was having a stroke<\/a>. While she said she has never seen the Democratic leader act like that before or since, Trump has used the lingering questions about Biden\u2019s health to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his policy decisions.<\/p>\nTrump went on to win the 2024 presidential election, earning a second term in office. He had previously lost to Biden in the 2020 race.<\/p>\n
Democrats, meanwhile, have continued to speculate how their odds might have been different had Biden dropped out earlier \u2014 or not run at all. The topic remains a point of division within the party.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell asked Hunter Biden whether he watched his father\u2019s now-infamous debate. The younger Biden responded that he had viewed it alone in a room in his house in California.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike everybody else, I was shocked,\u201d he said. \u201cI could tell as soon as my father came out that something was wrong. I\u2019ve never seen him with kind of the hundred-yard stare that he had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like his stepmother Jill, Hunter Biden framed the incident as an anomaly: \u201cThe reason that was so shocking is because it had never happened before, and it hasn\u2019t happened since.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also speculated that the Democratic leader\u2019s cancer diagnosis the following year may have contributed to his debate performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cNine months later, he was diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer and stage-four metastatic bone cancer, none of which we knew,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A controversial pardon<\/p>\n
Hunter Biden has himself been the subject of numerous controversies during his father\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
Republicans have long accused the younger Biden of leveraging his father\u2019s political status to further his personal business pursuits.<\/p>\n
He has also struggled with drug addiction, and in June 2024, during his father\u2019s re-election bid, he was convicted of three felonies for owning a gun while under the influence of drugs, and lying about his addiction on his firearm application forms. Such charges are typically rare.<\/p>\n
That same year, Hunter Biden also pled guilty to federal tax evasion charges, for failing to pay $1.4m from 2016 to 2019.<\/p>\n
Though Joe Biden had pledged on the campaign trail not to pardon his son\u2019s crimes, he abruptly reversed course in the final weeks of his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department\u2019s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted,\u201d Biden wrote on December 1, 2024, with less than two months remaining in his term.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn trying to break Hunter, they\u2019ve tried to break me, and there\u2019s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suggesting that his son would be a target for political persecution, Joe Biden granted him a \u201cfull and unconditional pardon\u201d for any actions taken from 2014 up to that point.<\/p>\n
It was part of a spate of unconventional pardons Biden granted before leaving office. His brother James Biden was also pardoned, as was his former chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci and the Congress members involved in the investigation of the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.<\/p>\n
Biden suggested that his pardons were motivated by the fear the incoming Trump administration would launch a campaign of political prosecutions against perceived political rivals.<\/p>\n
Observers, however, have questioned the broad nature of the pardons, and some critics, particularly on the right, have suggested they amount to government corruption.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connell presented that allegation to Hunter Biden in their interview. In response, the younger Biden acknowledged that the pardons were controversial.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas it good for our Constitution? Was it good for the American people? Was it good for my dad\u2019s legacy? No, on all counts,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that is easily criticised and for good reason, and I can\u2019t pretend otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hunter added that his father\u2019s fears about Trump have been borne out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that Donald Trump has proven to be exactly who my dad thought he was going to be, as it relates to the revenge and retribution that he would seek on his political enemies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hunter Biden, the younger son of former United States President Joe Biden, has offered an update on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[893,43,6512,44,714,41,39,42,40,772,1690],"class_list":["post-851200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-joe-biden","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}