Episode 1215 - Hunter Biden
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fuck aristas what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it if you're new to the podcast we've been at it since 2009 creating a interesting conversation all over the map
Marc:For over a decade, well over a decade.
Marc:We're doing this a long time.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Look, today on the show, here's the deal.
Marc:We get pitched guests from a booking agent and Hunter Biden...
Marc:was pitched.
Marc:He's got a book out, Beautiful Things, a memoir.
Marc:It's out tomorrow.
Marc:So I talked to my producer, Brendan McDonald.
Marc:He says, what do you think of Hunter Biden?
Marc:I'm like, I don't know.
Marc:Do we need to get into that?
Marc:Do we need to get tossed around by the cultural tsunami that follows that guy?
Marc:And what is that guy, really?
Marc:And who is he?
Marc:And I have no sense of him.
Marc:And so I was like, nah.
Marc:We don't need it.
Marc:You know, he'll be all right without doing our show.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I just don't know.
Marc:It doesn't feel good.
Marc:And then it started bothering me.
Marc:Like, I judged this guy based on what?
Marc:Based on nothing.
Marc:I've never seen him.
Marc:I've never heard him talk.
Marc:I know he had a drug problem.
Marc:I know that the right-wing machine sought to destroy him or destroy his father through him, that he had this horrendous drug problem.
Marc:And I just assumed that he was like a sociopathic douchebag.
Marc:You know, that was my... I mean, that's what I got in my head.
Marc:But then it...
Marc:Then it started to bother me.
Marc:I was like, this Hunter Biden thing, you know.
Marc:It was just sort of eating at me.
Marc:I'm like, look, man, I'm a recovering guy.
Marc:I don't really know what this guy's story is.
Marc:Then I started thinking about, like, what has it got to be like to be trying to recover when you're being used as some sort of whipping boy by the right, by all the right-wing press, being judged by the right and left.
Marc:But they're seeing you as some sort of portal.
Marc:Into some nefarious conspiracy.
Marc:And they're hammering and hammering and hammering.
Marc:How does a human, let alone a drug addict trying to stay clean, deal with that?
Marc:So, you know, I started thinking about, like, what is it like to be this guy?
Marc:How did he handle it?
Marc:This crack addicted son of our current president.
Marc:And look, I started to think, I know how to talk to these guys.
Marc:If he's got a little sobriety, I know how to talk that.
Marc:I know how to talk to drug addicts.
Marc:I've met these guys before.
Marc:I know low bottom addicts who've dug out.
Marc:I just started to think like, well, get me the book.
Marc:You know, and I read the book and it just...
Marc:I'll tell you, man, it's as most people probably have no idea, really, thankfully, what it's like to be in deep addiction, like to really not have any control over it, but to feel that need to do that stuff that you no longer are concerned about yourself, the depth of self-destruction and depravity.
Marc:I stayed in that groove.
Marc:I'm like, well, let's see who this guy is.
Marc:Let me reach out to this Hunter Biden as a sober guy and have this conversation.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:You know, at the bottom of all this is like I like to have conversations with people about who they are, what they come from, what they do, what they want, how they got to where they are.
Marc:You know what I do here.
Marc:And I just knew that out of the gate this was going to be, just from doing a little research before I read the book, I knew that he was like a total mess with the marriages and the relationship with his brother's widow and
Marc:All the accusations of him using like he clearly traded on his family name to help with jobs.
Marc:I didn't think he committed any crimes in doing that, but it seems pretty obvious that he he did use his name for personal gain, though I assume that it's hard to know.
Marc:I mean, he he is a Yale educated lawyer, but he is a Biden.
Marc:I imagine that gets a little blurry.
Marc:But it was because of this that he was an easy target of people looking to to hurt Joe Biden, to hurt Joe Biden's political prospects.
Marc:He was the easiest target.
Marc:In fact, Hunter was.
Marc:And if you look into it, which I did, a lot of the stuff the right wing tried to use against him was transparently just an attempt to hurt his father.
Marc:Nothing else.
Marc:They basically tried to run the Crooked Hillary playbook on Joe Biden by turning Hunter's business dealings into this financial conspiracy that involved Joe Biden and and dubious corrupt forces in the Ukraine.
Marc:And, you know, it was such a flimsy case that Trump got impeached by trying to manufacture it.
Marc:And a lot of the accusations against Hunter were just tabloid fodder that attacked his character for being a drug addict.
Marc:Like all that shit with his laptop.
Marc:I mean, who the fuck cares about his laptop?
Marc:Even the people who said they looked at this stuff on the laptop couldn't come up with anything.
Marc:The guy had an insanely dark struggle with drugs, but he did survive that.
Marc:And he has, to this point, survived this onslaught of political contempt.
Marc:But he's not out of the woods in any real way.
Marc:I mean, he has a reprieve, as we call it, in the recovery racket around that stuff.
Marc:And if he does the work, you know, he can stay sober.
Marc:But I mean...
Marc:The Justice Department currently is looking into his taxes.
Marc:There's an investigation that could end up with him in prison.
Marc:You know, there's still a lot of struggle on the horizon for this guy.
Marc:So I just want to make that clear because that was my sense.
Marc:Outside of all of the made-up shit, there's some very tangible, very real problems.
Marc:And my intention in this conversation is not to clear his name or set anything straight for the right-wing attack machine.
Marc:It's not what we're doing here.
Marc:So that's the kind of stuff I was thinking about going into this.
Marc:So I read Hunter's book.
Marc:And it's very clear who this guy is.
Marc:And I hadn't I don't I don't think I'd realize just how deep into addiction he was and just how recently.
Marc:You only got a couple of years clean.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, at the end of the book.
Marc:Like, you know, sometimes when you read these books, it's sort of like, well, that's, you know, he's got a little hindsight.
Marc:And that was an uplifting story.
Marc:I'm glad he kicked it.
Marc:And he's, you know, and I learned a lot from it.
Marc:But at the end of this book, I got to be honest, I was still concerned about this guy.
Marc:I still wasn't sure that he was OK.
Marc:And I brought that into the conversation.
Marc:And I really didn't know what to expect because I had not seen him talk.
Marc:I've met a lot of drug addicts in my journey in sobriety and also in using.
Marc:I made assumptions about this guy's character, as I said at the beginning.
Marc:I didn't know if he would be sort of like if he was going to work me, if he was going to hustle me, if he was going to charm me, if he wasn't going to be candid with me, if he was a sociopath.
Marc:I didn't know what.
Marc:Is he a good guy?
Marc:That seemed like a long shot.
Marc:And right when he got here, you know, I asked him if he wanted coffee.
Marc:Because we all want coffee.
Marc:All of us addicts.
Marc:You just say, you want coffee?
Marc:Yeah, of course I want coffee.
Marc:I always want coffee.
Marc:Where are you taking it?
Marc:Two sugars.
Marc:No milk, sugars.
Marc:I do it black.
Marc:But this guy, as I said, is only a couple years out of it.
Marc:Gonna have a couple sugars in that coffee.
Marc:You know, he's definitely been humbled.
Marc:I don't think he's got another life in him.
Marc:I think he's used them all up.
Marc:I do feel, after talking to him, a bit concerned about his sobriety and his well-being, oddly, because I don't know him, but that's just the nature of what we do as recovering people.
Marc:But I found him to be a very sensitive guy, very raw and open.
Marc:His new book is called Beautiful Things, a memoir.
Marc:It releases tomorrow.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get your books.
Marc:And it's an incredible document about, more than anything else, grief and the effects of grief in life and then just addiction.
Marc:It's out tomorrow.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get books.
Marc:This is me talking to Hunter Biden.
Thank you.
Marc:well it's good to see you man yeah thank you i read the book and i gotta be honest with you as a as a guy who's done a share of drugs at uh at the point where you uh where you say i gotta take a break yeah okay yeah i gotta take a break because i'm about to i'm about to it's triggering too much yeah yeah you were a pretty legendary uh crackhead man oh god i swear to god i i don't i mean i shouldn't be here
Marc:No, it's crazy, you know, because, I mean, I'm coming up on, I guess this is my 22nd year.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I listen to you all the time.
Marc:Oh, you do?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Oh, so you know what the story is?
Marc:How are you doing it?
Marc:Do you feel like you're out of the woods?
Marc:How are you doing it?
Marc:Are you doing the thing?
Marc:Are you doing the regular way, the secret meetings?
Guest:Well, I have been, you know, we have a mutual acquaintance.
Guest:You know Moby?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:What about, he's helping you out?
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean...
Guest:There's like a whole crowd of people here.
Guest:And I didn't, I mean, he was a friend of a friend and he just showed up at the house before COVID and was like, hey man, you need someone to talk to.
Guest:You need someone to take you to a meeting.
Guest:I'm here.
Guest:I first got clean and sober in 2003.
Guest:That was the first, it goes back that far.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I ran big book meetings, literally three hours every Sunday.
Guest:I never missed a meeting in probably five years.
Guest:I was serious about it.
Marc:And what led up to that one?
Marc:It's like the one thing I have a hard time putting together in the book is the timeline, the cash, and the bouncing around where it got bad, when it got bad.
Marc:Because I know when I was using that what becomes very tangible is that you're going to
Marc:become untethered from a moral compass or the reality that you once knew, that there's a line where you're like, if I cross that line, then there's no safety.
Marc:It's all going to be gambler's luck after this.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's sort of a commitment to a life.
Marc:And you're pretty clear about that.
Marc:You're like, yeah, at some point you're like- At the end.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm this guy.
Marc:There's no getting better.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's like a horrendously terrifying- Yeah.
Marc:Because it's sort of like, in retrospect, it reminded me a little of leaving Las Vegas.
Marc:Like, you can't seem to succeed in killing yourself, but you no longer care if you do or not.
Guest:That is exactly it.
Guest:I mean, it was almost as if that movie was playing right in front of my eyes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't a concerted effort to go out and jump off a bridge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I might as well have gone out and jumped off a bridge.
Guest:It was a much slower way.
Guest:But, you know, I first got sober in 2003.
Guest:It was drinking.
Marc:Right.
Guest:How old were you, man?
Guest:In 2003, it was 33.
Guest:33?
Guest:Yeah, 33.
Guest:Got sober, stayed sober for just close to eight years.
Guest:Oh, so you had some real time.
Guest:My sobriety date was the day Johnny Cash died.
Guest:And I went to rehab.
Guest:Picked up the 12 steps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It saved my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, absolutely 100% saved my life.
Guest:And by the way, it didn't only save my life then, it saved my life this time.
Guest:Being able to have some of those tools at the outset, I stayed sober through the program.
Guest:The first go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had this counselor in my first rehab.
Guest:And he told me a story.
Guest:He got sober.
Guest:He got really into the program.
Guest:He became kind of a speaker and was flying all over the country.
Guest:He became a- Big time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, big time.
Guest:He was a counselor and he was on a plane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And seven years sober.
Guest:He's on a plane back from some speaking engagement on, you know, the sober life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He got on the plane and he said like four days later he woke up in, you know, in a different fucking city.
Guest:And seven years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Seven years in, I'm on a plane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No one else around.
Guest:The flight attendant rolls up with a cart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And says, hey, you know, would you like a drink?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, I'm a Bloody Mary.
Marc:Just like it was another day.
Guest:It was another day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That started this, because relapse is so goddamn insidious.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:And once you've had, like, if you've got seven years of program, then you've got to drown that out.
Guest:and you gotta drown out whatever the fuck else is going on.
Guest:And then you're lying to everybody, and you think nobody can tell you're drinking, so then I went back to rehab, and then I relapsed again.
Marc:But what was that, you know, I don't know how many people know the full story of the sort of ongoing tragedy of your family.
Marc:How old were you when your mother was killed?
Marc:I was just about three.
Marc:So it's you in the car with Beau, your brother, and your two sisters?
Marc:No, my one sister.
Marc:The one sister who was younger than you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your mother.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And she was about a year and a half younger.
Guest:Beau and I are a year and a day apart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:February 3rd and 4th.
Guest:And then Naomi Cristina, which we called Caspi.
Guest:Caspi was in the car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were out buying a Christmas tree.
Guest:And it was right after my dad got elected in 1972.
Guest:He was 29 years old.
Guest:To the Senate.
Guest:Yeah, to the Senate.
Guest:And we got broadsided by a tractor-trailer.
Guest:And we both spent a lot of time in the hospital together.
Guest:But my mom and my sister died in the accident.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I always... I never...
Guest:You know, this whole, you know, you know, in the program, a lot of guys still say, like, you're an alcoholic because you're a goddamn alcoholic.
Guest:You're an addict because you're an addict.
Guest:It doesn't have anything to do with anything else.
Guest:And I kind of adopted that because I felt really guilty about the idea of seeing anything as trauma, you know?
Guest:As trauma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because so much of my life was, I mean, I had an incredible life growing up as a kid, you know?
Guest:I mean, I said we remarried my mom.
Guest:Jill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was...
Guest:Seven, eight years old.
Guest:But I have my aunts and my uncles.
Guest:We were raised by my whole family.
Marc:Did you ever do any EMDR or anything like that?
Guest:No, I haven't.
Guest:Oh, you know, I did a little bit of it.
Guest:A little bit of it.
Guest:I mean, I've done...
Guest:I have been a goddamn professional.
Guest:I mean, I've done everything from, you know, ayahuasca to ibogaine to... Yeah, I read about that.
Marc:Some old school shit.
Marc:But like, because I just wonder, like, do you... Because there's some element to... And I'll be honest, like, you know, I'm reading the book and you're talking about...
Marc:Growing up in the Senate, you and Bo, you and Bo, and the loss of Bo, which we'll talk about.
Marc:But right when you start talking about crack, all of a sudden it's like you're in it.
Marc:There's an immediacy to the writing.
Marc:There's a passion to it.
Marc:Because there's something ever-present.
Marc:When you think about crack or you do crack or drugs or whatever your thing was, you're not...
Marc:It's different than nostalgia because that was a guaranteed thing, man.
Marc:I mean, it's like the way you describe it is like you could always count on crack.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like if you got the good shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then the rest of this stuff trying to sort of frame the darkness of your life.
Marc:And, you know, I never felt that you were saying that you were drinking or using drugs because of that.
Marc:I just felt that you drank and you used drugs because you drank and you used drugs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I guess my question is, do you ever feel, like really feel and not just like speculate that the traumatic...
Marc:loss of your mother created a tangible void.
Guest:100%.
Guest:Have you ever seen Dr. Gabor Mate?
Guest:Yeah, I've read his stuff.
Guest:He did a TED Talk.
Marc:Yeah, I've read about half of his books.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's the first person I saw that explained it, that spoke to me about trauma being like the center of all addiction.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And it made me open my eyes to the idea that, you know, there's a lot more work than just, which this isn't obvious, than just abstinence.
Guest:I mean, I had all the tools of the 12 steps, which I think at least saved my life a number of times.
Guest:But the work that I hadn't done, which by the way, part of this book was doing that work.
Guest:It was literally going through and talking about those things, talking about the accident and talking about losing Bo.
Guest:And I am absolutely certain now is that, you know, like I talk about that, you know, talk about it when we're in the rooms, that God-sized hole that you're trying to fill.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And that, to me, is that trauma.
Guest:It's not the excuse.
Guest:It's not the reason.
Guest:But it's certainly the thing that I think I'm trying to...
Marc:Well, that sense of like, you know, you know, there one day gone the next and the brutality of the accident.
Marc:And then just sort of that, you know, like a lot like I imagine that your sense of like need had to be, you know, intensified throughout your life.
Marc:I mean, I felt that in the way you talked about your brother and sort of the relationship there that, you know, that you do seem to rely on people a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the end, and, and that relationship, the, the, uh, when I lost Bo, I mean, I, I think I'd definitely convinced myself my whole life is the one thing that I couldn't possibly lose was my brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As I just couldn't be without him.
Guest:Is that, um, and I say to people when he died, it literally felt like I lost like half my vocabulary.
Guest:I didn't know how to talk to people.
Guest:I felt like half a person for real.
Guest:And this was just like five years ago, six years ago.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're in your 40s.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:45, yeah.
Marc:And when you guys were growing up with, like, because I have to assume, obviously, your father, like, once, I guess, when he met Jill, that probably leveled him off a bit, right?
Guest:Yeah, and all of us.
Guest:I mean, you know, people, I think, out of courtesy, like, say, my stepmom or my, you know, but she's my mom.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:we reformed a family and and and we had a great family and yeah i mean my family is incredibly close i mean my when my mom died my uncle my uncles frankie and jimmy moved into the um you know made the garage they still around apartment yeah yeah i mean my uncle jimmy's my best friend in the world yeah i mean i i uh did your dad's brothers yeah my dad's brothers yeah and i mean uh
Guest:Are you guys the Irish clan?
Guest:Yeah, we are.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:Except my mother, who's Sicilian.
Guest:She makes everybody remember it all the time.
Guest:But, you know, and my grandparents.
Guest:I mean, I saw my grandparents every day.
Guest:You know, I slept in my grandparents' house.
Guest:We called them Mama Madata.
Guest:On my dad's side every, you know, three days a week until I graduated high school.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Everybody was in Delaware.
Marc:Everybody was in Delaware.
Guest:An hour.
Guest:Everybody was in literally 12 minutes of each other.
Marc:I remember that with my grandparents.
Marc:Everybody was in New Jersey.
Marc:They were within 45 minutes away.
Marc:When somebody made dinner, everybody would show up for dinner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that has always been us.
Guest:And when Bo died...
Guest:I think it was unimaginable for any of us.
Guest:Beau and I had become such a center of the story of my whole family.
Guest:Well, how did that start?
Marc:You guys, obviously, after your biological mom was killed, what do you think it was about Beau's fortitude around it to handle it and somehow look out for you the way he did?
Marc:You're only a year apart, but there seems to be a difference in dispositions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that's a question.
Guest:I haven't spent much time thinking about the ways in which Bo and I were different.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Because I've spent... I never saw a separation between us.
Guest:Now, we were really different.
Guest:And look...
Guest:My brother was no saint, but he was about as close to it as you get.
Guest:I mean, really.
Guest:I mean, we called him the sheriff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, literally.
Guest:I mean, all his friends.
Guest:And I mean, he was the guy that literally walked into a party and said, you know, okay, you stop drinking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That person would stop drinking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he was never a, you know, I mean, and he was funny as shit.
Guest:I mean, he had the greatest sense of humor and it was just a choice that he made and I made the choice to drink.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He drank, he just didn't drink.
Guest:No, I mean, he literally didn't have a drink until he was 21, so never through high school, and not until he was a senior.
Guest:And then he drank for, you know, like socially.
Guest:And your old man, he doesn't drink at all, right?
Guest:He didn't drink at all either.
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:I think because that, you know, I think he saw other people that we were, you know, that we're close to or their family.
Marc:You got family?
Guest:Is it in there?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, we come from a big Irish family.
Guest:A bunch of Finnegan's.
Guest:And I've actually, the Finnegan's, I've now learned that, you know, I mean, we're incredible, incredible.
Guest:That's your dad's mom?
Guest:My dad's mom, yeah.
Guest:Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, who is the source of all good in our family.
Guest:But on my grandfather's side, you know,
Guest:joe biden senior yeah uh you know there's a lot of alcoholism and i think it's and my dad i think saw that i don't i don't know exactly why i chose not to but your so your grandfather joe biden senior was a was alcoholic no he was not an alcoholic but uh but i think his uncles and his you know i mean yeah yeah so so a lot of people died young of things that that we're not really sure of so right so so you think your old man saw that and just said yeah not gonna do it exactly and i think that beau you know got that got that same message
Guest:And I don't know how people, and it's just like, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, the first time I drank, all I knew is that, you know, I was four foot 11.
Guest:I weighed 90 pounds.
Guest:I was a freshman in high school.
Guest:And I asked the, you know, the five foot eight senior girl to the prom.
Guest:Now she laughed at me, but I got up the nerve at the party to go ask her to the prom.
Guest:From drinking.
Guest:Yeah, from drinking, you know what I mean?
Guest:And so in that moment, I was both embarrassed but really proud of myself.
Guest:And I felt like for a moment, that moment when all was right in the world.
Guest:And then you chase that, literally.
Guest:I found the most insidious drug I ever used was alcohol.
Guest:I mean, by far.
Guest:I mean, it's the only drug that you could die from withdrawing from.
Guest:It's the only drug-
Guest:You can kind of do it around regular people.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it's hard to avoid it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the thing that grabbed me in a way that nothing else ever had was crack.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you're growing up, though, I'm just curious as to... Because you spent a lot of time... In some ways, because your father's the president now...
Marc:And he was the vice president for eight years.
Marc:But in some ways, I have to assume that from a very young age, when you grow up in politics, in, you know, your dad's a senator, he's a popular senator.
Marc:Everybody knows him.
Marc:He, you know, he's well respected in the state.
Marc:That like on some level, there's this idea like, you know, when you start getting targeted by the right and everything else, that there's some part of you that because I know, you know, that you're the son of the president.
Marc:I know that, you know, you were the son of the candidate who was going to be president, the vice president.
Marc:But on another level, I mean, there's the weight to that.
Marc:But you also I think when you grow up like you did, that president is just the biggest promotion you can get.
Marc:You know what president is, but you're around presidents.
Marc:You're around senators.
Marc:You're around government.
Marc:So it doesn't register quite the same way.
Marc:Or am I wrong?
Guest:No, to a certain degree, you are.
Guest:Am I right or wrong?
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:That it doesn't register until it happens.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Because it's exponentially different.
Guest:I mean, exponentially different.
Marc:When they become vice president?
Guest:When they become vice president, from senator to vice president, exponentially different.
Guest:And then become president, exponentially different.
Guest:And what I mean by that is that, you know, we grew up in Delaware.
Guest:My dad commuted every day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the Amtrak.
Guest:Yeah, on the Amtrak, of which I was on the board of the Amtrak.
Guest:But he commuted every day.
Guest:Was that your first gig?
Guest:No, no, I was 10 years into being a lawyer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I mean, this is one of the other things.
Guest:I've served on well over a dozen boards.
Guest:I mean, I was chairman of the board of the World Food Program U.S., which is, you know, supports the U.N.
Guest:World Food Program, which just won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Guest:I mean, it's the largest humanitarian organization.
Guest:I served on, like, beyond a healthy number of boards.
Guest:And most of them all nonprofits.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he's going to the... Anyway.
Guest:He's commuting to work.
Guest:He's commuting to work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in Delaware, like, you know, Bo and I would be, you know, when we were like 16, 17 years old and you get pulled over for speeding, it wasn't like...
Guest:There was no trepidation on the part of the Delaware State Police Officer to literally walk up to the car and look down and say, oh, your dad is going to kill you.
Guest:Wait till I tell Joe.
Guest:I'm going to see him down at the train station.
Guest:And he was Joe.
Marc:And Delaware's small.
Marc:And Delaware's small.
Guest:750,000 people.
Guest:It's like growing up in a town.
Guest:And everybody knew us, mainly because of the tragedy.
Guest:But it's so small.
Guest:And we were always with my dad by choice.
Guest:Always with my dad.
Guest:Like you'd go up to the Capitol and hang out.
Guest:Well, I mean, we'd go down to D.C., but literally get off the train, go to his office, his kids, run around the Russell building, and then ride the subway cars between that and the Capitol, and then get back on the train with him and go home.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:So it's like your playground.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and we and we never lived in D.C.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I didn't grow up knowing any other, you know, senators, kids.
Guest:I didn't, you know, and, you know, my dad was listed as the, you know, the five hundred and thirty fifth poorest person in Congress.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And, you know, I think he left he left the Senate with less assets than anyone in the history of the body.
Guest:It strikes me that, you know, he's like a real civil servant.
Guest:I mean, 100 percent.
Guest:You know, all of those the qualities that I think the good qualities that people see in my dad, it's not only not.
Guest:I mean, it's real beyond even that.
Marc:You know, is that a lot of was that a lot of pressure?
Marc:For you?
Marc:Which stage?
Marc:As a kid growing up?
Marc:No.
Marc:Right, you just looked up to him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But at some point when you started to realize your expectations out of yourself and perhaps what you thought your father's expectations were, when did it start to weigh on you that you didn't know what to do and you felt compelled to follow in the footsteps of your father and it seems like your brother was a little more focused on politics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he took a lot of that.
Guest:I don't think any of us felt pressure.
Guest:I always felt for children of people that are in powerful positions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can see that they don't have that relationship with the dad like Bo and I had with my dad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It must be such a burden.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't ever view it that way.
Guest:Bo was more certain that he wanted to go into politics.
Guest:You know, I mean, I grew up wanting to write and paint.
Guest:You know, I mean, that's what I wanted to do.
Marc:What did you do that when you were a kid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, and like in high school, like what were you like in high school?
Marc:I mean, aside from getting drunk, did you hang out with the freaks and the artists?
Guest:Yeah, both.
Guest:I mean, I played football, but I hung out with the guys in the smoking pit.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:When they still had smoking pits.
Marc:Yeah, I remember.
Marc:Yeah, they had to.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I remember in my school, you could smoke everywhere.
Marc:But in high school, I'm a little older than you, I was able to move through.
Marc:I was never a jock of any kind, but I definitely was able to talk to everybody, freaks, jocks.
Marc:Yeah, 100%.
Guest:And that was my, I mean, I knew when I applied to law school,
Guest:I also applied to the writing program at Syracuse.
Guest:Would you go to undergrad?
Guest:I went to Georgetown.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You were at Georgetown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I went to Georgetown.
Guest:I graduated Georgetown, and I went and did a thing called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:It's like a domestic peace corps.
Guest:I did it out in Portland, Oregon.
Guest:My original posting was going to be to...
Guest:Native American reservation in eastern Washington state.
Guest:But the volunteers that were there decided to stay.
Guest:So this priest I knew said, I'm from Portland.
Guest:Portland's really cool.
Guest:So I went to Portland.
Guest:We got a problem with the hipsters coming in.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:By the way, that was just at the beginning.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That was like 1990, 92, 93.
Marc:Well, I mean, now, see, that's, well, that's an interesting question.
Marc:Like, so, like, how do you know to do something like that?
Marc:I mean, you know, you graduate Georgetown, you're probably drinking pretty hard, right?
Guest:Yeah, no, I mean, I drank, but I also did well.
Guest:And, you know, I spent a lot of time doing things that, you know, I was, you know, worked for the Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance.
Guest:I started a program.
Marc:How does that happen?
Marc:How do you think to do those things?
Guest:You know how it happened for me?
Guest:Well, number one, because that's what I wanted to do.
Guest:I knew when I went into college, the only thing that I was certain I wanted to do was go to the Peace Corps.
Guest:That's what I wanted to do.
Guest:To help people or to travel?
Guest:No, to help people.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't think I'd be traveling to places that most people wanted to.
Guest:And then there was this really cool Jesuit priest, Ted Desiak, that when you go to Georgetown, a Jesuit priest lives on every floor.
Guest:And to tell you the truth, I'd go and I'd drink Bushmills.
Guest:And he had started a thing called the Jesuit International Volunteers.
Guest:And that was in Micronesia and in Nepal and a couple other places.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he asked me if I wanted to help him start a summer program.
Guest:And so I did that.
Guest:And we went to Belize and we started the summer program for kids in Dengariga, Belize.
Guest:And he talked me out of doing Peace Corps.
Guest:He said, if you want to do something for people, there's a hell of a lot of people here at home that could use to help.
Marc:Now, is this a message of the Jesuit school, or was it just because you grew up in a family that was doing service?
Guest:Both.
Guest:I knew what I wanted to do, and I ended up in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, which is non-ecumenical.
Guest:You don't have to be Catholic to be a part of it.
Guest:You'd live with other volunteers.
Guest:At the time, you made 80 bucks a month.
Guest:You lived in a house.
Guest:You pulled your money for food, and that was in 1992.
Guest:I don't know what the monthly stipend is now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The idea was service.
Guest:And so I worked in the basement of a church that I sat in a little office and people would pick up the phone from the neighborhood that didn't have groceries or they couldn't get their lights turned on and I'd advocate for them.
Marc:But you also wanted to write and express yourself and be a painter.
Marc:And so you took a year in there?
Marc:Yeah, I did that.
Marc:And you applied to the graduate school.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And I applied to, my brother was at Syracuse at that time.
Guest:In the law school?
Guest:Yeah, in law school.
Guest:And so I applied there and I applied- For law?
Guest:Yeah, for law.
Guest:But they had a great writing program that at the time Raymond Carver was there.
Marc:Raymond Carver.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then Tobias Wolfe was there.
Guest:Raymond Carver died, I think, yeah, before I applied.
Guest:Are you a big Raymond Carver fan?
Marc:Yeah, it seems like your entire life are chapters in a Raymond Carver.
Marc:But at this point, you're in the middle of a relatively happy ending.
Guest:It's between a Raymond Carver and a Stephen King short story, to tell you the truth.
Guest:So I applied there to do a dual degree in the writing program.
Guest:Oh, creative writing and law?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had thought about applying to the Iowa Writers Program.
Guest:Oh, that's a big one.
Guest:But then I got married and with a baby on the way.
Guest:How'd you meet her?
Guest:At the Judgment Volunteer Corps.
Marc:That's Kathleen?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you met her in Portland?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you just started dating and you weren't out of control in any way yet?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:You're just a normal.
Marc:I was a normal.
Guest:20 something year old.
Guest:Yeah, 23 year old.
Guest:Hanging out in Portland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of time at Pal's Books drinking, you know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:A bottomless cup of coffee.
Marc:Yeah, thinking.
Guest:Yeah, thinking.
Guest:Doing a lot of thinking.
Guest:Doing the reading.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Doing a lot of thinking.
Guest:Worried about the Jesuit priest down in El Salvador and you know what I mean?
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:I mean, a lot of that.
Marc:So now, you got married because she was pregnant?
Marc:Yeah, but we were in love.
Guest:We were in love.
Guest:And Naomi, my daughter, was born in December of 1993.
Guest:And I decided, though, that being up in Syracuse was in the winterland of Syracuse rather than closer to home, which I decided to go to Georgetown and go to law school.
Guest:So you went to law school at- I did my first year at Georgetown, and then I transferred to Yale.
Marc:So you're saying to me that the primary incentive was to provide for the family.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, you know-
Guest:I don't regret any of it.
Guest:I mean, I don't regret any of it, that part of my life.
Guest:It's a beautiful part of my life.
Guest:And we spent two years in New Haven.
Guest:I graduated from Yale because I didn't get in when I first got there.
Marc:Where did you go?
Marc:Did you eat at Sally's Pizza or the other one?
Guest:Sally's.
Guest:Actually, you know what the coolest thing was is that we had a little baby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I looked, if you see a picture of me from that, I was 23, but I looked maybe 16 years old.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so people would literally come up to us and say, you know, where are your parents?
Guest:Like straighten that baby's head up in the stroller.
Guest:They shouldn't be leaving that kid with you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we, I literally was probably the only people ever that didn't have to wait in line at the Sally's.
Guest:Not because of anything to do with my name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we would come and we'd have this little baby.
Guest:You and your kids?
Guest:And there was Flo that worked up at the, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I love Sally's.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:They made that.
Marc:What's the name?
Guest:We lived right there.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:On Court Street.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just got introduced to the whole scene, the whole new pizza scene.
Marc:Oh, did you?
Marc:Okay, gotcha.
Marc:When I played there, not too long ago.
Marc:There's that other place that makes- Pepe's.
Marc:Pepe's is the other pizza.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What about that weird hamburger machine, the-
Guest:Oh, the first ever hamburger.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:I used to go there with my guy that is like an uncle to me, Roger, every Wednesday.
Guest:Don't ask for cheese.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:They're pretty good, though.
Guest:It's on toast.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, it's a weird thing.
Marc:You know, it's a novelty item, and you're wondering, it's like,
Marc:It's one of those things that's been there forever.
Marc:There used to be a place in Harvard Square called The Tasty, which was on the corner.
Marc:It was just this little counter.
Marc:The food was okay, but it's a novelty of it, and you're probably half shit-faced when you're eating that hamburger usually anyways.
Guest:I'm sure we're interested in a lot of people in our talk of Yale and Harvard.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:We're talking hamburgers.
Marc:We're talking about hamburgers and pizza.
Marc:There's no elitism in hamburgers and pizza.
Marc:It's just the location of the two places.
Marc:All right, so now you're a family man, and you do what you got to do to get into the world where you can support your family.
Marc:You let go of the Raymond Carver dreams, the sitting at the coffee shop writing, thinking, and now you're about to enter the game.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how does that go?
Marc:So you graduate the law degree?
Guest:I graduate with a law degree.
Guest:How's the booze at this point?
Guest:When do you graduate?
Guest:1996.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:From law school.
Guest:Two kids by then?
Guest:No, one.
Guest:Just a one.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And then making the decision of whether to go work for a big law firm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I paid for my law school.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I paid for my college, too.
Yeah.
Guest:and figuring out how to be able to handle the loans.
Guest:And then, you know, I, I'd worked at the summers at some big law firms.
Guest:I'd worked at, I got offers from Skadden Arps and, you know, like anyway.
Marc:Now, are you feeling at this point, like, well, it's still pretty early, but I mean, do you feel at this point that your name is getting you anywhere?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, it's really hard to, like, separate the two.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:But I know this, is that I could have gotten, I mean, I was at Yale Law School.
Guest:No, I know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so, I mean, like, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't- And you did all right.
Guest:What?
Guest:You did all right.
Guest:I did real well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was, you know, I'm proud of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, work my ass off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because one of the things is, is that, you know, I'll tell you what.
Guest:I don't care what your name is.
Guest:Say you're, you know, whether it's acting or anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it, you know, your name can be, you know, whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, if you show up and you're Tom Cruise's kid and, you know, you may get the first movie, but you're not getting the next 10.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:That is true.
Guest:And by the way, I mean, I don't know of any profession in the world in which, you know, it's like, I don't know many dentists that their dad wasn't a dentist.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, right.
Guest:If you're a shitty dentist, you don't last very long.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:But I think at some point when your life started to get away from you and the nut became too big for you to manage, that I think you did learn as your father grew in stature that the name did offer you some cachet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to your point, figuring out how to filter that is one thing when your dad's a United States senator.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Figuring out how to filter that is another thing when he's a whole nother thing when he's vice president.
Right.
Marc:And when you've got a habit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So when you do land a job, where's that first gig as a lawyer?
Guest:I went to work for a bank, MB&A, which is the largest credit card bank in America at the time.
Guest:And I went to work as a lawyer.
Guest:And I couldn't take it.
Guest:But you took some shit for that from the right.
Guest:Oh, I mean, Michelle Malkin wrote an entire book about how my dad was, you know, bought off by the credit card companies.
Guest:Now, they were the, you know, I mean, the banks at the time were the largest employers in the state of Delaware.
Guest:But regardless, I went back and a lot of really good people.
Guest:I mean, but I only lasted for about a year and a half there.
Guest:Because it was just too much or?
Guest:No, because it was like, I mean, I went from thinking that I was going to write novels and paint and maybe work as a public defender to go directly into working for a credit card bank.
Guest:Doing what?
Guest:I was a lawyer.
Marc:What does that mean?
Marc:I would do contracts.
Guest:What's the job?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the contracts, the affinity marketing.
Marc:Oh, so immediately soul deadening is what you're saying.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And again, I got to make it clear because Delaware is a small place.
Guest:I love the people that were there.
Guest:I mean, really good people, but it wasn't for me.
Guest:I mean, wearing my MB&A pin and my blue suit with the white shirt and the specific tie on a daily basis.
Guest:Um, and so I left and I went to work for the, um, uh, I went down to Washington and, uh, got a job with the Clinton administration and thinking again, like along the lines of public service.
Guest:What were you doing for them?
Guest:I worked, I was, uh, I ended up working for Bill Daly at the department of commerce and that was the, uh, the longest title in, in government.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The executive director of e-commerce, e-commerce policy coordination for the office of the secretary.
Guest:That's what my card actually said.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:When did they call it e-commerce?
Guest:Two-sided card.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Flip it over.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:So when does it start to get away from you?
Guest:When do you have that second kid?
Guest:So right before I took that job at Finnegan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The second kid.
Guest:Yeah, Finney.
Guest:Her name is Finnegan.
Guest:Finnegan James.
Marc:Finnegan and Naomi.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then my third is Maisie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I have the second and administration ends, you know, and we're all waiting for the next administration, which is going to be the Gore administration.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that doesn't happen.
Guest:There's a numbers issue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Numbers issue.
Guest:And I had to figure out what I was going to do.
Guest:And I decided what I was going to do because I had a bunch of buddies that were, you know, riding high on the on the dot com bubble.
Guest:And so what I did was I started my own law firm to focus on that.
Guest:E-commerce.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the bubble burst on that.
Guest:So I had to figure something else out.
Guest:And what I figured out was a friend that was president of one of the Jesuit universities said we could use some help.
Guest:We send teachers into this school in the toughest part of Philadelphia.
Guest:And we're looking for help with federal funding.
Guest:And I said I'd help them.
Guest:And so then I created a law firm.
Guest:that was 90% of my business was representing Jesuit universities.
Guest:They were trying to get things like mobile dental clinics and, I mean, a whole host of... So again, service-oriented.
Guest:Service-oriented, but I was making money, and I was doing okay.
Guest:And what happened was... Catholic Church got some bread.
Guest:What?
Guest:They got some bread, the Catholic Church.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A little bit of money.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But, you know, the incredible thing about Jesuit universities, they're the only schools that are still like... Like, it's the only school still in inner-city Detroit.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, there's not a – at the time I was doing it, there was not a dentist's office in the city limits of Detroit except for Detroit University's, which is a Jesuit University's – Detroit Mercy's dental school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we got mobile dental – anyway –
Guest:That's when my drinking started to get out of control.
Guest:2000.
Guest:Yeah, because you're hanging out in D.C.
Guest:and I decided that I was going to try to do what my dad did, which is commute back to Delaware because he could afford a house there rather than in D.C.
Guest:And then I'd stay down a little bit longer and then I'd go across the street to the Bombay Club and have 16 too many drinks.
Marc:Yeah, it's like I remember... I remember...
Marc:You know that like it's been a long time for me, you know, and the obsession is is gone But you know getting into that routine where you know if you've got the one thing that I think a lot of people don't understand about drug addiction and alcoholism if you don't know
Marc:What it feels like to want that shit in the way that an addict wants it, you can't understand what the fuck we're talking about.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it's like a lot of people kind of like, you know, you had a little problem.
Marc:It's like, you don't get it.
Marc:Like where you're just all day long, you're just waiting for that drink just to get out so you can walk across the street and sit in a fucking half empty joint and be like, I'm good.
Marc:I'm good now.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You know, the best description I've ever, one of the best, is I heard Mike Tyson talking about it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he said, have you ever been really hungry?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, think about it, that you're starving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That you haven't had food in 40 days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And somebody, you know, the cheeseburger's right over there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that insatiable like feeling I mean there's no there's no conscious thought that goes into it but it's like it's deep man it's weird it feels like you know I'm gonna get whole yeah yeah and by the way that's the thing too is it you know and that's when I realized that I needed to get help was then when it wasn't just a mental obsession when it became a physical obsession
Guest:When I wake up in the morning and I'd have to reach in under the bed for the pint of Smirnoff that I hid just to be able to get into the shower.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so that's when I quit.
Guest:That first time.
Guest:That first time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're like low bottom shit, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean like you're drinking.
Guest:That was my high bottom.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:And I should have stuck right the fuck there.
Guest:I should have stuck there.
Guest:I had the chance and everybody, everybody told me that I went to, and that said, don't, don't do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I can, I, you know, the guys that come back in and sit down and say, I just went out and I tested, I tested it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know, I just got out of jail or I just, you know, or, you know, I'm three divorces later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My liver's almost gone.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Or they're dead or they're dead.
Guest:Oh, God.
Marc:And so many of them.
Marc:So many of them.
Marc:I know, man.
Marc:There's people... It's like you mentioned Permanent Midnight in your book.
Marc:Jerry's one of my good friends.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He's like... And like, that guy survived.
Marc:I can't... Talk about triggering.
Guest:I can't... Well, Jerry's a... He's a warrior.
Guest:He's a survivor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's the other thing, Mark, too, is that you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that... I ain't alone.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:Like, I'm not... Like, my story is not like... It's rough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it seems rougher because of who my dad is, but the fact of the matter is, is that, I mean, how many of me do you know?
Marc:It just lived.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, yeah, I definitely know many of you, but like, you know, you guys are alive to tell the story.
Marc:How many of you do I know that died?
Marc:Who the fuck knows?
Marc:I mean, it's like worse than ever now.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right, so you go to, so you clean up in 2001?
Marc:2003.
Marc:So when did you join the service?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, that was one of those decisions that, you know, my brother had gone into the Army National Guard and had gone to Iraq.
Guest:But this was before he went to Iraq.
Guest:And I'd always wanted to do it, but I didn't think I could.
Guest:And I started the idea of doing it when I was sober.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I unfortunately acted on the idea when I was not.
Guest:You joined or you got activated?
Guest:I joined.
Guest:I mean, I was in that cycle where I was like, you know, I mean, that's one of the part of the things that people don't understand, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At least back then, you get 60 days under your belt and you think like, hey, what I should do is join the Navy at the age of 41.
Marc:But you're one of those guys with the big ideas and you do it when you're fucked up.
Marc:I know.
Guest:I mean- Yeah, but I was sober.
Guest:I mean, I was sober.
Right.
Guest:This is the first time since a long time I realized why they say, don't make any decisions.
Guest:Don't make any big decisions in that first year.
Guest:Don't get into a relationship.
Guest:Don't make any big decisions.
Marc:Don't hang out with the fucking guys anymore.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I immediately grabbed hold of a woman, and I married her.
Marc:I hung on to her for dear life.
Marc:I married her, and then she left a drained husk eight years later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It hated me.
Guest:It still hates me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's sober.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And I, you know, I mean, thank God in this time is that the, uh, is that I haven't made any of those decisions.
Guest:Um, you know, I mean, Melissa literally saved me and I'm, and in that moment, I knew that I was going to, that God almighty, I had to hang on.
Marc:Oh, Jesus Christ.
Marc:You gotta be pretty beat up, dude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, after a certain point, I mean, I know you talk about being able to bullshit and lie and everything else, but you've got to be humbled.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:I mean, in a way that is...
Guest:It's pretty awesome, humblingly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, because I read the book, and at the end, I'm like, no, Jesus, I'm a little concerned.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By the way, you're not the only one.
Guest:You're not the only one.
Guest:I don't think he's out of the woods.
Guest:No, but by the way, then when the book ends, I'm clearly not out of the woods.
Guest:That's when the hard work starts, man.
Guest:You know, I say to everybody, I think I write it in the book, is that this is the truest thing I ever heard, is that getting sober is easy.
Guest:All you got to do is change everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:that the ability to change everything requires, at least for me, not only getting honest with the people around me, but getting honest with myself.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And for the first time, I've been allowed to, I've given myself permission to do that.
Guest:Now, you know, it's a hell of a lot easier when your story's being, you know, the concocted story of you out there is even worse than the story that I write in the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But did you pick up your laptop?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you know the creepiest thing is is I look I have no clue.
Guest:It's real only thing I do know is that the intelligence community just came out with a report that said the entire thing is Russia's disinformation and I tell people just give my book.
Guest:Yeah, I mean it's all right there.
Marc:I got nothing to hide right the funny thing is is like, you know like given how much shit was stolen from you over the years when you were high.
Guest:Yeah
Guest:I mean, exactly.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:The only thing I do know is that Rudy Giuliani supposedly sleeping with it, which is creepy enough just to even think about.
Marc:Well, I don't know how the hell like I mean, like, but like I just I wanted to talk about the Navy Reserve.
Marc:Yeah, because like that seemed to be the turning point.
Marc:Because you got, what happened?
Marc:You got busted?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I was, you know, I did a drug test that I failed.
Guest:I had no idea, truthfully, how I failed it because I knew that the drug test was coming.
Guest:I still don't know.
Guest:Was it blow?
Guest:Yeah, it was cocaine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at this time, I was not smoking crack.
Guest:I was drinking heavily.
Guest:But it was the most goddamn embarrassing thing that I've ever, well, at that point it was.
Marc:Well, at this point, is your brother concerned about you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is your father like, what are we going to do?
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:There's never that.
Guest:See, the thing with my family is there's never a discussion behind my back like, what are we going to do about Hunter?
Guest:It's like...
Guest:Where the fuck is Hunter?
Guest:I mean, like, you know, my dad calls me every day.
Guest:He called me every day through this whole period of time.
Guest:If he doesn't get me on the phone, then he texts me 32 times.
Guest:I mean, he literally, you know, there's... Worried.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, worried, but he's always his whole life.
Guest:You know, I think...
Guest:something that you learn when you lose people that you love is that if you get a chance to call the people that you care about most, you do it.
Guest:So my point is that there was never a feeling of like, oh my God, I let my dad down.
Guest:All I knew is that I let myself down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that they were there to help pick me up.
Marc:It just seems like, not unlike many addicts, you start letting yourself down over and over again, and you get used to it, and then you just see yourself as a piece of shit.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And then you can't get out from under it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So this is the beginning of the end of the marriage, though, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:You know, I mean, Jesus Christ, divorce is so hard.
Guest:And, you know, my girls, my daughters are so amazing.
Guest:They love their mom and they love me like so much.
Marc:You getting along with her?
Guest:yeah now yeah it's okay yeah you know but it's like you said put it it's hard put it through a lot a hell of a lot and you know it's i always say it's the courage to get sober is one thing the courage to stick around somebody trying to get sober how many how many rehabs you go through with her uh
Guest:Let me see.
Guest:At least six different, you know, at least six different programs.
Guest:It just wears them down.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I did outpatient.
Guest:And then you relapse, and then you lie about it, and then you fess up to it, but you keep drinking, you know, and then you have to think, oh, my God, and then ultimatums are laid down because that's what they tell you you need to do.
Marc:My first marriage, I don't got no kids, so it's different, but, like,
Marc:It just got to the point where it's like, I'm never going to.
Marc:There's no way she's going to forgive me after a certain point.
Marc:And I don't want to live in that.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:That, you know, live in the contrition that will never be received.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:And it's not their fault.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:You fucked it up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the truth is that I'm not even two years clean yet.
Guest:And so figuring all that out in my head is that I know that I know a hell of a lot of amends to make to a lot of people.
Guest:You're doing the thing, though, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, here's, like, what I was trying to see is, like, you know, now all of a sudden, you know, you get attention from the right wing over, you know, MBNA initially.
Marc:But you're attached to your father.
Marc:You're, you know, you're Joe Biden's kid.
Marc:And now you're wrestling with, you know, massive alcoholism.
Marc:And then, you know, once crack gets into the picture and, you know, you buy yourself like a huge house in 2006, right?
Guest:Oh, no, I didn't.
Guest:It wasn't a huge house, but it was expensive.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:My point being is that like your nuts get out of control.
Guest:You know, what I did was I sent three girls to private school and I'm, you know, and I buy a house in, you know, Spring Valley close to the school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you want to be in Washington instead of, you know, in Virginia.
Guest:And I don't have any savings.
Guest:And so it's literally, you know, what I'm what I'm making is going to, you know, paying for house tuitions to for the vacation that you want to take for the, you know, I mean, to live that life.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when did the international hustle start?
Marc:Not until after Bo got sick.
Marc:And so.
Marc:Oh, so like.
Marc:2014.
Marc:So you were just doing.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:So the other gigs were like, you know, you started a hedge fund with your uncle and did something.
Marc:I tried to start.
Marc:And that didn't work out.
Guest:No, it didn't work out.
Guest:I was sober.
Guest:I was sober then.
Guest:It just didn't work out.
Guest:You know, I mean, one thing is that you think that, you know, D.C.
Guest:is bad.
Guest:Go to Wall Street.
Guest:I mean, it's just like, oh, my God.
Marc:Well, you did some lobbying and you worked for Amtrak.
Guest:Well, I did that.
Guest:My core business was lobbying on behalf of the Jesuit universities.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then like once your dad becomes VP, you can't do that.
Guest:And I didn't work for Amtrak.
Guest:That was a non-paid board position.
Guest:I mean, you don't get paid at all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was appointed by George Bush to do that.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I guess the point is like, again, when your dad becomes VP, it takes a shot at your business.
Guest:Oh, 100%.
Guest:And so I dropped because the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign had made such a big deal about lobbying and what they used to call earmarking and things.
Guest:And so I completely changed my business.
Guest:And I dropped all my lobbying clients so that that wasn't an issue.
Guest:I worked on behalf of a big...
Guest:engineering company and that, you know, just to do business, you know.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:They were based out of Wichita, Kansas.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But they do, I mean, they built, you know, roads and bridges and stadiums.
Marc:And what exactly do you do for these places?
Marc:For them?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What I was doing, I was a consultant for them.
Marc:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, what it means is that if they wanted to go into the city of Baltimore for the new stadium.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I would help them.
Guest:I would figure out with them, you know, who the people are to talk to.
Guest:The regulatory environment, you know, because I was a lawyer too.
Guest:And so, you know, who are the people to talk to?
Guest:What are the regulatory hurdles?
Marc:But at this point, like, are you feeling sober?
Marc:You're sober, but are you feeling desperate?
Guest:Well, I mean, I have to pay the bills.
Guest:And they're big, right?
Guest:Yeah, but I wasn't desperate.
Guest:And that's 2008 when I start that new business.
Guest:And I built up a really good business.
Guest:And I was proud of that business.
Marc:And then when does it start to get... It seems that China and the Ukraine is the portal through which the right wing runs the big racket through you.
Marc:And it seems to me that you were so in need of money and bordering on being out of control that the idea that you could manage a conspiracy... Oh, I mean, that's the most ridiculous thing.
Guest:I mean, literally, it's so banal.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:As it relates to Ukraine, just take this.
Guest:The thing that drives me the craziest is this idea that I never had a job.
Guest:And it's somebody plucked me out of the target and decided that this is the way that they're going to create a criminal empire or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was at least on 14 boards, or served on 14 boards in major positions.
Guest:And in some of them, I was the head of the Corporate Governance Committee.
Guest:I was a lawyer at that time.
Guest:I was working for, I was of counsel to Boyce, Shiller, and Flexner, which is one of the biggest law firms in the world.
Guest:What is the benefit of being on a board?
Guest:Why so many boards?
Guest:Well, because it was all servicers.
Guest:So I did the World Food Program U.S.
Guest:I was on the Center for National Policy.
Guest:I was on a whole different bunch of boards.
Guest:I was on JVC Northwest Advisory Board.
Guest:I was on Catholic Charities.
Guest:Made you look good.
Guest:And you enjoyed doing it.
Guest:You know, I actually really enjoyed doing it.
Guest:And I didn't need to.
Guest:I wasn't running for anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wasn't.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, look good to who?
Guest:I mean, nobody was writing about the number of boards I was on.
Guest:And they still don't.
Guest:Maybe to yourself is what I mean.
Marc:It made me feel good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:100%.
Marc:Because at some point you're.
Marc:An active battle begins in the dark you and the you that is of service.
Guest:The me that has to pay tuitions and not just tuitions.
Marc:Life.
Guest:Alimony at some point.
Guest:Spousal support.
Guest:Child support.
Guest:I mean, that's all comes later.
Guest:But anyway, my point is that...
Guest:I didn't have any issue with going to work for a company that was under threat from an invading Russia of its entire existence.
Guest:And they came to me as a lawyer at Boy Schiller.
Guest:Burisma did.
Guest:Yeah, Burisma did.
Guest:Because they wanted to legitimize their business after... I think ultimately that's what it is because they wanted to expand internationally because they knew that they couldn't only depend upon Ukraine for their entirety of their business.
Marc:And they were once an appendage of Russia.
Marc:I mean, the Ukraine was...
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:It was an oligarchal structure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so this is post oligarchal structure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they want to, you know, broaden the business on an international level to give them some credibility and exactly some freedom.
Guest:They kick out Yanukovych.
Guest:They have a Democratic election.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a whole bunch of reforms.
Guest:But then Putin invades their East Coast, mainly for one thing, for their natural gas.
Guest:And so he takes over Crimea.
Guest:And, you know, and so, you know, Burisma is independent, largest natural gas company in Ukraine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, is feeling very threatened.
Guest:And so...
Guest:It came to me as a lawyer to help them do a own internal security check to basically determine whether or not, you know, Kroll had done a report, which is one of those big international, you know, security and investigation firms.
Guest:And I had them do another, a Nardello report.
Marc:That's Nick Kroll's dad, the comedian.
Marc:Oh, is it really?
Marc:I think so.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he's got it good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, long story short, I'd done both of those and come to the conclusion that they were, you know, they were as things go on the level, really on the level.
Guest:And there's a guy that was president of the president of Poland, the first democratic, truly democratic president of Poland, a guy named Kosniewski.
Guest:Who was on the board and he is a beacon of democracy.
Guest:He literally is like one of the loudest voices against what's happening in Poland now.
Guest:And he said he called me and he said, Hunter, would you join the board to do what?
Guest:And he said, well, number one, it's really important for us to be able to go outside of Ukraine.
Guest:And we need to show that we're different.
Guest:We're different than this mess.
Guest:The other one is to Putin, is to say, you know, we're choosing the other side.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the third one is, he said, I had an expertise in corporate governance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I said, if my role was limited to that, that's what I would do.
Guest:And I did the job, you know.
Guest:Now, I did not take into consideration that this would be a flat-out Russian operation to, you know, with all of these guys.
Guest:I mean, supposedly directly from the desk of Vladimir Putin.
Guest:I mean, that's what the DNI report-
Guest:To a disinformation.
Marc:About you.
Guest:About me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what they then did was what ended up requiring an impeachment.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which is try to muscle the government of the Ukraine to open an investigation into you and your father.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it doesn't sound like your father was involved at all.
Guest:Not even.
Guest:God almighty.
Guest:I mean, not even.
Guest:And by the way, no one has ever found that.
Guest:Of course not.
Marc:But he knows you're doing the job.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Does he say things like, is it okay?
Marc:Everything all right?
Guest:Well, I did the press release when I joined the board.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was part of it.
Guest:And he said, I hope you know what you're doing.
Guest:And that's the only conversation we had on it.
Guest:Because at that time, I really did know what I was doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did not take into account.
Marc:And he wasn't going to run for president at that point.
Guest:He wasn't going to run for president at the time.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I was a year away.
Guest:Bo had been diagnosed.
Marc:Oh, really?
Yeah.
Guest:About seven months before that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, glioblastoma stage four.
Marc:And that prognosis is just no good, huh?
Marc:And how was your drug use at that time?
Guest:It was nothing.
Guest:I mean, I was clean and sober.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Through then to when Boone dies.
Marc:And when were you working for BHR Partners?
Guest:Well, that was a private equity firm.
Guest:The idea was to create a private equity group to be able to invest outside of China into U.S.
Guest:infrastructure projects and things like that.
Guest:which all, you know, shut down.
Guest:I mean, again, I mean, really kind of simple thing.
Guest:I invested in it.
Guest:I have never received a dollar from it.
Guest:Not a dime.
Marc:Well, that's, I think, the one part of the story that nobody really gets into is like, you make a lot of bread.
Marc:You make a lot of money.
Marc:No, none.
Guest:I mean, zero.
Guest:Literally.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, they have me like carrying a bag of, I mean, it's like, it becomes ridiculous.
Marc:Well, how did you not drink or use once that starts to happen?
Guest:Well, that didn't start to happen until after Bo died.
Guest:It didn't?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, so that was leading up to 2016.
Guest:So remember, exactly.
Guest:And so 2015, at the end of May, Bo passes away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I stayed sober.
Guest:That whole, you know, a little less than two years.
Guest:I mean, I'm with my brother constantly.
Guest:You were there in the hospital every day.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I never left.
Guest:And I went with him everywhere.
Guest:It was a slow decline?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, we tried everything.
Guest:And we did the...
Guest:Anyway, we did everything.
Guest:Thinking back on it is that I would never put him through that again.
Guest:What, did he not want?
Guest:Chemo and the radiation.
Guest:No, I mean, he was, look, he didn't want to hear the statistics.
Guest:Glioblastoma, stage four, multiform.
Guest:The survivability is, I think, like 0.2%.
Guest:I mean, it's like beyond de minimis.
Guest:And making it past two years, I think only something like 1% of people make it past two years with severe disabilities.
Marc:And were you able to...
Guest:get closure all the way i mean were you able to bow and i yeah uh yeah you know i am um i i don't know how it's a uh i know he's i know he's here now yeah but he felt like he was very far away for a long time after he died because of the drugs uh
Marc:Because of your own pain?
Guest:Yeah, my own pain.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Drugs make it even, you know, drugs drive that feeling away, but they make the distance even further, you know?
Marc:Yeah, it seemed like you kind of got untethered from yourself.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:So Bo dies.
Guest:There was a low level burn, which I realized is that from the very beginning, there was a, you know, what's the one thing that is obvious to everybody that is the most important thing in my dad's life?
Guest:It's his family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, I think they looked out there and thought, okay, where's the weak link?
Guest:And, you know,
Guest:and it's not you know i mean dc is a small place yeah uh it's not easy to you know too difficult to figure out um you know well you know uh the the attacks start then and they just kind of ramp up and they obviously become uh you know exponentially worse as my personal life just unravels do you think the idea was to scare joe out of running
Guest:Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Guest:I think that they thought that it would be a big enough distraction because, look, the essence of their attacks are literally, there's zero truth to them.
Guest:But knowing that you've got a son that just died and your other son who's near death in many ways,
Guest:And if you just keep pounding on him, like, how does a guy survive that?
Guest:How does your father?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How does somebody survive that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we must have been killing him.
Guest:I mean, hurting his feet or breaking his heart.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:I mean, that's like, I wake up every day and just think, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, that guilt, that guilt for putting my girls through that, you know, those days and times in which, you know.
Guest:When you were fucked up, you mean?
Guest:Yeah, where I was or, you know, what the hell was going on or, you know.
Marc:Well, that whole, how many years, that was like five, eight, four or five years.
Guest:So 2015.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but I go immediately to rehab, you know, two months after Bo.
Guest:When did you first smoke the crack?
Guest:Uh, not until, um, that, uh, next year.
Guest:Um, so 2000, I think 16, I get it all.
Guest:I really do get it in my mind.
Guest:I went through when I was writing it and I had to really like lay it out.
Guest:I mean, I wrote it out longhand.
Guest:He's part of it.
Guest:Like, okay, what's the, you know, how do these all match up?
Guest:And then I had to have somebody else.
Guest:I asked somebody else to go and like,
Guest:How do I piece together to make certain that I'm telling the right things?
Guest:Because so much of it actually really bleeds together.
Guest:But then, you know, a year after, basically, Bo dies, I'm in another treatment program.
Guest:So that first year, I went to a treatment program, spent 40 days there, got out, went back to my yoga, you know, six times a week and all of that.
Guest:But then my marriage is completely unraveling.
Guest:And I'm living alone for the first time in my life in separation and agreement that we made.
Guest:And my brother's gone.
Guest:And I'm living in that grief by myself for the first time ever.
Guest:And I drink again.
Guest:And then I get back on the horse.
Guest:But, you know, I'm closest probably ever came to death with that period of drinking.
Guest:I was drinking, you know, at least a quart a day.
Guest:At least a quart a day.
Guest:I mean, that... Vodka.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just by yourself.
Guest:By myself.
Guest:Just sitting there.
Guest:I mean, you know, I mean, combine that with that level of grief.
Guest:Like, I felt like I lost everybody.
Marc:But then you're just pounding like you're not letting yourself come up for air at all.
Marc:Don't want to.
Guest:Right?
Guest:You know?
Guest:I mean, literally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The strength to be able to get out the door and walk across the street to a liquor store.
Guest:I mean, I think about that today, and it still gives me the chills more than anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I went into an outpatient program, and then I screwed up.
Guest:But they wanted me to take a drug test, and I didn't want to take the drug test because I just admitted it to them.
Guest:And I said, if I take the drug test and it leaks, then it's the second time that it looks like I've failed a drug test.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:actively going through a divorce.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't want it to be that.
Guest:And so they said, no, well, you have to take drugs.
Guest:Actually, you can't come back.
Guest:And that was the only excuse I needed.
Guest:I literally walked out the door, ran into, you know, Rhea, who's in the book.
Marc:That whole thing, that whole book turns on this Rhea character, like, you know, where...
Marc:Like, all of a sudden, you have this whole life with your family, with Bo and the passing of Bo, and you're putting your family through this nightmare of not knowing if you're going to be okay and repeating.
Marc:And then you meet this woman...
Marc:And when I was using, I know what it's like to have a guy that can get you the shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:As opposed to you going out into the world to get the shit, which you did plenty of, too.
Marc:But you talk about this woman in very respectful and reverential, like it was a real relationship.
Marc:You basically invited a houseless woman who rode around on her bicycle, high on crack, to live in your house.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:For months.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And it's, by the way.
Guest:I know you know.
Guest:I mean, you got to read.
Guest:I know you know I know.
Guest:You got to read it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, of course.
Guest:To get the full context of it.
Marc:That's where the tone changed because it's like, you know, it was, you really get the feeling that once you hit that bottom and you live there,
Marc:That's all you had.
Marc:And that the immediacy of feeding the monkey, of honoring the addiction at any cost was what you were living for.
Marc:And you met her and she lived the same way.
Marc:And somehow or another, you had this understanding with each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, one of the things about crack is that it's not... Number one, it's not nearly as widespread as it was when we were kids.
Guest:But there is a thing about it that hits on every single obsessive, compulsive, addictive part of your being.
Guest:It's literally...
Guest:You know, fire.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's, you know, I mean, it has all of the addiction of all of the physical movements of smoking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like it is the oral fixation.
Guest:And then it has the, you know, the fixation with the sound of the lighter going off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:then you have all of your little tools and all of the little things that you need to do the ritual of it it's got that ritual and then it's got that big bang for its buck at the outset yeah and all of those things and you literally if you you find yourself yeah if you if you if you're like willing to go down that rabbit hole which i pray god nobody does listen to this because it is awful
Guest:But it becomes everything.
Guest:I mean, what it does, I spent more time crawling around on the floor in apartments, motel rooms, hotel rooms, you know, the park, you know, looking for little white pieces of something than you can imagine, like hours and hours and hours, and you can just sit there.
Guest:As long as the supply keeps coming in and do it for hours and hours and hours.
Guest:Weeks?
Guest:Weeks.
Guest:You're talking about not sleeping for weeks.
Guest:Oh, weeks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I would literally, I think by the end, you know, I was there, I was maybe getting 10 hours of sleep a week, a week at best.
Guest:And you just do it and do it and do it.
Guest:The only breaks would come when you'd run out.
Guest:And this was after Rhea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I moved from Washington and was living basically from motel to motel.
Guest:As you run out, and the things that you will do, I mean, I had dealers that would tell me, like, I'll meet you at the 7-Eleven on X and Y at 4.30 a.m.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'd get there at 4.30 a.m.
Guest:And you'd be the only one sitting out of the parking lot.
Guest:And the guy would be looking at you through the window.
Guest:And you know exactly what he was thinking.
Guest:And even if it wasn't what he was thinking, you were absolutely certain that that's what he was thinking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so you're sitting there.
Guest:You go low in your seat.
Guest:You go high in your seat.
Guest:You act like it's normal.
Guest:You go in to buy it.
Guest:And it's 6.30.
Guest:And you finally get the guy back on the phone.
Guest:And he said, I'm pulling in right now.
Guest:I'm pulling in right now.
Guest:And you're in a 7-Eleven.
Guest:What do you mean you're pulling in right now?
Guest:What?
Guest:Yeah, it's not the Autobahn.
Marc:Well, that's the whole other relationship you talked about was with that guy, John.
Marc:It's very interesting to me that the relationship with Rhea, the houseless person on the bicycle who you lived with for five months and watched crime shows with and smoked crack with compulsively.
Marc:And then you got this guy, John, who was some sort of hustler that seemed to have like a stable of crackheads.
Marc:And the way you sort of try to understand your behavior, and even just hearing you talk about the ritual of smoking crack, it's like, and you said it in the book, you're like, when people don't understand why drug addicts do what they do, it's because we fucking love drugs.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Like, even when you talk about it, I'm sitting here going, like, oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Getting a little.
Marc:Yeah, a little funny fun.
Yeah.
Marc:But like at this point when you, you know, at this point in your life where I have to assume that like your family is sort of like, well, if he dies, he dies.
Marc:There's nothing we can do.
Guest:No, God, no.
Guest:It's the exact opposite.
Guest:They were, you know, one of the things I've read about in the book is this intervention scene, which happened on, you know,
Guest:on multiple mini levels yeah like constantly but uh you know the the the big um you know theatrical production yes and my mom calls me and i'm in one of those motels and for some reason she gets through to me and and and gets you know truly through to me and says come down we miss you so much yeah please come down and see us yeah come down and i walk in
Guest:And there are two, my three daughters, my niece and nephew, my mom, my dad, and two counselors from a rehab.
Marc:But at this point, you're like fucking taking a hit every 15 minutes.
Marc:You're no longer functioning.
Guest:Where are you getting the money at this point?
Guest:Well, I mean, I still had my business, but I'm not showing up.
Guest:I mean, it's running out.
Guest:It's running out fast.
Marc:Okay, because the scene you depict with these fucking... I knew when I was in Hollywood at the comedy store in my early 20s, living in someone else's house and hosting these fucking Coke parties, the riffraff that would come and go, they'd steal shit, and you kind of like...
Marc:prided yourself on knowing this fucking you know weird underworld of like for me it was like these porno people and drug dealers and freaks and you're like this is life man yeah yeah yeah and and in in the moment you embrace that that's for sure is that you think that you're like some kind of like oh you know i like i mean but it's get away from it you're like jesus
Marc:But I'm here with you like an hour, and it's like you're a sensitive guy, you're a sweet guy, and you allowed yourself to be a mark.
Marc:I mean, you knew that they were taking you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But I don't know of anybody that's an addict that isn't a mark, though.
Marc:No, I guess so.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:But there's two sides of it, right?
Marc:Either you're going to be like the guy with the gun or the guy that just says, I don't care, take my wallet.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you're that guy.
Guest:Yeah, 100%.
Guest:100%.
Guest:Which is probably lucky that you're not that hard.
Guest:By the way, that was part of the resignation, too.
Guest:You know, like I was like, yeah, you know, like I knew what I was doing was just just awful that I was killing myself.
Guest:And it was like so, you know, so somebody steals my wallet like that's the least of my goddamn problems.
Guest:You know, I mean... But over and over again, it seems.
Guest:Over and over again.
Guest:Over and over again.
Guest:But by the way, again, like I said, if you're addicted to crack the way in which I would addicted to crack, or, you know, is that you're an easy mark for anybody, let alone... Because you start fucking... Let alone the predators that make a living out of doing that.
Guest:And you're easy... I mean, you're...
Guest:Easily identifiable prey because you're walking up to the lion.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:You need them.
Guest:And so you put your head in their jaws and just, you know, like sometimes they bite and sometimes they don't.
Guest:Sometimes they, you know, I mean, it's just absolutely the most, you know, insidious, maniacal life.
Marc:so but like so all this shit is going down you know you're being hammered as the the kingpin of this grand conspiracy the sitting president is impeached by the house trying to fucking hang you out to draw trying to to yeah to get you you know investigate that's you you and you're you really the reason why he got impeached yeah and so by the way
Guest:The book ends when I get sober.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's when they just start on me in earnest.
Guest:And what happens is, I mean, start in on like this, Giuliani starts in on this whole Ukraine thing.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:So that's May of 2018.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, let's just, I just want to like express my concern.
Guest:I mean, 2019.
Marc:To a degree that like, so you, you know, you've committed your life to dying a crackhead, probably in a hotel room in some sad fucking way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You did some strange, cracked out New Yorker interview.
Guest:By the way, probably the thing that saved my life is because that was the first time I told anybody outside of my family any idea what was going on.
Marc:So was the idea there to help yourself or to...
Guest:to help your dad oh god i all i all i knew is that i didn't tell anybody i didn't tell my dad i didn't tell anybody in the campaign i didn't tell anybody except you know there was a part of me that's still a snob and it was a pulitzer prize winning journalist from the new yorker and i thought that sounds like a great idea but you didn't know and it was like a therapy session though
Guest:so i told him like the whole thing because it was all about well you know what about this in the ukraine and that it's like none of that's true but here i'll tell you something that's true yeah you know i'll tell you something that's true this part's true yeah and i thought you know what that was my like fuck it yeah i was gonna yeah like tell the world this is who i am all this other stuff total bs yeah but this is who i am you reject
Guest:yeah yeah and and for the first 75 percent of it then i meet melissa yeah see this here's the concern it's sort of like so you're like not even really down you're still high yeah when you meet this woman yeah oh but i was at my lowest my lowest low like you've been thrown out of another hotel
Guest:yeah i mean i mean that was that that was i i was never thrown out they just never had a room for me the next day right right because you go day to day you know i mean i you know i i still you know i was a valet all through college and um so i still have my my my valet friends who are uh you know saved my life i don't know how many times just taking making certain that you know
Guest:Not letting that guy that was clearly coming to do something, you know, bad into the hotel room.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Like, you know, taking my keys from me and not being able to find it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, that's one thing that's really important too.
Yeah.
Guest:You know those times that you're talking about?
Guest:You were saying, you know, at the end of your run?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, one thing is that I think back on it now, and because I wrote the book, it was such a useful exercise for me to also realize so many acts of kindness from virtual strangers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People that literally...
Guest:You ask why I was more of a mark instead of an aggressor.
Guest:One of the reasons, too, number one, that's me.
Guest:I hate meanness.
Guest:But I'll tell you what.
Guest:Some people that had no reason, no gain for them, that pulled me out of the way, whatever oncoming bus that it was, it just happened over and over and over again for me.
Guest:and um your uncle too my uncle look my uncle is uh the most amazing man one of the most amazing people i know yeah he is literally there for for for everyone he's my he's my best friend in the world and uh my uncle jim yeah yeah
Guest:I mean, he is an incredible human being in his own right.
Guest:And so, anyway, long story short, though, is that when I meet Melissa, I'm talking to Adam Entos with The New Yorker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like a two-hour therapy session each night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm telling him my whole life story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I get set up on a date, which I wasn't dating anybody.
Guest:No, you're out of your mind.
Guest:I'm out of my mind.
Guest:And for some reason, I decide to call him.
Marc:But it was weird because it was like some people that were at the hotel.
Marc:You didn't really know the person.
Marc:At the hotel.
Marc:I've never met her before in my life.
Guest:They said, you've got to meet this woman.
Guest:And I said, you know, which anyway, I call and we set up a time and she doesn't show up and then she doesn't show up again and she doesn't show up again.
Guest:She has no idea who I am.
Guest:No idea.
Guest:All they knew was me as Hunter.
Guest:But you haven't slept.
Guest:You're out of your fucking mind.
Marc:Didn't you ever hear voices in your head?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There's a whole scene in the book in which I think I had a, you know, not sleeping for 16 days driving to Prescott, Arizona.
Guest:Oh, the owl?
Guest:Yeah, that owl.
Guest:I'll tell you what.
Guest:It was the realest thing in my life.
Guest:But you didn't think it was Bo?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always think it is Bo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you didn't say that in the book.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I didn't want to get too California on everybody, but I absolutely felt that way.
Guest:I still do.
Guest:I still do.
Guest:I mean, that's the other part about it is that those little things, like, wow.
Guest:But...
Guest:I walk in, and there's this incredibly beautiful South African woman from a big Jewish family in Johannesburg.
Guest:And I just look, and I see something.
Guest:I recognize something.
Guest:I don't know whether I saw... I saw whatever the unconditional love that my brother had for me, that's what I saw.
Guest:I'm not the first person to love at first sight, but...
Guest:And within an hour, I tell her everything.
Guest:And to her credit or not, she just said, that's going to end.
Guest:And I don't know why, Mark.
Guest:It found its way through all of that crack, all of that vodka, all of that grief, all of that sadness, all of that shame, all of that guilt.
Guest:It found its way.
Guest:And I said, okay.
Yeah.
Guest:And now that's not the end of the story.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's not that... I mean, then it took, like, holy shit.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:That means that, you know, Melissa literally, like, she took my keys.
Guest:She took my phone.
Guest:She took my clothes.
Guest:She took my... You know, I mean, she had to basically play my jailer for, you know... To get you... To detox.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not just to detox, but then to make certain, you know, I was still, you know, like...
Guest:She never left my side.
Guest:She never left the apartment.
Guest:She never left the room.
Guest:And she, for some reason, intuitively knew that she couldn't.
Guest:And it's just, I think that anybody to do that for another human being is somebody I want to be with the rest of my life.
Marc:Yeah, I never really, I didn't, like in the book, like I didn't really, like until I'm talking to you now and knowing, feeling like who you are, is like, you were just like so wide open, so broken.
Marc:So broken.
Marc:And so like, you know, you were just like a, you were just a throbbing sort of heart there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, just like so like the idea because like my first when I read it, I'm like, you know, this is like a junkie thing, you know, like he's getting off on this moment and he's in trouble.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like, you know, when you explain it, you you were just sort of like you were it was you were finished.
Guest:finished and i and by the way right i knew i was finished yeah and i and i saw like i think that's my brother too i think it's my mom i think it's the you know and i know it is them in terms of the um i think it's my dad you know i mean
Guest:When you're at the bottom of that well, you know, people always say, you know, let him hit bottom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People I know who hit bottom are dead.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:My friend used to do a bit about how, like, when you hit bottom, you'd be surprised how much give that floor has.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It can go much lower than you think.
Guest:But, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always have said, and I really believe this, is that finding your way out of that tunnel when there's no light on either end without somebody coming back in for you with a lantern is almost impossible, if not impossible.
Guest:And somebody came in with a light and I saw it and I grabbed for it and I haven't let go.
Marc:I hope I'm happy for you.
Marc:And I hope it works out.
Marc:And you got a little baby now?
Marc:How old?
Marc:Baby Bo, named after my brother.
Marc:Yeah, one year.
Marc:It just seems like somehow the love got through somewhere.
Marc:You found that- That's the whole story.
Marc:Right, what you needed in your heart, whatever you were doing with this pain was killing you over and over again.
Marc:And it seems like your whole family, the ones that were still with you, you know, had had a lot of faith in your ability to hopefully get back to who you were.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And somehow you have, you know, right now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And well, that's I mean, it's a great story.
Marc:But, you know, I still am concerned and I hope you're taking care of yourself.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, I'm concerned.
Guest:You know, I mean, I really am in the sense of, like, I have a healthy fear.
Guest:You should have healthy and unhealthy, just fear in general.
Marc:Yeah, fear.
Guest:No, but what I'm saying is, like, I'm not living in that, but it's like, you know, like, I'm leaving here, and I'm going straight home.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like, I literally don't, I am, I'm still, you know...
Guest:I still am close enough and have had enough experience.
Guest:Do you do the Zoom meetings?
Guest:No, I don't do Zoom meetings, but I do calls with people that I trust in the program.
Guest:I mean, almost, not almost, every day.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:And you talk to your old man every day?
Guest:I talk to him, yeah, every night before he goes to bed.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your mom, everybody.
Guest:Yeah, everybody's great.
Guest:My girls are great.
Guest:They must be relieved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're tenuous.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, beyond relieved.
Guest:I mean, it's just like, you know, I put them through so much.
Guest:I mean, and I just am so incredibly grateful.
Marc:And what about, like, because I know that, you know, there was very public sort of strange grief-driven relationship with your brother's wife.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And are you guys all right?
Guest:Yeah, fine.
Guest:I mean, I adore her.
Guest:And Natalie and Hunter, my niece and nephew, are, like, my own.
Guest:And...
Guest:Everybody's okay.
Guest:That got weird for a while, but now you're okay.
Guest:Yeah, it did.
Guest:That was one thing.
Guest:It was kind of all out of love.
Marc:Yeah, the grief thing is weird because grief is like you don't know what the hell it's going to do to you.
Marc:I lost somebody almost a year ago.
Marc:What a stupid thing to say.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Oh, no, no.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:There's no way to judge or to understand behavior that happens in that need of sort of relief from that trauma.
Marc:My brother got divorced and married somebody, and their exes married each other.
Marc:People do to hold on to something.
Guest:yeah exactly exactly and it just made sense I imagine for a while it did it thought it was like bringing I thought we were kind of it was like maybe bringing back oh you know what some oh really so you would summon him back right right like maybe between the two of you yeah yeah
Marc:Well, the other example, it was not really my brother, but I know a woman who used to work with a woman who went on some sort of mission, you know, a humanitarian mission in Iraq and was killed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the friend at home has like, you know, she's made a foundation.
Marc:Her whole life has been in the memory of this person.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she actually dated that person's boyfriend for a while because of the grief you come together.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And I was alone.
Guest:Hallie's her name?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But everything's good.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:You know, I mean... But, you know, no one comes in, you know, to recovery, you know, on a roll.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know that one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So... Yeah.
Marc:I just like... I just think, you know, because I know the one thing in the book.
Marc:And like, look, I'm no...
Marc:Bleeding deacon.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, and my program is whatever it is, but I do know that in the first five years of my sobriety, I was every day with the meeting, put sobriety first before anything else.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:You know, nothing, you know, and I was, I hammered that shit in my head every fucking day.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:And by the way, so do I. Okay.
Guest:100%.
Guest:I am literally, I am...
Guest:I have a discussion with somebody in the program every single day, mostly three times a day.
Guest:Yep, got a sponsor.
Marc:So when are you going to do that fourth?
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:Part of it was the book, and maybe a little bit right here.
Guest:But that is... Look, I don't care what anybody says about the program.
Guest:It is...
Guest:it saved me sure and it and it's and it keeps saving me and so and all i know is at the end of it is one thing is that that whole you know the promises and and yeah the obsession will be lifted that's the big one yeah and you can which allows you to be of service to other people and hopefully that that is what the book does i mean it gives me an opportunity you know made me nervous for you but but i'm glad that it's okay
Marc:yeah thank you you know what i mean thank you as somebody who because like the one thing i noticed was that like when right when you start talking about ria and when the crack comes in once you get through the death is sort of like the amount of focus to the ritual of smoking crack yeah to the to the uh the the the choy boy yeah and the uh hard and all the lingo i was like
Marc:oh boy yeah yeah he loves his shit yeah you know yeah but uh but no but but we don't i you know i i think you're it sounds like you know you're doing what you have to do and it sounds like you got you know beautiful thing going on and your family feels better and your your dad's president and you there's a little you can feel like you're not dragging him uh a bit you know he's got a lot on his plate yeah now but but you're are you still in a little bit of trouble
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:I mean, there's an investigation.
Guest:I think everything's going to be fine.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's, you know, let it play itself out.
Guest:But I'm absolutely certain at the end of the day, everything's going to be fine.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm absolutely, I did nothing wrong.
Guest:And so- What is it, taxes?
Guest:Taxes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I got, I really could accountants.
Marc:It's tricky, man.
Marc:It must be, do you ever, does the weight of that kind of like after everything that's gone on-
Marc:in terms of your name being dragged and you being used as this portal to try to damage your dad.
Marc:It seems to me it's one of those situations that it's difficult on either side.
Marc:If you do get off, they're going to be like, oh, he got off because of his old man.
Marc:And then if you don't get off, it's going to be the most painful thing in the world for everybody involved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I just know that, you know,
Guest:I'm cooperating with anything anybody wants to ask me.
Guest:I'm an absolute open book, complete transparency.
Guest:It's all out there.
Guest:And whatever comes, I know that there are people that are professionals, and this is what they do.
Guest:And it's going to come to a conclusion.
Guest:I know what I've done, and I know that I've done nothing wrong.
Guest:And so I'm going to let the process play out.
Guest:But I'm going to be okay.
Guest:Okay, bye.
All right.
Guest:I got to believe it.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I do appreciate.
Guest:I mean it for real.
Guest:I appreciate the concern.
Guest:People listening can't see this, but your eyes.
Guest:I see it in your eyes, too.
Guest:I'm okay, buddy.
Guest:I really do.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Marc:Well, good luck with the book, and take care of yourself.
Guest:Oh, for real, it's an honor.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:You know, one of the things since I've been, is I listen to you twice a week.
Guest:Oh, yeah, good.
Guest:Yeah, you kept me tethered.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:The thing?
Guest:The thing.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I'll give you my number.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Anytime you need to call.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:Okay, man.
Marc:All right, thank you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes, that was Hunter Biden.
Marc:Try to stay in touch with him around the sobriety thing.
Marc:I feel like that he's a pretty tender-hearted guy beneath all this.
Marc:He's definitely not a sociopath or a bad dude.
Marc:And I believe he knows.
Marc:He still has got a long road ahead of him.
Marc:And I wish him well, and I'll help how I can.
Marc:Do what you can, folks.
Marc:Hang in there.
Marc:How about a little guitar?
Marc:How about it?
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Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey.
Guest:The Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.
Guest:Sammy the Sidestepper, Buster the Bully, all accounted for.