There's something so old-fashioned about Hunter Biden's sudden surge in Twitter activity. Former President Joe Biden's son returned to the platform in May and began posting at a staggering rate this week: 102 posts on Monday, 85 on Tuesday, 74 on Wednesday, and so on. (These figures come courtesy of People magazine.) About 10 or 15 years ago, it seemed like barely a day went by without some celebrity joining Twitter and going viral with their "reply," which would then be hailed by then-rising digital media outlets like BuzzFeed. Now, Twitter/X and BuzzFeed are mere shadows of their former glory, and celebrities tend to be a little more cautious about dipping their toes into the cesspool. But as a man who knows what cesspools are like—having survived addiction, enormous personal loss, and the Republican Party—Hunter Biden apparently seized the opportunity.
Biden's tweets underscore his status as an "ironic icon," as the New York Times once called him—a slimy yet lovable loser whose penchant for drugs and sex workers makes him even more appealing to certain demographics, namely progressive but disillusioned millennials and Generation Z. A common theme in his posts has been frank and self-deprecating references to his struggles with drug addiction. Biden's most popular tweet this week was a response to a user who demanded he admit that the bag of cocaine infamously found in the White House during Joe Biden's presidency belonged to him. "It's definitely not him," the younger Biden wrote. "I would never forget my drugs." In another response, he clarified that cocaine wasn't actually his drug of choice. "And at least clarify," he wrote. "I smoked crack. I would never waste cocaine on snorting it.".
Sometimes these drug references were used for a specific purpose, such as when Biden tried to counter a user's suggestion that he belonged to the "elite oligarch class." He responded with a familiar photo of himself shirtless and smoking a cigarette, taken from a long-stolen laptop that came under scrutiny during the first Trump administration. "Do I look like I'm part of the elite oligarch class? By the way, this was taken at a Super 8 motel off I95," he wrote. Other posts, however, seemed to reference his past simply for fun, such as when he responded to a meme of himself smoking a pipe: "I know this may sound petty, but I hate it when people photoshop a meth pipe into my mouth," he wrote. "A crack pipe doesn't have that little bowl at the end. This is why we can't trust AI. Please edit accordingly. Thank you for your attention to this matter." (This final line, of course, refers to a phrase President Trump frequently uses on Truth Social.)
Elsewhere, Hunter lashed out at CNN's Jake Tapper and his criticism of the Biden family while dismissing the Trump family's corruption. He repeatedly attempted to engage in a humane dialogue with the trolls, attempting to find common ground with one who called his family a "disgrace" by pointing out that the user's profile picture was of Johnny Cash, whom he also considered a hero. He said Cash, like him, had run-ins with the law and was a heavy drug user, but he quit and "spent the rest of his life singing for prisoners, addicts, and people the country abandoned because it knew he was one of them." It was a surprisingly sweet note.
Almost everyone on the internet is raving about Hunter's Twitter era, responding with the usual litany of compliments: "He's posting awesome stuff," "We love it," "He doesn't care," and "We love it," and so on. He already has almost half a million followers. It's all good, and I agree to a certain extent: "Thanks for all the funny moments, Hunter.".
But I hope this kind of talk stops before he, to use a perhaps unfortunate metaphor, becomes intoxicated by his own drug. There have already been calls for him to run for president in 2028, to which Trump himself has responded. (He's obsessed, too.) We've seen what happens when the handsome son of a powerful politician with an unpredictable online presence runs for president as part of Jack Schlossberg's congressional campaign, and it's not pretty. As charming and sweet as Hunter is, "being a really good blogger" is a perfectly fine niche for him, and we shouldn't have to force principles on him to become president.
Lest we forget, because it seems everyone has, it's been just two weeks since Hunter Biden appeared on the podcast of notorious anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and called her "probably the most effective communicator I've ever heard behind a microphone." I imagine it was part of his plan to make his enemies see him as human, but even so, his defense of his father's 2024 campaign was also both understandable and ill-considered. We all need to slow down a bit. Who knows, maybe Hunter will get tired of tweeting and dramatically scale back his activity—500 tweets a week is a frantic pace. If that happens, at least we can always look back on this week of brilliant tweets like a gourmet cigarette at a Super 8 motel on I-95: a moment worth cherishing.