Muse

Hunter Biden, welcome to the Candace Owens show.

It's wonderful to be here.

People are just going to be like, how on earth did this happen?

Right now.

I got to give them a bit of a backstory. So I went to dinner with a fellow podcaster and we were just talking about interviews because we don't do too many interviews on the show. And he first asked me what was the best interview I ever did. And I said, without question, the USS Liberty survivor, Phil Turney. And then he said, what would be your top interview that you'd want to do? And I said, oh gosh, we're in such a different time now. Like I'm just not interested in politics. Like it would have to be something so different. And then I said, actually, Hunter Biden. I said to him, I watched your sit down with Andrew Callahan. And it was kind of the most refreshing interview that I had seen in politics in a very long time because we're so used to being gaslit about various things happening. Everyone's trying to hide stuff. And we read a lot about you. I guess we didn't really hear anything from you. So this was kind of the first time that I heard you in your own words, just totally owning your addiction issues. Also going after Jake Tapper and George Clooney. And when we were kind of expecting the typical Democrat, like, these are great guys. These guys are amazing. Jake Tapper should, you know, win a Pulitzer. I don't know. And I would just, it wasn't what I was expecting, is what I would say. So, and then that person just sort of made this happen. Yeah. So I want to just sort of get into the Hunter Biden story. I will say to the audience right now, I have already made the pledge right when I got on the phone with you that like, obviously, I'm not going to make you say anything bad about your father, because that would just be completely demonic to be like, say something terrible about your father. Everyone knows my opinions, my political perspectives. They're already out there. He's your dad. So that is separate from my viewpoints.

Because there's no way I possibly could. Yeah, of course.

I totally get that. But there's a lot to be said about you and a lot that I guess hasn't been said about your journey. And I guess I want to start with just one question for the culture. The cocaine that was found at the White House. Was it yours?

No, not only was it not mine. Number one is thank you for having me here. And one of the reasons is to be able to answer these questions. You know, the one thing I am, after six years of this, I've been sober since June 1st of 2019, clean and sober, verifiably so, by the way, and verifiably so by the Bureau of Probation in which I was drug tested randomly for over the course of two years while I went through my trials and things like that. But beyond that is that, directly to your question, I wasn't even there. Not only there, but people have to understand is where that cocaine was found was, you know, the visitor's entrance underneath the, that is where visitors come in and they come over from the old executive office building staff to go to the, go to the Oval or go to the chief of staff's office or to the offices in the West Wing. and it was found in a cubby in uh right outside of the situation room and it's like no possibility not even remotely beyond the fact that i wasn't even there i mean i spent probably you know over the course of four years maybe um 25 days at the white house like 25 nights 30 if i you know i'm being fair. And so it's just a, you know, it was an easy, easy, you know, um, I was, I'm an easy target, uh, and understandably so. Right. I mean, I've been, I think probably the most famous addict, uh, and, uh, famous person, um, it was the grace of God in recovery for seven years, but we're

close to seven years, June 1st. Yeah. I definitely thought you were on drugs while your father was in the White House. I don't know. But I think it might have just also been the timing of the laptop coming out and then people just assuming that you were still on drugs. I don't know. That might have been why in our heads we thought that.

I think that it was, that they purposely conflated, you know, my, I wrote a book which came out in April of 2021 in which I did something that very few people, I think, ever in, that are kind of like similarly situated to me do in which I was, 100% frank about the fact that not only was I an addict, not only was I an alcoholic, I don't really see the distinction between the two when they're both drugs, but I was a crack addict. Like, I was a degenerate crack addict. I mean, I've heard you call me a crackhead many times and the truth of the matter is, I was a crack addict. And I say that not to shock people because it's really shocking.

uh, crack cocaine carries such a stigma to it to begin with. But I say it because I think that there are so many people, I don't think, I know, there are so many people. I think that there's, you know, at any given time, 30 million Americans that are either in active addiction or in recovery. There's not a single person that I know that hasn't been impacted by addiction at some level in some form personally or with someone that is one degree of separation from them that they love no one that i know least of all me yeah and yeah and and um and part of that one of the reasons i'm here that the stories that you tell about that in terms of um my family your family and uh and and there is where the common ground is for me i'm i i can 100 say this is that I, a friend of mine, uh, said, gave me this quote, um, about two years ago, and it's become my mantra. Is it, it's Mother Teresa. It was attributed to Mother Teresa is if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. That's, that is my, that's, that's my everything, uh, now. And, um, and part of that is not just the family that you have, by blood and birth, but also the community that you're inextricably tied to. And that community for me is the recovery community and it's people that are still sick and suffering from addiction. And so the biggest reason that I wanted to come talk to you beyond the fact, and this is not me blowing smoke, I think that regardless of whether I agree with you, that you're probably the most effective communicator I've ever heard. Thank you. I'm behind a microphone and it's really driven me crazy at times. It's really, really, really mad. When I was the enemy. But I wanted to talk to you about those things and anything else you want to talk about.

Yeah. I'm most interested in the addiction story and I was saying to you before we got, before we started rolling, that this was sort of something that I noticed when I would cover various topics, whether it was pornography, drugs on my show, drinking, how many men would write and say they were suffering with various things, and yet they don't often speak about how they're quietly suffering, whether it's with addiction to pornography, addiction to drugs. And I don't think there are enough conversations about it. And so when I watched that interview of you just just laying it out there something that most people try to hide or they're shameful of i was like there actually just needs to be more dialogue about it i grew up with tons of addicts in my family i have people in my family who are still addicted um and there is i think there is a natural anger that people have when they for some reason believe and i think this was part of the anger that even some that i had it toward you before i heard you speak about your addiction is that you sort of think when somebody has money and political connections that that somehow removes them from going through these sorts of barriers in life so when i grew up it's like okay like you have uncles whatever that are addicted to crack you have cousins that are doing crack whatever it is or experimenting with meth and drugs and those things and then you see someone that has a life of privilege and for some reason in your mind you wrongly go okay that can't happen and it did happen and i actually i'd like to hear like how you got addicted like what was actually the the

story your path toward addiction yeah so i thank you for uh let me talk about that or asking me about it and i really mean it it's um one of the things that traps people i can only speak about myself but i think that uh people that are in uh that that are addicts or that are in recovery also you find out really fast is that you're not as terminally unique as you think you are And one of the things that is really important about addicts talking to each other and talking about it is that realization. Because one of the things that traps you in your addiction is shame. And, you know, you, like me, are Catholic, and we have learned that guilt is an appropriate emotion. Guilt is an appropriate response to something when you've done something wrong. And you're supposed to atone for it. And you're supposed to seek forgiveness, whether the forgiveness comes from an individual or not. That's the lesson, is that it is only through seeking that forgiveness can you release yourself from that guilt. That's appropriate. Shame is not. Shame is just absolutely not. corrosive. Shame is you telling yourself that you're not worthy, that you're never going to be worthy, that the things that you've done, you can never be redeemed from. And I've done horrible things in my addiction in terms of what I did in terms of my relationships and decisions that I made. And more than anything, it's just removing myself from being present for the people that love me. And what happened to me, and I really mean this, is that the exposure, not piecemeal, but the total exposure, my entire digital footprint stolen from me, the 20-year digital footprint, every text message, every picture, all of the things that you would be ashamed of, became front page news for four years, five years, beginning in 2019. And it forced me into a choice. And the choice was, do I get out of bed and live or do I die? And it became that much of a dichotomy. And I chose to live. it wasn't easy and um and maintaining sobriety in in that kind of like a pressure cooker um is often the thing that triggers you but something broke in me in a good way

which was that i no longer have any fear i i like you know sitting down with you is to me and all an opportunity for you to see me as a human being and not um you know hunter biden laptop yeah and the pictures that you know uh congressman green uh like put up in congress or the or the new york post you know i think i was on the cover of the new york post in one year more than any uh anybody in the history of the paper and none of it was good none of it was good and And, um, but what it's given me is the opportunity to own it all is to own, uh, all of my story without shame or fear, um, uh, realizing that I, um, I have a community of people out there that I want to, uh, I want to be of service to. I really mean that. And, and, um, and so, and part of it is by me being able to be honest about it, we were just talking before we started this is the hardest thing for any addict to do is is not only get honest with the people that they love but to get honest with themselves and until they can until they can really see themselves for who they are all of it and and decide to love themselves then you know uh the cycle is just going to continue it's just at least in my experience that that's the truth i think one of the things did i even answer your question yeah i want to talk about

the first time that you got introduced to it because that's interesting oh i know i went into

all the good stuff actually do start with that like how did you actually get introduced first

off describe for people who don't know uh the difference between cocaine and crack because crack is is a lot more addictive yeah and so just what is the difference i know i got a lot of heat for no it was fantastic it was fantastic i was like he's actually very educated on this and well

Well, it's important to me to make the distinction that there's this idea that there's this kind of a secret kind of special enhancement to powder cocaine that makes it into crack. And, you know, you have to have, you know, some technical degree in order to be able to do that. And let's start all the way at the beginning. I think that I'm genetically predisposed to being an alcoholic. I do believe that there is a genetic piece of it. I do believe that my brain works differently as an addict in terms of the way in which my synapses fire once they're introduced to the dopamine hit and the serotonin increase that occurs because of an introduction of a substance. I believe that I became acclimated and physiologically depended upon that when I started to drink in earnest. when i was in college in which you can control and you know i made it through Georgetown and uh i went to Jesuit volunteer corps for a year i've been in uh and it's kind of like domestic peace well you know the JBC i was JBC for a year after after college and um and then i went to Yale Law School you know was married had um um my my oldest daughter when i was first year

law student and made it through all of that and made it through my, um, first years of employment, drinking probably more than everybody, uh, than, than most people do, but completely functional. And one day I woke up when I was 33 years old to my brother calling me and say, this has got to stop, but you got to stop. And, um, and, and what he meant was, is that, you know, like a whole weekend was missing and I said okay and he drove me to the airport and he put me on a plane in New York and I flew to a place that was started by Eric Clapton called Crossroads in Antigua and I went to rehab and I came out and directly when I came out my brother picked me up from the airport drove me to an AA meeting, walked in with me, DuPont Circle in D.C. I met my sponsor at that first meeting that I ever went to. And I stayed clean and sober for about seven years. And then I relapsed. And it was such a mundane, stupid story. I was on a plane by myself. Everything was okay. Things were looking up. It was, you know, normal life pressures, but it was all good. And that's the real insidious thing about addiction and alcoholism. It never goes away, necessarily. There's always the answer that is being presented to you by the thing that you trust the most, which is your brain. And what it says is, if you don't want to feel this way, whatever the way is, or if you want to feel this way even more, I have the answer for you. And I was on a plane by myself, and I had a drink. And that drink in 2010, seven years almost of sobriety, started a cycle of relapse and recovery and relapse and recovery, in which it was really hard for me to be honest with the people that loved me because I just wanted to hide it. I just wanted it to go away, and I thought, okay i'll get through this cycle and you know i'll sleep it off uh this weekend and that that's it i'm done and that would last a week and then would last three months and then i went back to rehab and then it became kind of then i came back and i started i mean talk about you talk about this all the time which i love that you do it was big pharma you know what i mean i had shingles and so somebody prescribed me like 52 oxy coat like i mean ridiculous and i started that and and then i started drinking again and the prescription ran out and then this cycle just started to happen

and um but when my brother died uh it all fell apart bo and i uh were uh and like i don't purport that our relationship was unique or that his loss was greater than my my loss of him was greater than anybody else's loss of their brother or someone that they deeply, deeply loved. But when my mom and sister and Bo and I were in that car accident in 1972, and we survived, it was the two of us every day. We're a year and a day apart. We talked every day. I mean, except when he was in Iraq, I literally probably talked to my brother every day. And when Bo died, my marriage fell apart after 20 years, 22 years, by the way, for reasons that marriages fall apart, you know, but I take a lot of responsibility for it. and uh and it just started a really really dark circle a cycle in the past when i would uh when i would have these relapses there's there's always someone in such proximity to me that they would like you know i couldn't escape i couldn't escape in this instance bo was gone i uh right after bo died um i uh um ended up uh um separated from my wife like within the month and my dad for the first time in my life who was my rock uh was stuck in his own grief like deep deep grief and and i just went down and a hole and i checked myself into rehab that year and came out and stayed sober for a while and then we

relapsed and then went into a, um, an outpatient program in DC where I went like, you know, four hours every day for, you know, from eight to two or six hours every day, um, stay sober. And then I relapsed and I came back and they said, well, you have to, I admitted to them that I relapsed and, and that in this instance, I also used cocaine. And they said, well, you'd have to take a a um a drug test and i said i'm not going to take a drug test i'm not going to put something on you know it's because it's not protected by hipaa in a rehab uh uh scenario which is crazy right yeah anyway long story short they said you can't come back in unless you take the drug test and i said i'm not taking the drug test i'm going through a divorce and it's not protected by hipaa It will become public. I don't want to do this to my family. Like, I'm telling you, I use cocaine and I drink. Is that not good enough? Come back. And they said, no, for whatever reason, and I'm not blaming them. This is not their fault. I walked out, and I knew Lincoln Park was a kind of open-air drug market. I saw a woman that was kind of famous in the area since I had been in college, literally for 20 years that i would see in the streets around you know dc in that area where i worked for a long time and i said i went up to her and i said can i get some crack wow and i think it was basically i said can you help me commit suicide i mean i i don't think i know that that now and in uh looking back it was the coward's way and i really mean that i was a coward that i didn't go and just do it i said let me do it this way and really really really drag everybody down with me along the way like let me figure out the way not only to kill myself but to maybe kill my dad you know really hurt my family um uh particularly my my three daughters who like adore me and I adore just the fact and I smoke crack and the difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine is this and I really truly do not want to give a road map for people to be able to do this because I swear to god it'll kill you but it's sodium bicarbonate which is baking soda water, heat that's it, that's all that is the entire difference of it which allows it to be ingested through a smoking. And the combination of those things makes it so that it affects your physiology much faster than it would be if you just use powder cocaine through your nose or in any other form other than intravenously. And it also allows you to ingest more faster than you could possibly ever ingest

by sniffing cocaine up your nose. The combination of that, the combination of combustion ritual and uh the ritual meaning the way in which you have to you know i mean i can still feel my hands doing it is you know becomes this ritualistic thing with the combination of combustion which is uh and you learn you i mean if you really study things about addiction is these kind of key components of um oral fixation and things like that, it just becomes the most ungodly addiction that you can possibly imagine to the point where I was smoking crack. You know, I mean, literally, you know, I was either looking for or smoking or recovering, not even recovering. You don't recover. You just go find more for, um, close to a two year period of time. And it took me to places, you know, I wrote all about it and I got made fun of about it and you know people think that you know when i wrote my book like you know you know calling through the carpet to find crack cocaine and you know parmesan cheese and you know i know it's a real laugh line but anybody that's ever been an addict like that

they don't laugh about it it's devastating think that you were that person you can see yourself doing it just devastating and so what happens in addiction so often is this is people not only

they can't admit that they can't even admit it to themselves just block it out they go they get 30 days clean they come out they go back into the same exact situation that they were in before and they think i'm just not going to do it again i'm just going to stay you know like i i'm going to make it i'm gonna make it and what will come up is that that wake up in the morning and they'll remember that time in the motel with the you know

the person, the prostitute that brought you the drugs and that just stole your wallet and all your drugs and everything. And you were conned through carpet to see if there was anything there. And you smoked whatever white that you found on the ground. Like, it's the shame. It's thinking of yourself like that, regardless of who you are, regardless of where you came from, whether your dad's the president of the United States or it doesn't matter. And they don't admit that to themselves. They don't admit it to anyone around them. Don't ever say it. And you know what happens? They never lose it. And it sits like right here, like in the back of your head, and it pops up. And you just feel so disgusted with yourself that your brain immediately tells you, regardless of how far away you are from a drink or a drug, like, I know the way not to feel this way. I know exactly how to feel this way. You're going to die if you keep feeling this way. you need you need to take a drink and that's always how it starts i mean alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the world um uh just by virtue of the amount of destruction and um and devastation that is uh that comes personally into the people around people that are alcoholics and i don't find any difference between being an addict and an alcoholic um and uh but that's where it starts And that's where it started for me. That was my, that's my story until I met Melissa and back lean and sober. And I've been so, you know, almost seven years now.

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When you're in that moment, and I guess people don't realize like you're going through this and you don't get to decide what your father does for a living. And I think that's probably why people separate it as well too, because like I said, there's this idea of what a politician's family is supposed to be. And you obviously are, because I genuinely understand what those sorts of addictions do, I don't think people realize you're just not even yourself. It's like a demon, the best way to say it, and maybe I'm taking a Catholic take on this, but it's like a full demonic possession when you're in the throes of these drugs. And I mean, this was actually a great benefit of A&E doing intervention because people could really see these moments where people will choose the drug over their family. They will choose the drug over their kids. They will choose, you know, they'll choose the drug over literally anything. And for people who, and I would, I actually tend to agree with you that I've wondered myself if there's something genetic because I'm not wired that way. Or maybe I just haven't found the drug that would do that to me. but like i would say that like i've just never been um never had something and was like i just need to have that again or want it again and i've seen friends that they have something once and they're like want to do this every second and i go that's very interesting like it's almost like

you're you're made of something different i'm certain of that and the science is certain of that and anyways i mean we all can uh i think that we all can um associate with um understand addiction at um more or less devastating um levels so for instance where's your phone i mean you have a you you basically have a packet of heroin right we all do in our pocket yeah constantly giving us that dopamine which by the way we can get to talking about that because i think that that that we are not nearly as divided of people as we think that we are I think that that bag of heroin in everybody's pocket, um, is feeding them a lot of that division, but is, so we can all kind of understand the compulsion to do things that aren't, um, that clearly aren't benefiting us, like staying up, uh, until three o'clock in the morning and going through your, for you page on TikTok. um every mother father can watch their teenager um do that and go god this is awful and i'm going to take his phone away and then they turn back to their phone and they they start going through their phone like and i and i'm you know i i am not any uh better i so we can kind of all understand that compulsion it's when the compulsion becomes just so uh uh the the the blast radius continues to grow so the the difference between being a um uh you know addicted to your phone um and being addicted to crack cocaine i'm not saying are the same but at least we can kind of get a little bit of an understanding of the physiology of that of the way in which the brain actually works.

It's like the micro versus the macro, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And everybody has the micro.

So you can see the micro impact of it. But I think that one of the reasons why people are so shocked by my story, and by the way, and we're able to conflate, so if the New York Post every day for six years uh runs a picture on uh you know on online i mean i think they literally at one point did like uh 1.5 stories of me a day for an entire 18 month period okay and um in each it didn't matter what the subject was it was a picture of me naked with the prostitute with whatever and with a with crack with a crack pipe in my lips but what like i so i don't get mad at people when they go like was that your cocaine like well number one you know the white house it's like it just doesn't make any sense i had seven secret church agents with me at any given time everywhere i went the idea that i was in the situation room and would decide to drop off i mean But beyond that silliness is I don't blame people for not realizing that I have worked my pep and ass off. I mean, in this environment, the proudest thing that I've ever done is stay clean and sober through all of that. every piece of it both the trials through the accusations through the you know Alexander Smirnoff's and Galluf's and and you know Konstantin Kulik's and Leb Parnas's and Rudy's and Steve Bannon's and all of that is that purely because of the love of the people around me and my willingness to own it all I'm i'm sitting in front of you yeah and and you're not taking that away from me right no and by the way that's the beauty of it yeah the realization at one point is that you can try i have no fear no fear and um that doesn't and that's why i'm here more than anything is because i like i don't i i probably you know i'm certain that we disagree on a lot of stuff but there used to be a time, Candace, where you and I could sit down together and disagree about tax policy and disagree about, you know, the Catholic Church's view on abortion or disagree with, I mean, whatever the subject may be, and still be able to go have a meal together.

Right. I talk about that often on my show. Like, back when I was left leaning in college, my best friend was republican conservative like it wasn't so at each other's throats and hating each other and wanting to destroy one another and you know you could kind of see the good and the bad and go well i'm you know this is why i have this perspective and perspectives could change and that was allowed to you know i i think about what it was that just revisiting what made a lot of people including myself so angry about you um or i guess it wasn't really about you it was the gaslighting it was the letter that came from people saying it was russian propaganda that is what is driving us crazy about the epstein files right now it's what's actually leading it ironically to the collapse of the maga support is we don't want to be gaslit yeah and to be fair it wasn't you that that's why it was so refreshing when you were like yes i had a crack condition this is me i did this i was with hookers but you weren't speaking for you and they were they were literally a bunch of people that were coming out and saying this is not real and that is the most infuriating thing for because everyone's average everyone can connect with addiction everyone could have this conversation actually if you would come out and and i probably in that environment obviously it may be that would there would have been different result because we were at each other's throats but that is what made people so angry it was like nope he never smoked cracked it wasn't real the laptop is russian propaganda like guys what is this yeah

by the way is that here's the problem is that steve bannon saved and rudy giuliani saved the quote-unquote laptop which by the way is bullshit that like if we can agree on that gaslighting i will agree on the gaslighting of this is that is that it was never a quote-unquote laptop there was a hard drive okay of stolen and um uh hacked material wherever it came from whether it came from a Delaware repair shop or whether it came like Lev Parna says from Dmitry Furtash who was trying to sell a hard drive Hunter Biden's in um in Ukraine you know that they were looking for before the laptop repair shop guy was ever the twinkle in the eye just go back and look at the record okay so here's the thing is you're absolutely right and the the and this is like the the freedom of being able to say this it's like yeah they should have let me go out and talk yeah but it was two weeks before the campaign and then and and and then the the election was over steve bannon it goes on uh and with his buddy gao um you know the chinese billionaire that's now in prison and you know that that is like a chinese spy or whatever you know where he got arrested on his boat and all that crap is it i mean there is a go listen to it go listen to the recorded conversation in which they say like the laptop like we got them we like you know so we put all we collected all the salacious pictures and we put them out there and then rudy went out and stood on the steps of the newcastle county courthouse with Bernie Carrick and said, this contains child exploitation, like pure, you know, I mean, pure bullshit, just bullshit. So on both sides, you have this reaction, you know, which I don't think was necessarily a coordinated reaction in the sense that, what do you do in two weeks? And so they come up with this and they say, and I don't get to go out and say, you know, no, I was. But you know what I did is it come April I write a book and I tell everybody I was addicted to crack and here's my story and here's what happened and here is the all of the rooms that no one would ever want to admit to being in that I was in and uh and and it was like a blip on the radar because everybody was now fighting about whether there was kind of a suppressed story on Twitter and whether there was a, um, this gaslighting from, you know, and by the way, I am not here to defend any.

But then it's part of like the political machine where they're like, we have two weeks to go to the election. We're going to do this denial, you know, because we can't afford this right now, essentially. And so, and then we're going to table this, make it past these two weeks. And then by that time, first and foremost, your father won, right? So, uh, you know, and so people are angry. They feel like the election's been stolen and that there was this entire collusion to cover a laptop, which if it was on the other side, they may have done, too. This is what D.C. is. It's politics. But that that is where I think the anger came from. And it was just like, I get it. How dare you gaslit us? And then people then start making you this focal point of.

It never had anything to do with me. Right. It was kind of bigger than you at that point. You know what the laptop proved? That you were a crackhead. There you go. That you were deep in the throes of crack addiction. All this other bullshit, you know, bribery and all these other things that they investigated up and down during the Trump administration with a Trump appointed U.S. attorney, with the Trump appointed U.S. attorney, the only U.S. attorney in the country to stay on and continue to prosecute me, who then became special counsel after I got a plea deal because I paid my taxes late and I paid them with penalties and interest. And I owned a gun for 11 days.

While...

They say, I was addicted, and check that box. That's it. Everybody has all the information. It's not like the Department of Justice has my digital footprint in every text message, every email. There's not a single one in which you find that would in any way support the really serious accusations of enriching my father, enriching himself somehow, or none of it. None of it's there. so i own whatever you want to call it i own the laptop come you know what we can go through it together if you're willing to like avert your eyes to the to the tragedy of addiction i mean just the absolute tragedy of it yeah but man oh man we have not there is no space for that in discourse anymore there's no space for the nuance of uh you know well that was addiction that wasn't corruption you know I did not do any business through entire four years I became a painter you know why I became a painter because it literally saved my life I painted my whole life and Melissa instinctively knew that I literally needed to like occupy my hands in early recovery like 12 hours a day like just you know like to be able to focus on not the crushing weight of the consequences of years of addiction. And so I just sat and I painted and I painted and I painted. And I decided to have a show in the gallery and offer my paintings for sale. And New York Post comes out and says, Hunter Biden's selling his paintings for half a million dollars. I've never sold a painting nor offered a painting for a half a million dollars in my frigging life. And by the way, everybody knows this because every painting that I sold, everybody that bought a painting had to pay about a quarter million dollars to defend themselves before an impeachment uh hearing go read the transcripts of people under oath but regardless is this is the laptop absolutely proved nothing but it became this this cultural touchstone it was like it it embodied the biden crime family and if you wanted to be able to believe that not wanted to be able to believe that if you believe that because you're being told that by people that you trust that have told you that your election was stolen that your democracy was thwarted that that the process was um unfair is that all you had to do and i get this is look at the pictures it doesn't look like a good guy to me right because you weren't a good guy in the pictures no yeah smoking crack in a motel room with a prostitute right like you know what i mean like they come out and like they're saying oh like this like I admit it all not only admit it all

I own it all I will I will own everything the worst of it all of it and then being like I mean

now in retrospect and things have changed I mean times have changed I like I said I was one of the chief people that was really angry about it and it did that was the exact reason why when I re-examined it was the gaslighting it's the same reason why I'm angry with Trump over the Epstein thing it's like, I can't come back from media gaslighting. The Trump thing is worse because it came from his own mouth, the gaslighting. So it wasn't like people trying to cover it up. It was like Trump being like, what Epstein files? Are we still talking about the Epstein files? But then things kind of changed, I think, with time also because I was very, definitely said I was close with Don Jr. Traveled a lot with him through the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. We talked about it, this corruption can't be denied it all these photos coming out and then we get whatever this you know trump family is now and it's like man i think it was a historian that wrote on x exactly how i feel which is i wish i could go back to the days where i thought like hunter biden's art was the most corrupt deal that was done in politics and now we're going okay you know we stood behind trump we fought we shared the photos of hunter biden to the extent that we could and now we have their family engaged in so many corrupt deals, the meme coins, the taking advantage of people. And you go, okay, well, what we actually have is DC is corrupt. Politics is corrupt. And I think it is kind of a unifying point, not to excuse the gaslighting of people for two weeks, which made people super angry. But I do think it's just a different time where people are kind of going back and examining and I feel actually terrible realizing that you were finally clean. And then it's just this humiliation ritual over and over and over again of people putting everything out there and not realizing also your kids are facing this consequence as well um which people do not think about a lot of times when they publish stories like i even was reticent and didn't cover the christy gnome thing because the first thing that came to my mind um kids those are kids like i'm like these are kids that are about to go to college like and so and why are they doing this because she's in politics right and so this becomes they don't think about the children and yeah i mean i think i now now that i have kids too i think there's just like wow they don't sign up for what i do for podcasting kids don't like sign up for that

kind of stuff yeah you know number one though kids are way more resilient than than you think it so much tougher. And, uh, and I know, um, the, the, uh, my girls have like, and I, and they love me and deeply, and I can 100% accept that love now and return it with everything that I have to offer but you're you know part of what you're describing is politics in memoriam you know part of it but something's changed and is there is a meanness um a willingness to adopt uh very very un-american uh tactics um uh against our opponents because it become a zero-sum game it's not just that i disagree with you it's you need to be punished you need to be punished for what you believe you know there's this incredible show i really want to meet them one day you've probably i don't know if you listen to it's uh called the necessary conversation have you listened to that incredible it's a brother and a sister who are progressives one lives in la and like one lives in austin or something like that and she runs a bakery his sister and a mom and dad and they are ultra maga and i think they're like in you know missouri somewhere okay and i mean like don't take their caps off trump literally can do no wrong he's playing 4d chess on the epstein thing the you know i know he said no warren oran but you know uh he must have a reason for it and you can't convince like literally that but they have this conversation and they have real issues with each other like the daughter gets really mad at dad like dad you were a jerk to us when we were kids you made me but then she has this conversation with her mom who loves animals and like taught her about empathy and they would adopt all you know these animals and they would uh and you find out like her dad taught you know or coached all of their little league games and she was a softball player and if a kid couldn't like afford the uniform dad would quietly go out and buy the uniform and he's awful on this thing by the way like he's like he's and like in terms of the way that he speaks and he speaks to them and he's like tough and i don't get i don't give a shit and, you know, drop a bomb on them kind of, you know, thing. But it's so informative is that before, that's a normal family. That's a thing.

Before, you and I could meet at a restaurant in Georgetown and your husband and my wife and we could have dinner together. And like with Tucker, I knew Tucker, you know what I mean? And, like, you could have dinner together and think that what Tucker was saying was crazy. I don't agree with, and I don't agree with, you know, half the stuff. But you know what it didn't mean? It didn't mean that I thought that he should be tried for treason and executed. And that's what happened to me. And I mean that not figuratively. I mean it literally. That's what people were saying. And that's what people of real importance were saying. Those were the words that were coming out of the mouse and I'm paraphrasing of people like Steve Bannon and people like Rudy Giuliani, people of authority. And it changes everything is how can you even have a discussion, for instance, how could I go out and talk about how could I respond? was that cocaine mine. Like, what do you want? You want me to take a drug test? Because I'm taking a drug test almost weekly for the Department of Corrections and probation. You know, I have a probation officer. I'm on release until trial. You know, but what do you do? Is that the statement that you make to the New York Post? It's impossible. It becomes impossible. But what do you do? You realize this. And I don't know if you feel this way in your own life. is that you know what the real problem is it's not out there it's not that person if i could just get steve bannon to tell the truth if i could just get Rudy Giuliani to stop lying about me. If I could just get Konstantin Kulak to say that he wrote the written, if I, like, it's not there. You realize, in order to survive, it's all inside. Every single piece of it is about figuring out how to love yourself, not living that shame, and in order for you to be able to be of service first, or, you know, Melissa, like, return the beautiful thing that she gave me, which was a chance to be of service to my dad, to return the unconditional love, which is not love without consequences, not love without accountability. It's just knowing that no matter what, even through the consequences and being held accountable, that that person still loves me.

All right, you guys. When I think about the future, I picture the little moments that matter most, family dinners, bedtime stories, lazy Sundays at home. The people that we love are the center of everything that we're building. But there's one conversation that so many of us put off, and that's usually surrounding what would happen if we were not here. That's really what life insurance is about. It's about making sure your family is protected, supported, and able to move forward no matter what life brings. And honestly, getting covered today is so much easier than most people think. That's why I love Ethos. With Ethos, you can apply online in just minutes. No medical exams, no waiting rooms, just answer a few health questions and you could be covered the very same day. And what really stands out to me is that Ethos helps match you with coverage that actually fits your life, your goals, and your budget. With up to $3 million in coverage and plans starting around $30 a month, protecting your family can feel a whole lot more doable because peace of mind should not be complicated. So get your free instant quote today at ethos.com slash Candice. Again, that's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash Candice. Application times and rates may vary. I also want to tell you guys about Native Path because this episode is brought to you by Native Path's grass-fed collagen for better bones, joints, skin, hair, and nails. Have you noticed that your skin is losing some of its glow? Maybe your nails and your hair are feeling weaker or that it's easier to tweak a joint or pull a muscle? Well, right around age 30, our bodies start producing less collagen every year. And by the time most people reach 60, they've lost about half. That's why I use Native Path Collagen. it was created by Chad Walding, a doctor of physical therapy who spent years trying to find a clean collagen supplement for his patients. And when he couldn't, he decided to make one himself. The label has one ingredient with no fillers, no additives, and is third-party tested. It only takes 10 seconds to add to my routine, and it dissolves instantly in any beverage. So if you want stronger nails, healthier-looking skin, less joint discomfort, and even improved DEXA scans, go to getnativepath.com slash Candice right now. There's a special discount plus free shipping from our listeners today. Again, that's getnativepath.com slash Candice. I think that was also what came across in your interview with Andrew Callahan, where after I watched it, I think it sort of edited my opinion about that relationship between your dad because I think since the laptop scandal, in my mind, it was, I guess, a bit cartoonish where it was like, well, you can do whatever you want. You go ahead, smoke crack. We know we're just powerful. We'll cover it. You know, we'll do it. Like, that's the, like, whatever. We've had so much power. We've acquired so much power. And then when I sort of saw you really defending your dad over this George Clooney thing, I was like, okay, this is just a normal father-son relationship. Like people can't apply that for some reason when you're talking about a president or somebody that has access to power, but he just loves his dad. And this is the way any normal person would defend their dad. If they said something about your father, if they said something about your son, like this is so normal that I think that's what was a bit of like resting for me. I was like, this is very normal dynamic. He doesn't care if Jake Tapper's on his side. He doesn't care if George Clooney is on his side. That's his dad that you're talking about.

And he's having a natural reaction that I would have if someone was talking about my dad, my grandparents, my sister, my cousin, even when they do something wrong, by the way. Like, it's like, okay, no, but, like, that's my family member who did something wrong.

And your kids. And so you have no right.

And I will breathe fire on someone. And that's kind of, and you're right. And now it's getting dirtier. The games people are playing are dirtier. And it is about wanting you to feel unsafe. And I think that is something that is so new when you have people posting your address, posting where you are, knowing that you have children. And yeah, I really do. And it is over perspective. Like for me, it was me changing my mind on Israel. And suddenly I'm getting the New York Post treatment and I'm getting all these people coming after me and I'm going, this is my perspective. perspective you're welcome to try to debate me on why i feel the way i feel about which is because i have two eyes about what's happening in gaza but to do these tactics where you're trying to destroy people uh is that feels very very new to me yeah that that let's be not let's be honest i

hate that phrase okay i get it from my perspective is this i know where that started and

And that started when Donald Trump, from rally stages, started the Where's Hunter?

Thank you.

Started to yell, Where's Hunter? Call and response crowds. And then they printed t-shirts. And then they made hats. And then they made mugs of Where's Hunter? And then they showed up at my door. I didn't have any security. I didn't have anybody. I can't afford that in my life, particularly at that time. And they literally showed up at my door with bullhorns and mega hats. And on the direct and the way that they got there is the New York Post published on the front page, on its cover, an aerial view of my home with the address. And then in the thing said, and if you stand here at this, you know, on this part of the street, you can see in their floor-to-ceiling windows. And, you know, and so they showed up. Wow. And Melissa was, what, six months pregnant at the time? You know, she got in the car, because she was alone at the time, and sped off, and they followed her, and they ran her off the road. You know, she panicked. And then, you know, she got and did it again, and they surrounded her. And that's new, man.

That is new.

And, like, similar to you, is it, like, before I sat down, I heard where you live, what your, the level of security that you have or didn't have, and, you know, what your perimeter of your property is like. How the hell do I know that? And how is that even remotely safe? Because you have people who now, you're, you basically spoke your truth and they decided that you cannot exist. And so, therefore, I don't know if it's going to happen, but for some reason, I think it's appropriate for me to say, tell you what Candace's address is, who lives there, and the level of security she has.

Yeah, Tim Pool doing that was one of the most, it was so obvious what he was doing.

By the way, my dad said to me, is I have to stop saying the F word.

But it was, no, like, seriously, that to me was like, it's a declaration of war. Like, they know I homeschool my kids. they know and he's describing the security apparatus and he's doing it in this rant trying to be impassioned about the fact that i don't support israel or i don't support whatever his whatever his motivation was there was zero reason that you would be describing the perimeter of my house outside of wanting someone to get harmed and like i first first first of all like i'm not like tucker carlson and i save people all the time that's why i get so worried because when tucker gets accosted in public he just has this like total happy warrior demeanor i will claw someone's eyes out for my kids like i like i am not the property to try we will shoot you like i will shoot you and i will kill you and i will happily go to prison but before you have one opportunity to even make i don't want to be going to think about whether you're going to hurt my kids sound exactly like that's and that's just that's me that's just me and by the way i've said over and over my podcast i will i will smile in my mugshot okay because i did the right thing and i have no qualms about that so when he did that i i was like okay this little beanie boy okay little beanie boy i see exactly what you're doing the whole world sees what you're doing and you are doing something that you because you want my children to get harmed and then if something happens to them you're going to go well i don't know how that happened as i was describing the perimeter of her home and talking about what her security is um which was inaccurate but that's

but that's like what are we even talking about that's exactly why they do it is that even if the chance is this small the reason that they do it is exactly that is to is to make you really afraid not for yourself for your four kids for your family for the people that work around you it's like i and by the way i'll tell you is that i have the same approach that i think tucker has to it which is then i don't know it is which is basically like i can handle it like i can diffuse a situation i can do it melissa people kill you yeah i'll kill you and i'll ask questions later And she did exactly the same. And you know what really worries me? Is that. Is that. Is all of a sudden, we're all talking about violence. Like, you're talking about violence. Violence is defense. But now you're talking about the violence. And then they kind of like go, oh, you're gaslighting us. This is bullshit. You don't, you're fine. You're really rich and you this and that. You can take care of yourself. It's like bullshit. Did you see what just happened to my best friend? Yeah.

Like, I mean, we just watched Charlie get, and he had a full security apparatus. Yeah. We still don't know what happened to Charlie Kirk. There's zero interest. That's another thing that just completely, for me, was like, done with Trump whatsoever. Like, I mean, there's just no way, for someone who came from the inside and watched the work that Charlie did to get these people elected, Don Jr. was like a brother to Charlie, literally like a brother to him. Yeah. And to see the Trump brothers, to see Donald Trump himself, Cash Patel, who Charlie pushed for him to lead the FBI, had him on his podcast, J.D. Vance, like, you know, came out of nowhere. Charlie was like not sleeping to make that happen. And to see all of these people have zero interest in the obvious holes in the story, even if ultimately the holes get filled and there's a picture that makes sense, which I put that at a zero percent chance. But let's just, you know, the fact that they have zero interest and they're just accepting the narrative, like what this has done to me, and I've said this, I'm just done with politics. I'm just done with politics because I can't even begin to comprehend it. And again, that element of gaslighting that's happening here where they're pretending that the people who are noticing that none of this is making sense are the crazy ones and everyone else who's like, no, turn the chapter a week later, it's all solved. And this is how it went down and none of it makes sense, but just accept this slop. It is the most infuriating thing and it's just fully removed the scales of my eyes. And I've stopped with this left versus right, Democrat versus Republican. I'm like, this is sheer evil versus good. This is like sheer evil.

But by the way, for real. Exactly. Exactly. It is good versus evil. Yeah. They have torn the mask off of this. I said to you before, is that I pray to God that by the end of this, that you think of me as a friend. Because if anything ever happened to me, I want you. You and Melissa team up. You fit. Like, oh my God.

of it. It's not happening with Charlie Kirk.

And the criticism of you for asking the questions for someone who was like a brother to you, it's like what the F were you talking

about? What are you talking about?

How dare you care? You're coming from someone who you've attacked and politically you've had all of your criticism which I have no problem with and we disagree on so many things but I listen to you and I go, right on. Like, Epstein I mean, like, you want to figure out why they don't want to let the release all the Epstein files? All you got to do is literally look at a picture of Trump standing on his stage at his inauguration and look behind him.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like every single person.

He's protecting his donors without question.

I mean, it's crazy. Like, Palos and Pauly and this and that and the other thing and all of these things. It's like, okay. And by the way, like, anyway, my point is, yeah, it's like, when are people going to kind of wake up to the fact, and it's not left or right, this is a really, really horrible group of people that are pulling strings that impact us all. And they make us think that because you and I disagree on, you know, the graduated tax rate or some social issue is that we are sworn enemies. I mean, not just, you know, like sworn enemies, that I deserve violence.

And I could see them. And it does seem like both sides have woken up without question. My audience is now split. And I still say what I believe. I haven't changed my position on abortion. I'm Catholic. I have, you know, there's nothing that has changed. I think they're just hearing me for the first time. And I do think there was something about the Charlie Kirk assassination that everyone just sort of looked up, you know, we just sort of all looked up at the machine and was like, wait a second, what is this? Because they expected Trump to be ride or die. They expected cash. I mean, wow, this is going to be solved in the clearest way possible because the entire political apparatus that has the power and the Department of Justice is in the hands of Charlie Kirk's friends. Like that was how I felt, right? This is it. No, whoever did this is never going to get away with it because these are Charlie's friends. And what did we get?

They're the people that Charlie Kirk made.

Charlie Kirk made these people. That's exactly right. He led a youth revolution to get these people elected in power. He was ride or die.

The level of disloyalty or fear. I don't know what it is.

Disloyalty.

Is.

Disloyalty may be guided by fear, but it's so disloyalty. It's disturbing. and i i cannot i can not forgive trump the trump family uh what they have done or what they have not done for charlie can i keep one of these yeah yeah and i'm full on i'm like call me a conspiracy i'm like you where i'm like oh that what is the shame tactic of the day you're calling me a conspiracy that's great i'm like you'd be a fool to believe the stuff that they're telling us today the stories are telling us um i mean it's it is something that is just so disturbing And I think that the Charlie assassination has just so crazy, like, because he was so Republican conservative. But I think it's brought people together in a productive way.

Look, I'm I'm I'm here and you're here and the.

um, I, I really think that we're not unique. You know, I think very, very kind of emblematic is that like, I'm like, let's put the past, you know, not behind us. Like I'll explain anything you want. I'll talk about anything that you want to talk about that you still have questions about or that anybody is with, but like, this isn't right. This we're witnessing right now is not right the level of corruption the obfuscation the um i mean whether it's butler or charlie or these things that that it's just not right and i mean it's so glaringly not right it's almost as

if they're just saying f you they don't they're not even trying like we don't even get good psyops anymore and that's what i keep saying i'm like they're it's so disrespectful that we're not even getting good good psyops anymore like we're we're supposed to believe he survived four what We have four assassination attempts, the first president that's ever survived four assassination attempts. They quietly, they lie to us about things and make a big deal and then they make it want to, you know, it's going to go away. They're going to keep pretending and telling us that this is a totally normal grieving widow. Okay. No one's buying that. Like something's just not right here. Everyone can see that. This is not how you would react to your husband being shot. And this sort of just, I'm fine. And I like two weeks later, I fully accept the narrative. I have no interest in anything else. It's over. Let's close it. I forgive him. Let's move on. you're, you're asking us to abandon our common sense and our humanity is what you're asking us to do. And there, that kind of seems like where we're at, like they're insisting on this and I'm going, where is this going to go? Because we're not doing the thing they want us to do. Like they're just constantly giving us slop all the time. I mean, even the recent White House correspondence dinner, there was so much theater to it after so much theater. And now it's kind of, okay, secret service, maybe shot each other and we're just going to kind of quietly move on. but Trump needs a ballroom. Like, that's a normal reaction. Hey, there's a shooting duck. Hey, well, we better get that ballroom.

And by the way, it's going to cost a billion dollars now. And by the way, it's not from donors. And by the way, we're going to do it. Like, it's just like, it's just the constant, like, talk about gaslighting.

It's been, this has been just this. And we're not even, are we even a year into Trump's second term?

Yeah, we're a little over a year.

A little over a year into second term. And I don't think there's just been, I'm like, how are we going to deal with four years of just being gaslit every five seconds and told that, but MAGA, literally MAGA is not MAGA anymore. And what was actually never Trump, which was actually pro Hillary Clinton, if you think about it, that's now MAGA. It's literally people who have been against Trump the entire time who are lecturing us about this stuff, like the Mark Levins and the Ben Shapiros and like, we're MAGA and the Laura Loomers, like, you know, we're MAGA now. Okay, great. Then I'm not MAGA. Like I am, I've never agreed with these people. I am opposed to these people's ideas um i am opposed to unleashing an actual lunatic who has uh had to be baker acted and put on psych 5150 holds by her own parents who fear her i'm opposed to that actually being

unleashed upon the population melissa always she's a 5150 i had that someone she's got that person's gonna get 5150 and i go what are you talking about what's 5150 you're telling us this

is vaga now like this is what we do and yeah so it's been a it's a it's been a challenging time because you do have to have like the humility to admit that i'm quite embarrassed about it

the president of the united states of america has posted images of himself as a king i think half a dozen times now yeah like when are we when when are people going to wake up and go okay Like, if that's what you want, and by the way, if that's what you want, then you know what? I know that there is a, that there is a, the vast majority of Americans, but some that are really going to really, really have a problem.

Yeah.

Really have a problem. I am MAGA. And I, God forbid, and this whole thing is, is it, I, we all need allies now because they do have an enormous amount of power. You know, one of the things that I always think about is that it's so easy to silence people, but it would be particularly easy for instance to go, like, if someone, like, the whole cocaine in the White House thing. By the way, I look at your image. Is it, like, I, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I know my truth, and that's all I can do.

And you'd prefer crack anyways.

A hundred percent. And by the way, I would not have forgotten it in a cubby to go into the situation room, which I've never been in before. Okay, exactly. I mean, Jesus Christ. Anyway, but my point is, what if I'm flying back to L.A. and—

And, you know, or when I go through security and they find drugs in my bag, who would believe me that I'm clean and sober? Who would possibly believe me?

No one.

No one. No one. And I could take drug tests and I could prove it and I could, you know, I mean, literally, I pack my bag in front of a witness everywhere I go so that at least I would be able to say that. here's the crazy part is the idea that i would think that there is a government and power capable of doing that says everything anyone needs to know about where we are yeah the idea that you feel unsafe in the United States of America because you disagree with the current administration on a issue that 70% of Americans agree with you on. Like, you know, I think we all can agree is that we need to stop the wholesale murder of a population in Gaza. I, you know, whatever you think about my father's policy as it relates, I always say to people, you know, one thing he didn't do, he didn't greenlight a, to turn Gaza into a Trump golf course, you know, with the maitre d' being Jared Kushner with $4 billion in Saudi money.

It's despicable. Despicable. It's just like they did the deal before. I mean, when he posted that, I'll never forget that, posted the Trump, like, here's what Gaza could be and, like, I could have my name in a building. And I was like.

But literally, that's what they're doing.

This is dead children. Like, you're literally saying this is all going to be fine because we're going to get up a Trump resort or something. Positively despicable. I mean, just positively despicable, tasteless, indefensible. And it's not a joke, though. It wasn't a joke. And that is the deal.

And that's what they're doing. Literally doing. And by the way, they're doing it out in the open. I mean, it's not as if they're hiding it in any way. I mean, they are making deals as they go through. And, you know, like I always say to people, it's like, you had such a problem with me. I didn't do any business. I'll take the paintings. I didn't do a single business. I, you know, every single person that bought a painting from me during the time my dad was there in office. I had two shows and probably sold a total of 20 paintings and 13 of them to my best friend. And that's it. That's it. And you had a problem, not you. Well, you too, but they had a problem with me as being this emblematic emblem of corruption. These guys, okay Don Jr. got the single largest loan guarantee From the Department of Defense ever handed out Of over $600 million for an energy company A fusion energy company Of which he has zero, zero experience in They have gotten Jared Kushner, who's never run a private equity fund Has now a $4 billion private equity fund with 80% of the money coming from the Middle East, of which he continues to raise as he is the ambassador at large on behalf of the Trump administration, not as a political appointee, but simply as a son-in-law of the president to come to a peace deal of a war in Iran that they started that has cost the economy billions and billions of dollars for a war nobody wanted. That every president before them, before him, was pressured by the Israelis to get into. And every single one, regardless what you think of them, from Jimmy Carter, through President Reagan, through both of the Bushes, through Clinton, through my dad, said, you're out of your d***ing minds. And here's the reason why. This is what's going to happen. So who benefits right now? You know who benefits? It's the people that are making trades of billions of dollars on market manipulation that occurred. It's literally out in the open. But who's going to, you know, who's going to think about it?

You will not get a disagreement out of me. Like, I am so far off the Trump chain. He's posting me. No, no, by the way, and I'm not even saying it for the purposes of, like, yeah. But it is embarrassing. It is embarrassing because we got behind him as the answer to corruption. We thought he was going to be this outsider. You know, he's going to go to D.C. He's going to drain the swamp. And then he became the Loch Ness Monster, you know, and so it's like, I don't know what it is about that swamp, but you get swimming in it and it's like people do this. And yes, it has been for Israel, not to say that Trump wasn't pro-Israel. Most presidents actually are pro-Israel when they go in there and they go anti-Israel, they kind of end up dead. But it's. Or they sort of get kicked out, if you want to talk about Nixon and the scandal of Watergate, which I've revisited and did think that that had a lot more to do with his shifting viewpoints. But that wasn't the issue. Like, I was pro-Israel, generally speaking, not very educated about the topic. It's this level of corruption that you're talking about when you are willing to let real Americans be harmed, their day-to-day lives be harmed, their suffering at the gas pump, their groceries are expensive, all so that you could further enrich. How much more money does a Trump family need? Literally, how much more money do you need that you're going to allow this to happen? Don't you just want to have now the legacy of being a good president? I mean, this is...

Yeah, I have to say to you about the cryptocurrency thing. I think there's incredible promise in cryptocurrency. I believe in the meme token. I'll do something one day to create a community. And there's really good reasons to do it. There's really interesting ways. And I know people can disagree. I just happen to be kind of like a...

Crypto guy?

Crypto guy. I mean, just because of my understanding. i think it is incredible freedom in world in which we've been controlled by banks so if you have the same problem that i have with big pharma banks and and and the fed and these like like where does money come from kind of thing is it like i truly believe in in what uh satoshi uh you know kind of the manifesto of bitcoin but that's just me regardless my point is is that they had such an opportunity. It had such an opportunity. I'll give you this. I want you to look at the conspiracy. Go look up Gal Luft and Alexander Smirnoff. They're the two principal individuals that made the only claim that people hung their hat in, in Congress and elsewhere, as it relates to my dad and corruption, bribery and stuff like that. One of them is a fugitive from justice wanted by Interpol in the United States government, Gal Luft, who is a former IDF officer who is believed to be living in Israel as a fugitive, which the Israelis will not help us locate. And the other one is Alexander Smirnoff, who is a known Israeli intelligence agent. Those are the two people who was in a prison in the United States, serving six years and they can't find him. Bureau of Prison can't find him in his prison. In the prison. He is on furlough but no one knows where he's been furloughed to. The only passport that he has is an Israeli passport. There are forces that I used to say, oh, this is bullshit. Have you ever read The Devil's

chessboard yes i i i alan dulles looking into the cia i read this book chaos that then led me the devil's chessboard it's actually on our list for books to read for the book club yeah yeah yeah it'll knock you chaos cia the mansion stuff that was the one that knocked me and i was

like what the heck is our government what is going on chessboard and you realize the that

anyway what the cia is capable of and you think it's all a conspiracy and i think that's what they're fearful of is that people have awakened to that and so when they're kind of trying to throw red meat now what you see them doing the left the right it's just not landing the same anymore because we just realized that there is a by the way that's that's why i have in terms of

the left like you think i'm going to defend the um uh the the dc elite of the of the left they they crushed my dad they went when when they saw their chance they did everything in their power to um uh to to push push him out you know why because he was never part of that club he was never part of the epstein class he lived in delaware everybody the thing that you can think whatever you want about my dad is that literally my dad never bought a stock or a bond because he made a commitment in 1972 when he was 30 years old after watergate never to own a stock or a bond and he did my dad was the poorest person ever to enter the presidency and the poorest person not poorest. I mean, he had money, he'd wrote and written a book and he'd done well, but he had the least amount of wealth entering the presidency in modern years and since 1900 than anybody. And when he was in the United States Senate, he was not only the poorest man in the Senate, not poor again, he made over $170,000 in average over the course of 45 years, but not just the senate but 535 members of congress he was never a part of that club and and that's what i wish like you knew that's what i wish they knew and i am not here in any way to defend you know the the you know the dc elites of my own party i think the that they're just as complicit in all this bullshit.

Now, without question, like the Nancy Pelosi's, what's your opinion on Kamala then? Did you like her?

Look, I— I feel like you didn't. No, you know what? I did—I don't want to say anything. I don't—I didn't know the vice president that well. Okay. You know? I mean, I—and she was always nice to me personally. And so that was my, you know— But I didn't have, the other thing that people think that I was like living at the White House, I literally didn't leave my home because it was really hard to leave. I stayed, you know, in the hill that I lived on until the fires came. You know, that's where I was. I was with Beau and Melissa and trying to make it through and not trying to make it through, thriving making it through would otherwise have seemed like a horrible, horrible. life from any outsider's perspective. So I'm not dodging the question, but I don't want to shit on the Vice President because I have no reason

to necessarily. She did nothing personal to you.

She was nice to you. Never did anything personal to me. I don't think that she is you know, so. Kind of machine stuff. Yeah, exactly. You know, I don't in terms of all that stuff, I'm you know, I think I'm tough enough to realize that you know, that's part of like When you get to politics at that level, people kind of, I think, have this misperception of me is that for 50 years, I was a crack addict and I was that picture. You know, I mean, I went to Yale Law School, you know, I served in the Clinton administration. I was chairman of the board of the USUN World Food Program, which is the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I served on 16 boards before I ever joined the board of Burisma or anything. um i taught at georgetown for i was you know taught at the master's program of the school in first service for four years i actually didn't know that yeah yeah and that was something that

surprised me too not to be rude but i i thought you were dumb yeah because i don't know maybe because megan mccain was on the view for too long or something and i was like here we go just like rich political kids like i mean she is just she's just so dumb and and yet she's just always here like they're just giving her stuff and so i think there's also that perception where it's there rich kids don't work aren't smart and so i was kind of expecting you to be sort of a megan mccain and then when i watched it i was like oh wait he actually has he has brain cells which is by the way remarkable that you didn't kill them all off when you were on crack i told you before

i think they got pickled all the uh all the vodka so i was like this is interesting he's not a total

idiot uh so there is there are the stereotypes of rich kids who just keep getting handed all

of these awards in life i say to everybody is that if there's any ever anybody in the history of america that that benefits from uh low expectations it's me is that people are like oh my god like you aren't you're not a complete moron you didn't you haven't pulled out your crack pipe yet which is really crazy but that gives you an idea by the way of the level to which i was muted because uh they didn't want and you know you you have to subvert yourself to a machine to a certain degree and like it wasn't up to me if i wanted to go out and like rail at the machine or rail at you know go on and and and argue with jake tapper you know because it would harm your dad yeah because then then i become even more of the story but you give up your voice in that way and it's incredibly emasculating and particularly when the the um the portrait that is being painted of you as a, um, a near-do-well that never did anything in their life. Like, like you want to talk about experience? Go look at my goddamn resume. I have 10 times more experience in 10 times more things. And I know I am 10 times more well-read than either one of the Trump boys, regardless of what you think about them. Now, you know what I can't do is that I'm not a great shot, you know? And, um, and I don't know anything about real estate. And I don't know anything about making money. And that's why I'm about, you know, a few million dollars in debt. And I don't. And I need to change that one around in some way at the age of 56. But the portrait that was painted on me has given me this incredible gift that I can walk into your house, into your studio, and I guarantee that people afterwards are going to go, I still think he's a s**t, but my God, he's not. You know what? Like, can you believe it? He didn't go do lines in the bathroom.

No, I was, that was my reaction when I watched Andrew Callahan. I was like, wow, he's actually thought through his addiction. He's talking about the ritual. Like, this guy's not an idiot. And I, you're right. I guess you do benefit from having exceedingly low expectations, but it was sort of like. like you said, the first time you spoke. And of course you did sort of have to be quiet because otherwise you would have definitely hurt your father and there's a machine that's kind of bigger than you that you have to submit yourself to.

By the way, the rage was there. You could tell that I even went back. My dad just said, honey, that was really beautiful parts of it. Did you have to use the F word that much? I was like, coming from you. yeah but the thing about my dad though is he uh he um at least from the different generation he would he never talked to us that way ever like even around or around my mom or you know but anyway so i'm trying to curb the f word or for my mom and dad all right you guys summertime expenses

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Just about three. I was a month away from three. Beau was a month away from four. My sister, Caspi, was about 18 months, who my oldest daughter's named after, Naomi. Do you have any memory of her? Yeah, you know, I don't know for certain whether the things that I have, which I believe are memories, are memory, because it would be very rare at that age. I, I, I have distinct memories of my, my mom carrying us around in picnic basket. And, um, and I even have a, uh, a distinct memory of the car, not the accident of the car. Um, uh, but I don't know if it's because I've been, you know, steeped in stories, you know, the beautiful part like everything there's a have you ever read any of the um agnostic possibles you know no you really should because i know you're uh i i've listened to you talk about

your catholicism and your faith and i'm like a toddler in the faith and there's so much it's

like so rich so it's really cool there's the one of the things that i uh i've always been a student of because when i went first went to georgetown the two closest people after i got georgetown were two jesuit priests one was named ted deziak another one was bill watson and both father watson and father deziak led me into this idea of service you know it was the i started a thing called the jesuit international volunteers uh with father watson i mean excuse me father deziak And then I went to the JBC because of Father Watson, which is like the Domestic Peace Corps, you know, and I did that for a year. And then when I opened up my own law firm, all my clients were Jesuit universities because I was friends with presidents of universities that were just like five or six years older than me. You know, they were now becoming residents of St. Joe's and Granton and Loyola and all these Jesuit universities, Detroit Mercy. And, but anyway, the Gnostic Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels were, they were found in Naj Hominy, and they were written in the period between Christ's death and the first two centuries. And there's the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip. And Constantine, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. But what he did, and really what it was about, was not a true transformation of faith. It was a way to consolidate power. So he made the Christian bishops, who were, you know, 200 years into the very, very early church, he made the Christian bishops his lieutenants and enforcers as it related to the religion so that he can control the more radical elements of it. And so that is when they came to an adoption of just four gospels. And there's all of these other writings that became, that you could get excommunicated for promoting. That is really beautiful. Really beautiful portraits, like the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene. But anyway, it's not a gospel, but it is one of the texts. I think it's called the Acts of John. There is a thing that Christ says, and he says, I'm paraphrasing, you must learn to suffer as I do. in order to be able not to suffer. And that is the greatest lesson of everything, is not having gratitude for all the good things in my life,

for having immense gratitude for all of my life. Like, I wouldn't be here. We couldn't have this honest conversation. I couldn't get to know you as a human being if every single thing didn't occur behind it. I would not feel this gift of being alive on a daily basis the way that I do if I hadn't overcome committing suicide dozens of times in motel rooms

in places that I could never afford to be found dead. And it's that piece of life that the only way I got it

is when they just tore off all my clothes, tart and feathered me, and put me in the center of town and said, look at him. And I survived. When you survive that, you kind of go, what am I going to do with my life? Well, the number one thing I want to do with my life is, number one, take care of me.

Yeah.

Take care of me.

I feel like I have to say, like i'm really sorry that i contributed to that like i just feel really shitty like i feel guilty because like hearing you talk about i mean basically having the worst moments of your life like i always speak about on my show how a lot of these kids growing up aren't going to even know what it was like before social media where you could just make a mistake and like have that be over and you got to grow up and now it's like they're digging and they're finding people's tweets from when they're 17 they're an idiot they wrote the n-word once and they like want to hang them when they're 40 and um i just i just saw you as a caricature and it was it was definitely like i said like feeling gaslit by the political machine convinced that it was just the left that partook in this political machine and i just like really want to say like genuinely like i'm so sorry that i just didn't even consider he's a crackhead and like you know like that's actually a very relatable thing and he shouldn't be you know like to have that is just unbelievable to consider

every worst thing you've ever done i am uh like i told you before we started i cry very easily

but i do i just feel like i my it's not who i want to be and i think i've yeah i've come a long way from that in general um and like but i did partake in just the inhumanity of just look at this guy at the worst moment of his life like with prostitutes he's on crack he's on drugs and we should make fun of him because it makes us feel good or it makes us feel like we're somehow beating the machine and that it was I think a really warped viewpoint and hearing you speak about it today I'm just like wow it is so gross that I particularly

you have so much and I mean this in a good way so much power because I think that your audience absolutely trusts you and the reason that they trust you is because you've shown an enormous amount of courage of speaking your mind particularly as it related to someone that you love like a brother and everything that has transpired since then which is an immediate rejection of power and an immediate rejection of and knowing that you were just going to get the shit beat out of you and for you to say that to me I truly mean it just from a purely selfish point of view it means the world and I truly didn't come here for that I came here because you know what I has forgiven

every day without any expectation that I will be forgiven but I know the people that I hurt and you know and I still do and I'm not even remotely perfect and I still screw up and you know and but God if like if we could have this conversation and genuinely authentically believe that like i think just opens the door for and a few other people without being you know with with all humility like maybe you know maybe a few other people and there is a freedom in it too like

there's a freedom that your worst moments have just been yeah there's nothing else what are you gonna say yeah you know what i mean like you got me butt naked up with the with a crack pipe so i mean there's i survived it and so you have it and yeah it allows you to kind of return to who you are because it's you know addiction is yeah i wouldn't wish it i always say like you know people growing up and seeing what it's done to families and um seeing a lot of stuff when i was younger like really made me like again i'm like wow i can't even imagine imagine if you could talk about

it imagine if you could have openly talked about it and the person that you were confronting or doing it is like we're able to say like like this is you know like we got to do something about this come on everybody let's do something about it i want to start an aftercare program for people for free because the biggest thing that happens is people go to detox and they go to recovery center um or rehab and they get out after 30 days and they got nowhere to go and so one of the things that i'm trying to do is start a free aftercare program and there's a couple there's one in kentucky that is a really beautiful model but if i could do that you know i'm i've worked with it with a um with an organization called uh bosta universal um i'm the development director there and they do tenants rights and um and uh and homeless prevention like i i know what we all can agree on we can all agree on that you know uh that people can't afford to pay the rent and need to be able to figure out a way to stay um stay in their houses before it becomes a mother with three kids that are homeless we know where that leads but these kinds of things is what i want to use what i'm doing what like i want like i want to do that i also want to make a living i also want to do i also want to be able to pay my debt i also want to be able to do the things that i you know i have you know you know i also still want to make art you know uh you know i i started um finally and like you know what i'm gonna put all my art on my website and people can come look at it if they want to buy it they can buy it and like because i don't really believe art becomes art until you share it with somebody um i mean like until there's an observer of it so i can you know i can sit in my my my studio which is my garage but i want to do all of those things and i want to be able to do it and i want to be able to talk to you you know what i mean i want to be able to talk to the people i want to talk to like that family necessary conversation and say to the mom like the stories your daughter tells you about the way that you that you adopted animals it really moves me the fact that you think i'm the spawn of the devil we maybe have a discussion about it right you know yeah it's a caricature yeah and i have and

i have a caricature of me that's been built up for a year so i should have been more empathetic to it honestly but it's when you're in it you kind of don't really know that you're in it i think

Well, not only in it, it's that you're in it to win it. And when everything is put in a political lens and, and life or death and, you know, if we lose this election, you know, this is over and these, you know, now I will tell you this is that we've never had somebody that is, you know, uh, you know, both staying longer than they're supposed to. But regardless, I think that we all have a tendency to look at the time that we live in and say that it's worse than ever. Absolutely worse. And the fact of the matter is, like you, if you know your history, this is a cycle. There will always be really bad people. We will always be disappointed in the end with leadership. We will always have corruption. It doesn't mean that we need to accept it. It doesn't mean that we don't need to fight against it. It doesn't mean that sometimes really good people make the wrong choice. But what it does mean is that I have absolute hope. I really truly still believe in America. Even with all of its... false i mean even after reading the devil's chessboard like you know you read that and you go like what is that's not about democrats and that's not about republicans and if you go back and you go back to reconstruction you go back to andrew johnson and you go back to like the um uh you know the fact that the united states of america has not had it was not it's not been truly the united states of america until you know 1964 at best and this whole thing but i still really believe in the illusion and the thing that makes me so mad is they have completely torn away that illusion and people feel hopeless. They feel like there's no chance of changing it. Okay, they gave this guy the Marines to do it and he was the one who was going to blow everything up and make it better for everybody and they're kind of like, wait a second what happened to Charlie? Wait a second why are we at war again yeah you know

I think this is actually the most important question and I will make this my final question I want to ask you but I'm really interested about your faith life you're Catholic you're raised Catholic you went to Catholic school and like is you're talking to me about the Gnostic Gospels

let's you and I go see the Pope together

I'd love to do that

seriously

I think he's a little mad at America right now no but you and I he's been I was tweeted the same day is the pope by the way by trump when he said bad things about me for real let's go to the

vatican i would love to i would love to the coolest place in the world i love i just got

back from italy i was there uh two weeks ago yeah i did my confirmation well oh you did i did i was it was just the most beautiful oh that's so cool unbelievable yeah it was literally the same day that trump posted the time most vile person of the year so i felt like there was even in that there was something divine because it was like looking at fake power and then the real power of like having you know a cardinal getting confirmed being in italy the deep history like what outlasts that like there was something so fickle about it like posting this photo of me when i was sick okay great um wait hold on talk about humiliating people for sport somebody literally sent this

to me right before i came into you they knew that i was going to talk to you and i promise you i did not plan to do no you're so fine it was a prayer if you are wise and understand god's ways prove it by living an honorable life. Do good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don't cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God's kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. the whole first piece of that when you were just talking is what's my faith if you are wise and understand god's ways prove it by living an honorable life and the thing that i recognized is that oh from mother theresa i don't go to mass as much as i used to go up going to mass every sunday i never would miss a mass you know i i went to georgetown i was catholic but what I realized is that my real faith is in that belief is that just do the next right thing that's the whether it's the golden rule and that doesn't mean you have to be weak in your empathy but always be compassionate I believe in the perennial philosophy I believe that same exact message from the Upanishads to the Gospels of Jesus Christ are all at base in terms of the red-letter words of each of them are saying the same thing. Love your neighbor like you would want to be loved. And it's the hardest thing in the world to do. It's so hard, but that's my faith. And I think that there are certain people that arrive at certain times that are messengers of that. And, for instance, I certainly don't agree with the Catholic Church on a lot of stuff. I certainly have a... But I'll tell you what, I really am so proud of Pope Francis and now Pope Leo in terms of just the notion of social justice. And... I think that there can be a practical application of that in terms of our leadership. I really do. I think that faith that is used as a cudgel is...

really, really dangerous. I think that I know a lot of people that I personally love and very close to that are part of an evangelical church, particularly in the African American community, but that are horrified by the complicity of a certain section of the evangelical church in what's happening in the world today. So to me, my faith is very personal. It's rooted in Catholicism. And it's rooted in the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit Church in particular, which they used to always call the Black Pope until we finally got a Jesuit Pope. And with the eyes wide open too, that the church as an institution is incredibly flawed and had been. But it's given me an enormous sense of community and belonging just from a cultural perspective.

Well, what I'm going to say is I really think you should go to confession.

Yeah.

You should do that.

Oh, don't worry. I've been to confession.

Yeah, you should go to confession and get, you know, and just, you know.

100%.

yeah don't worry go back to the root go back to the root and um you know there's so much there and it's like you're not you know you're just not enough your brain's not enough i mean hearing you describe that i can do this that there is just something about for me like the the submission that every mass and just remembering like the beautiful thing yeah beautiful thing is this

the beautiful thing is that i have been going to confession for six years wow right here that's me you know i i like that freedom you know what you feel like the only person that you could say this to you know and i'm not saying that there is not like my impure thoughts that i'm you know that's between me and god but i am saying is that that feeling of release that the confessional is there for is the feeling that when i was finally able to see beyond all of the noise that i received by just existing and getting up every day and looking turning over

and seeing that my wife who saved me and and Bowie and my dad as a dad not as president

but just as a dad and my mom and my sister and my aunts and uncles and everybody else and then the wider circle my friend George you know my friend Franny my you know I mean my friend Bobby I like people that came into my life and and never left and Despite it all. And there was nothing in it for them, but just grief and ridicule.

Pretty cool.

It's everything.

Yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen, Hunter Biden never thought this conversation would happen. And it's just stranger things have happened. And I'm just, this has truly been one of the most powerful discussions that we've ever had. And I think it's because of your journey. You know, you've lived through a lot. You lost your mother, your sister in a tragic accident. You lost your brother to cancer. um maybe for a while lost your dad to politics political machine lost yourself to crack cocaine um and somehow and i gained everything yeah gained it all back yeah i really did i can't tell you

how much it means to me that uh that you wouldn't invite me here into your home to be able to have this discussion um and i i i really really mean it i i'm really really honored and i'm and i'm

I'm grateful that you took it and that you've accepted my apology because I just feel really shitty about it. But guilt is good, like we said earlier. Thank you so much for joining us. Amazing.