By Democrats appear to be ready to rehabilitate one of the leading anchors of their party’s popularity. In his first public remarks since the 2024 election, Hunter Biden blamed the Democratic Party’s defeat on what he described as a collapse in loyalty toward his father, then-President Joe Biden. The comments, aired in a forthcoming episode of the podcast At Our Table, hosted by former DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison, mark a striking defense of the former president’s leadership—and a sharp rebuke of the party that nominated his successor.
“We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party. That’s my position,” Biden said, according to The Washington Post. “We had the advantage of incumbency, we had the advantage of an incredibly successful administration, and the Democratic Party literally melted down.”
The interview excerpts, released Tuesday ahead of the podcast’s July 17 premiere, offer a rare glimpse into the Biden family’s post-election mindset. Hunter Biden, often a lightning rod for political controversy, appeared resolute in rejecting the prevailing narrative that his father’s age and health were the driving factors behind the party’s collapse.
“What sells is the idea of a conspiracy,” he said, referring to ongoing speculation that President Biden’s condition had been deliberately obscured during the campaign. “The ability to keep a secret in Washington is zero.” Citing the relentless attention his father received, he added, “Every single day, hundreds of people, and you can’t get one of them to go on the record and say, ‘I saw the president do X?’”
His remarks come nearly a year after Joe Biden’s re-election bid faltered following a disastrous debate performance that triggered calls from within his own party for him to step aside. Though Vice President Kamala Harris ultimately secured the nomination, she failed to consolidate the Democratic coalition and lost to former President Donald Trump in November.
Hunter Biden dismissed suggestions that his father’s leadership or cognitive decline were to blame. Instead, he pointed to internal fractures among Democrats and a failure to rally around the incumbent. His comments also sought to distance himself from the inner workings of his father’s administration, despite frequent speculation that he exercised quiet influence.
“I stayed as far away as I possibly could — which, by the way, broke my heart,” he said. The remark reflects a long-standing dynamic in the Biden family, in which personal loyalty often intersects uncomfortably with political reality. That loyalty was formalized earlier this year, when President Biden issued a full pardon for his son in the final weeks of his presidency. The pardon covered a series of legal troubles, including a felony gun conviction in Delaware and a guilty plea to federal tax charges in California.
The At Our Table podcast, positioned as a space for Democrats to regroup and reflect, will debut with a slate of high-profile guests, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—Vice President Harris’s 2024 running mate—Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina.
Like Hunter, Harrison, who urged Democrats to double down on identity politics during his last few weeks as leader of the party, came under scrutiny for “grifting” when it was revealed he had a documentary team following him around during the 2024 election. He left the national party with millions in debt, which some say has hamered the party’s response to the Trump presidency.
As Democrats reckon with the consequences of the 2024 election and the return of a Trump White House, Hunter Biden’s comments offer both a retrospective on what went wrong and an implicit plea for unity ahead, but also reveals that liberals will never fully be able to rid themselves with one of the most corrupt presidencies in the past 100 years.
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