Why Some Women Root for Hunter Biden

The New York Times push alert had just popped up on my phone—President Biden pardoned his son Hunter, saying his prosecution was political, and designed to hurt him politically—when the group chats started pinging away.

“Hunter!”

“Our hot, troubled boy lives another day!”

My friends were joined online by a chorus of like-minded people, including one X user who tweeted: “Pardoning him isn’t enough. I need to see Hunter Biden be the next bachelor.”

Biden, 54, has become a recurring character in the widening gyre of social media, an unlikely, irony-tinged folk hero. He’s the two-year-old boy who survived a car accident that killed his mother and baby sister, leaving him with skull fractures and head trauma. He’s the little brother, the spare, grieving the loss of his eldest sibling, the heir to his father’s political dynasty (Beau, who also survived that childhood car crash and then died of brain cancer at the age of 46). Hunter is the handsome recovering addict, casting about for purpose. He’s a sensitive soul with a taste for handguns and a cache of incriminating images on his laptop. He’s a little like the dangerous older men Lana Del Rey sings about, but one who is really a good boy under that weathered surface.

As one of my friends texted me, “The thing with Hunter is that he’s so troubled but also so pathetic that he’s harmless and that just makes him even hotter … Wow, I have a really complicated relationship with this man.”

It was not hard, in other words, for the people in my group chats—mostly college-educated women between 30 and 45—to imagine themselves as Zoë Kestan, who was recently profiled in The New York Times in a story headlined “She Met Hunter Biden One Night at a Club. Then She Fell in Love.” Described by the Times as a “downtown ‘it’ girl and social media star,” Kestan embarked on her romance with Biden at the height of his drug abuse after meeting him at the strip club where she was a performer. Kestan, who later testified about his drug use at one of his trials, revealed Biden’s love of soft-boy music faves like Lil Peep and Fleet Foxes, and—as a denizen of an edgy, sometimes irony-poisoned Manhattan cultural scene—helps explain his appeal to an online cohort of people perhaps excited to see an American political dynasty brought down to earth.

If part of what makes Biden intriguing are his vices, then his pardon is appealing to some as a bit of justice, however imperfect, for a man whose intentions seemed purer than his actions and whose personal redemption was dogged by what could easily be seen as politically-motivated prosecutions. (He was convicted earlier this year for lying about his drug use on an application to purchase a handgun, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges in September, and faced a maximum of 25 years in prison.) Did he frequent strip clubs and pay for sex? Well, sex work is work! Did he have a secret affair with his brother’s widow? Quelle tragique! Did he father a child in Arkansas, demand a paternity test, and spend years in a court battle with the child’s mother? Don’t worry—she’s getting back child-support payments and Hunter’s paintings! Does everyone have a solid grasp on the exact details of Hunter’s nefarious business dealings in Ukraine? Absolutely not! “Good for him,” another friend texted me, referring to the president issuing the pardon. “Now do everyone on death row and then chopper out of the White House with two middle fingers in the air.”

Of course, while some cheered Hunter’s reversal of fortune, politicians and media pundits did a collective spit take, taking to their keyboards to declare that Biden had sullied his reputation by going back on his promise to not grant his son clemency.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, long tipped as a Democratic presidential hopeful, told Politico, “With everything the president and his family have been through, I completely understand the instinct to protect Hunter. But I took the president at his word. So by definition, I’m disappointed and can’t support the decision.”

But perhaps no one has been more obsessed with Hunter Biden than conservative journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. It was The New York Post’s Page Six that first reported in 2017 that Biden was in a relationship with his brother’s widow, Hallie Biden. The Post spent years covering the acrimonious child support court case between Biden and Lunden Roberts with the breathless fervor of a nosy auntie, seemingly never quite sure how to reconcile the fact that Roberts was both Biden’s “baby mama” and a gun-toting “pro America” social media presence.

But the tabloid went all-in on the Hunter beat in 2020 when it broke the news of Biden’s now-infamous laptop, which contained not only what it called “smoking gun” proof of Biden’s shady overseas business dealings, but also a trove of “raunchy videos” and images of the president’s son engaged in consensual sex and drug use. The images of Hunter’s penis became such a staple of cable news fodder that its pixelated presence morphed into a meme.

Still, with all due respect to Hunter Biden the actual man, none of this actually matters very much outside of the echo chamber of op-eds and the outrage news cycle. The Hunter we love is a character we’ve summoned in our silly group chats, not unlike what The Onion did when it created “Diamond Joe.” With any luck, the outgoing president’s son will live a happy, sober life and fade from the collective consciousness like Roger Clinton before him. Or that’s how we, the twisted sisterhood of Hunter fandom, would have it. Inshallah.