Jimmy Kimmel took a break from roasting his most despised presidential offspring on Thursday to welcome the current president’s son on his evening program for a friendly, likeable, and occasionally hilarious conversation.
Hunter Biden, who resisted the onslaught of attacks, launched himself before, during and after the 2020 election, and somehow managed to come out stronger, fell Jimmy Kimmel live in person this week to promote his revealing new memory, Beautiful things.
“Do you know how Donald Trump always asked where Hunter is?” Kimmel asked in his opening monologue. “Well, it’s here in our building. He’s been here the whole time, it turns out. “
After introducing Biden as “probably the most famous board member of a Ukrainian energy company of all time,” the host told him, “After reading this book, I’m impressed that you’re alive.”
“Yes, it was a journey, but thank God I got it,” Biden replied. When Kimmel joked that the book may have inadvertently taught him to find and smoke crack, Biden added, “I hope it wasn’t the message you got out of the book. It’s not a way to do it, it’s a manual please. “
Clarifying that, unlike the president’s son, he has never smoked crack, Kimmel said, “I think I understand now. And I found it especially interesting when you wrote about the fact that what happens the first time you use it is something you chase the rest of the time you use it. It was never what it was that first time. “
Biden explained that he wanted to write his book to “humanize people who suffer from addiction.” But the story also serves to humanize itself specifically given the way Trump and other Republicans turned it into a kind of evil caricature in recent years. One such Republican was Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), whom Kimmel noted was closer to Joe Biden when they served together in the Senate.
“When you talk about Lindsey Graham attacking you on TV, she was considered a friend of the family, she was a friend of your father,” Kimmel said, “and how strange it is for that to happen, to see a person do it.”
“More than anything, it’s sad,” Biden said with a sigh, referring to his father’s fellow senators as “uncles” whether they were Republicans or Democrats. “Politics has become so toxic,” he added. “And I think what I hope my father can recover from is his genuine desire to get some of that toxicity out. So I had a deep respect for Senator Graham. And it’s sad to see how he has decided not just to attack me, but to focus on politics ”.
Kimmel later asked Biden if he makes him “crazy” when he hears someone like Donald Trump Jr. say the only reason he’s been successful is because he’s “a Biden” and “by his last name.”
“It’s very comical,” Biden agreed. “That’s to say it lightly.”
But when he tried to eliminate it by saying he tries not to “spend too much time thinking about it,” Kimmel urged him to say, “Yeah, I think about it all the time.”
Pressed by if he has ever met Donald Trump Jr., Biden replied strangely, “I don’t know,” adding, “but I’ve been in some pretty tough places.”