The Dictatorship
Hunter Biden and Candace Owens find common ground in conspiracy theories
Watching Hunter Biden’s nearly two-hour interview with the antisemitic megastar podcaster Candace Owens was, as you might expect, not an intellectually rewarding experience. But that’s not to say it didn’t have some accidentally illuminating moments.
Despite Owens’ considerable talent for monetizing content that appeals to bigots and conspiracy theorists — a significant portion of the MAGA movement — she is not well-read, appears to have no principles that can’t be jettisoned at a moment’s notice and her body of work serves as further evidence backing up the scientifically documented link between racism and stupidity.
Hunter Biden, it’s hard to believe these days, was just a couple of years ago a very influential person by virtue of nothing more than being President Joe Biden’s son. He was a key voice in the Biden inner circle and infamously urged his father to continue his doomed re-election campaign even after his disastrous debate performance. That was absurdly inept counsel that proved to be a hugely important factor in returning Trump to office.
Hunter Biden’s comeback tour has him playing the self-pitying sad-sack, whining to Owens that people think he’s just some “ne’er do well who never did anything in their life.”
But that wasn’t the only way Hunter Biden was of great value to the Trump campaign. Although multiple investigations into his foreign business affairs found no evidence that the elder Biden did anything wrong, Trump and MAGA portrayed the Biden son’s alleged attempts at low-level influence-peddling as the ultimate examples in self-dealing and government corruption. People including Owens often said Hunter Biden was emblematic of the “Biden crime family.” (Owens also said in 2021 that Joe Biden was “an illegitimate President” and a “true dictator.”)
What a difference a few years makes.
The current president and his family have enriched themselves to the tune of billions of dollars since he’s been back in power, with investments in industries and cash-infusions from foreign entities with business considerations before the U.S. government. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s comeback tour has him playing the self-pitying sad-sack, whining to Owens that people think he’s just some “ne’er do well who never did anything in their life.” To his detractors, he says in the interview, “Go look at my goddamn resume!” He cited his Yale Law education and serving on “16 boards” among his accomplishments.
Much of the excruciatingly boring first hour focused on Biden’s struggles with addiction, to which Owens showed great sympathy — even if she advertised the interview as being poised to “crack the internet.” (Get it?) Biden explained, convincingly, why the cocaine found at the White House in November 2023 was not his, and there was a lot of vaguely pious meandering chatter about finding salvation in his Catholic faith.
Among the interview’s few revealing moments included Biden assailing what he described as Israel’s “wholesale murder of a population in Gaza.” That’s interesting, if only because there’s ample data showing that President Biden’s “bear hug” strategy (throwing the occasional criticism toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his war on Gaza, but doing almost nothing to stem the brutality) was deeply unpopular among many Democratic constituencies and helped Trump win crucial swing states like Michigan.
Hunter Biden had his father’s ear when he gave him the horrible advice to stay in the 2024 race, but did he ever tell his father what a tactical, political and moral mistake he was making by rubber-stamping Bibi’s endless war? If he did, he didn’t mention it to Owens.
Owens, at one point, pointedly called out the Trump family’s shameless profiting off of the presidency, correctly comparing their galactic levels of corruption with the comparatively small potatoes of Hunter’s alleged chicanery.
Then came the truly unhinged portions of the interview, where Biden praised Owens’ supposed bravery “for asking questions” about the official narrative surrounding her close friend Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025. Although the alleged assassin reportedly confessed to the crime and left a trail of evidence suggesting the killing was politically motivated, Owens has for months speculated that there was instead a conspiracy involving the Israeli government and perhaps even Kirk’s widow.
The whole thing has a professional wrestling kayfabe vibe to it.
It’s worth noting that Owens’ rise was enabled by “anti-woke” critics of identity politics who nonetheless rarely skipped an opportunity to cite Owens’ identity for culture war street credibility. Bari Weiss praised her in a 2018 New York Times feature about the “intellectual dark web” as “a sharp, young, black conservative — a telegenic speaker with killer instincts,” and Christina Hoff Sommers wrote around that same time that Owens “is the pseudo-left’s worst nightmare: A formidable young black woman saying the emperor has no clothes.” Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire site also hosted Owens’ show for years.
She has since fallen out of favor with that crowd because of her antisemitism, but the damage is done: She’s a massively influential right-wing media star with nearly six million YouTube subscribers. And now she appears to be, at least superficially, pals with Joe Biden’s son.
The interview might not have “cracked the internet” as Owens promised, but there is something remarkable about the former Democratic president’s son chumming it up with an overt bigot, fabulist and purveyor of brain-rotting innuendos who relentlessly smeared him and his family for years. The whole thing has a professional wrestling kayfabe vibe to it — with heroes and villains regularly swapping roles amid performative shouting.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.