Hunter Biden is suddenly entertaining a return to the political spotlight, indicating that he would get on a presidential ticket only if California Gov. Gavin Newsom put him in the vice-presidential slot.
Newsom raised the 2028 question on his podcast, and Hunter answered by aiming lower than the top of the ticket. Hunter did not exactly pitch himself for the top job.
“Here’s the deal. I’ll run, but only as your VP, because the truth of the matter is the vice president’s residence is a lot cooler. It’s a lot easier job too,” Hunter said on the Friday episode.
Then he turned the White House itself into a kind of beautiful trap. “The grandeur of the White House is, it never gets old,” he said. “But you really do feel like you’re in a gilded cage.”
The joke landed during Hunter’s latest media blitz, which has put him back in front of Democratic audiences after years of scandals.
The tour has even triggered chatter in some Democratic circles about whether the younger Biden, who has been afflicted with a drug problem, should seek office.
Trump turned that speculation into a punchline last week by comparing Hunter to Graham Platner, the troubled Maine Democrat.
“Hey, if the guy from Maine can do well,” Trump remarked. “Well, I guess Hunter could do well, too, because the guy from Maine is a basket case.”
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Trump also lumped Hunter in with Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, whom the president compared to Mad Magazine’s infamous mascot.
“And I would say worse than him is the one from Texas that looks like Alfred E. Neuman,” Trump added. “I would say that if he can do well, maybe Hunter can do well. I’m not sure, it’ll be pretty close as far as I’m concerned.”
Hunter pushed back on the Platner mockery during the Newsom interview. “He was a veteran, a combat veteran, and he came back,” he lamented.
“He had some real issues, and with PTSD, and, and that trauma, and whatever way that he was working it out, I think he had been really open about.”
His media swing has not been limited to defending himself or other embattled Democrats.
In another interview with Molly Jong-Fast, Hunter blamed the party’s branding problems on a dinner-party donor class.
“There is this very powerful group of people, and they all go to the same dinner parties and they are all part of the same financial ecosystem, that continues to fill their pockets in the Democratic Party, which I think is the one thing that makes it very, very, very difficult for the Democratic Party to ever actually achieve the real systemic change that we need in order to rehabilitate that brand,” he said on Jong-Fast’s show.
The former first soon also defended one of the most controversial decisions of his father’s final stretch in office: the sweeping pardon that shielded him from further punishment and scrutiny.
To Hunter, the pardon was not a favor so much as a shield against a second Trump term.
“It would have been like having a gun to my family for the next four years at least, and so that’s why he pardoned me,” he argued.
“It’s a really incredibly rational decision, and it was a really difficult decision, and you know how proud of my dad I am. The fact of the matter is, he chose me over his legacy, because no matter what you say, that’s going to be one of the first things that is written about.”
The clemency grant stretched back to 2014 and covered any crimes Hunter “committed or may have committed” during the 11-year window, a period that also protected him from lingering questions about his business dealings in Ukraine and China.
Before the pardon, a collapsed plea deal had already become a Republican talking point. The deal fell apart after a judge raised constitutional concerns and questioned how far the immunity would reach.
The gun case then landed before a Delaware jury, which found Hunter guilty in June 2024 on three felony counts tied to lying on paperwork for a revolver and possessing a firearm while addicted to drugs in 2018.
Jill Biden has made the same argument from inside the family. “When [President] Trump was elected, things changed, and we knew that he would target Hunter, and we just could not let our son go to jail on a charge that no one would go, I mean, no one has ever gone to jail for,” Jill said during the CBS interview.
Although President Joe Biden had said he would not pardon his son, Hunter, Jill Biden says he changed his mind once Donald Trump was elected. She talked with Sunday Morning's Rita Braver about the pardon and her concerns over her family being targeted by the Trump administration.… pic.twitter.com/OCIDDap2sd
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) May 30, 2026
When CBS News’ Rita Braver asked whether she urged the pardon, Jill made clear she supported it.
“Oh, gosh, I truly supported it. I wanted him to pardon Hunter at that point, and I agreed with Joe,” she said.
Hunter later turned his fire on CNN’s Jake Tapper, who had challenged Jill Biden’s account of the former president’s fitness.
Tapper argued that Biden’s decline had been visible well before the final campaign stretch and called Jill Biden’s defense “very difficult to believe, if not just downright false.”
Hunter answered by accusing Tapper of targeting his mother while ignoring Trump family business deals.
“Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom. Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land,” Hunter tweeted.
“Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan,” Hunter posted.
So let me get this straight.
Jake Tapper is focused on attacking my Mom.
Jared and Ivanka are building a private island paradise on Albanian protected land.
Don Jr married the daughter of Epstein’s banker, and a startup his fund backs just got a record $620M Pentagon loan.…
— Hunter Biden (@HunterBiden) June 3, 2026
“Eric is taking an Israeli drone company public for $1.5B in the middle of a war with Iran that nobody wanted,” he added in the post. “And I know: ‘But what about your paintings, Hunter?’ Please.”
Hunter did concede one point this week, that age had slowed his father down.
“It was not like a surprise that people, as they get old, particularly at that age, they literally lose a step. Like, my dad lost a step,” he told Jong-Fast.
“That does not mean, per se, that there is a cognitive decline, but instead of embracing it, I think that they tried to kind of obfuscate it.”
Trump offered his own read on Biden’s condition when reporters asked about their post-election Oval Office meeting.
“No, not really. I mean, he was the same guy I’ve been watching for a long time,” Trump remarked.
“He was fine as far as I was concerned,” Trump continued, before joking that “I don’t know, something happened to him during the debate. It could have been me.”
He still needled Biden as “never the sharpest guy.”
