In a new and candidseries of interviews withThe New Yorker, Joe Biden’s sonHunter Bidenhad much to say about his drug and alcohol problems, his relationship with his father, his business and romantic relationships and his brother’s death.
And he had some choice words for PresidentDonald Trump.
Reflecting on a recent night in which a helicopter had flown close to him after Trump mentioned him, Hunter, 49, told the magazine that he told his new wife,Melissa Cohen, “I don’t care. F— you, Mr. President. Here I am, living my life.”
Over “weeks of conversations,” according toThe New Yorker, he addressed his divorce from first wife Kathleen, with whom he shares three children, as well asdating older brother Beau Biden’s widow, Hallie Biden, followingBeau’s deathfrom brain cancer.
For the first time, Hunter also discussed Cohen, whom he wed in May days after they met.
Much of the piece, though, details Hunter’s professional work over the years — and the controversies that work has occasionally created for his father — as well as his years-long issues with drinking and drugs, including recurring stints in rehab.
“Everybody has trauma. There’s addiction in every family. I was in that darkness,” Hunter said. “I was in that tunnel — it’s a never-ending tunnel. You don’t get rid of it. You figure out how to deal with it.”
Throughout the ups and downs of his life, Hunter toldThe New Yorker, he has relied on his father and his father has relied on him.
“I’m like his security blanket,” Hunter said ofthe former vice president, 76, who is the leading contender to challenge President Trump in next year’s election.
“I don’t tell the staff what to do. I’m not there giving directions or orders. I shake everybody’s hands,” Hunter continued. “And then I tell [my father] to close his eyes on the bus. I can say things to him that nobody else can.”
“I said, ‘Dad, Dad, you have to,’ ” Hunter recalled. “He said, ‘Hunter, I don’t know if I should. But I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’ I said, ‘Dad, if people find out, but they think you’re not approving of this, it makes it seem wrong. The kids have to know, Dad, that there’s nothing wrong with this, and the one person who can tell them that is you.’ ”
In a statement to thePostat the time, Vice President Biden said: “We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them.”
Hunter (left) and Joe Biden.Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images
“We were sharing a very specific grief,” he told the magazine. “I started to think of Hallie as the only person in my life who understood my loss.”
As family friend Lea Carpenter told PEOPLE in 2017: “No two brothers were as close as Hunter and Beau. And anyone moved to judgment now has no knowledge of the grace and strength with which Hunter and Hallie have navigated the last four years.”
Hallie and Hunter had begun dating in the fall of 2016 after he left the Grace Grove Lifestyle Center in Arizona. That marked his eleventh effort to get better since 2003, when he “admitted himself to Crossroads Centre Antigua for a month” after realizing he had issues with alcohol, according toThe New Yorker. He also began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
“When I found myself making the decision to have another drink or get on a train [home], I knew I had a problem,” Hunter said.
Though he relocated to Maryland in August 2017, he and Hallie broke up “several months later,” according toThe New Yorker. But their split did not become public for more than a year. Within weeks of that most recent headline, he met Cohen, a documentary filmmaker, in Los Angeles.
He got a tattoo to match hers — “shalom,” in Hebrew, on his left bicep — days after their first date, according toThe New Yorker. He proposed within a week of meeting her. After they married, with “the simplest gold wedding bands he could find,” according to the magazine, he called his father.
“He was on speaker, and he said to her, ‘Thank you for giving my son the courage to love again,’ ” Hunter said of his dad.
The former vice president told Hunter, “Honey, I knew that when you found love again that I’d get you back,” Hunter said.
His response: “Dad, I always had love. And the only thing that allowed me to see it was the fact that you never gave up on me, you always believed in me.” As with his relationship with Hallie, word of his new wife spread quickly to reporters.
Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA
“I would never have been able to predict that Donald Trump would have picked me out as the tip of the spear against the one person they believe can beat them,” Hunter toldThe New Yorker.
He said that, in their own private discussions, he and his father “both realize that the only true antidote to any of this is winning. He says, ‘Look, it’s going to go away.’ There is truly a higher purpose here, and this will go away. So can you survive the assault?”
source: people.com
