Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. president Joe Biden, criticized the Trump administration’s Middle East policy and renewed his attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with conservative commentator Candace Owens, a prominent critic of Israel.
In a preview of the full interview, set to air Thursday, Biden discusses Gaza’s future, criticizes President Donald Trump and his envoys and speaks openly about his past drug addiction.
Hunter Biden on the Candace Owens Show
(Video: from X)
“You know one thing [Joe Biden] didn’t do?” Biden asks Owens in the clip. “He didn’t greenlight to turn Gaza into a Trump golf course, with the maître d being Jared Kushner.’” He said Trump entered a war with Iran under Israeli pressure, unlike previous presidents who resisted Netanyahu’s pressure.
The comments follow Biden’s earlier attacks on Israel’s leadership. In an expletive-ridden interview last year with the web series “Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan, Biden accused Netanyahu of acting against Iran to serve his personal interests and preserve his political and legal future.
“Does anybody think that [he] is not doing this to save his own ass so that he doesn't end up in jail,” Biden said at the time, referring to the ongoing criminal trial against Netanyahu. He also criticized Israel’s handling of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, questioning why it took the military hours to respond and why forces were not deployed in the area if the Mossad had the attack plans a year in advance.
Biden also defended his father’s policy toward pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States, saying, “Bombing the shit out of whatever remains of a mosque in Gaza and turning it into a golf course... is not going to work.” He said the death toll in Gaza has risen significantly since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Biden again used the interview to criticize Washington’s political elite, saying, “The DC elite of the left, they crushed my dad, because he was never part of that club. He was never part of the Epstein class.”
Although Owens has mocked 56-year-old Biden for years and called him a “crackhead,” he expressed support for her amid public criticism over questions she has raised about alleged Israeli involvement in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Biden told her he listens to her and agrees with the questions she is asking. “The criticism of youth for asking the questions for someone who was like a brother to you? What the eff are you talking about?” he said.
Biden later confronted Owens over her past remarks about him. “I’ve heard you call me a crackhead many times,” he said, before adding: “I was a crackhead. My marriage was falling apart, and it started a dark cycle.”
When the two discussed his laptop, which Biden called “bullshit,” Owens responded that the device proved precisely that he had been addicted to drugs.
The laptop controversy began in 2020, when materials left at a repair shop in Delaware were circulated in the media. Social media companies initially restricted distribution over concerns that the material was Russian disinformation, while Republicans claimed the laptop contained evidence of financial corruption by Joe Biden and his son’s ties to Chinese energy companies.
Hunter Biden was previously convicted of gun offenses related to drug use and tax violations. He received a full pardon from his father before Joe Biden left the White House.
The interview prompted strong reactions in U.S. political circles even before its full release. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene praised the exchange as “real journalism” that showed where America’s political underground is headed. Jake Tapper, CNN’s senior Jewish anchor, shared the preview on X and wrote that Biden was making “some curious statements” on the podcast of “one of the political world’s most outspoken antisemites.”