Jordan. You mean jacketless Jim? Yes, yes.

I like that a lot. Jacketless Jim's. Jacket, but you know, he doesn't wear a jacket because he's very teeny. Well, and he doesn't want people to know how teeny he is. I have an alternate theory here, Molly, because today he berated Dr. Fauci about liberties. He really hates Dr. Fauci. His liberties are so inhinged by wearing a mask. And I personally bet that, you know, his liberties are probably inhinged by wearing a jacket, too.

You know, he just really doesn't like the decorum of that and, you know, doesn't want his liberty's infringed. But somehow what I think is like always so funny when these fucking idiots talk about their liberties being hinged by literally putting a piece of paper in front of their fucking face with two strings is that maybe the person whose liberty is in hinged upon is the person who gets fucking COVID and dies from their stupid behavior. Like it is unbelievable how all the time these people think that any time they have to do something, it's the end of the world.

But if people have to do things for them, well, that's. just they're right because they're a good job creating American citizen. And it really just makes me insane. And in the words of Maxine Waters, shut up, Jim. Yeah. And Jim is really terrible. And he is well deserved and that's fine. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studied The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

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