LISTEN – LOVE IS THE FIRST STEP –

April 5, 2021 – He has been in and out of rehab numerous times over the last two decades and has had long periods of sobriety between relapses.

It’s also a story about a family’s love and loss. Biden was 2 years old when his mother and sister died in a car crash. Hunter and his brother, Beau, were seriously injured but survived. Biden writes that his addictions entered a particularly dark phase after Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. It got to the point where in an intervention in early 2019, his father held him in a bear hug, saying, “I don’t know what to do.”

Hunter Biden says his wife, Melissa, got his life under control shortly after they met later that year. In an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon airing on Morning Edition, Biden credits his family’s unflinching love for his survival.

There was “never a moment that they weren’t trying to save me,” Biden says.

He also addresses his well-paid work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which began in 2014 while this father, Joe Biden, was vice president. Former President Donald Trump portrayed it as a corrupt deal that involved Joe Biden. Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens led to Trump’s first impeachment.

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