← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Family Heritage That Led to Hunter Biden
00:37:11
The Family Heritage That Led to Hunter Biden
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- [00:00]
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- [01:16]
Tyler Foggatt
You're listening to the political scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt and I'm a senior editor at the New Yorker. Many Americans have been fascinated by the story of Hunter Biden, the president's second son. There's the political element of the story, involving allegations that Hunter leveraged his father's prominence for his own financial gain. And then there's the personal element, which is focused on Hunter's spiral into alcoholism and drug addiction. Recently, the first story came to something of a conclusion. Federal prosecutors announced a deal in which Hunter would plead guilty to two tax charges and be sentenced to two years of probation, bringing a five year long investigation into his business dealings to an end. But the second story is still being unraveled. Hunter is now sober, but his personal struggles and even his questionable business decisions mirror those of other members of the Biden family. Joe Biden has talked about his background on the stump, but the full story is much more complicated, and until recently, even the president and his children may not have known the full extent of it. A while back, the New Yorker published a groundbreaking investigation Titled the Untold History of the Biden Family, its author, Adam Entes, uncovered the rags to riches to rags story of how the Bidens landed in Scranton with the President's father struggling to find work. It's a very different tale from the one Joe Biden has shared with the public, complete with polo matches, war, profiteering, addiction and scandal. It provides a crucial context for the Hunter Biden saga and offers a deeper understanding of Joe Biden himself, detailing the people and the events that have shaped the choices he's made during his decades long political career. Hi, Adam.
- [02:58]
Adam Entes
Hey, it's great to be here.
- [03:00]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Yeah, thank you for coming on. So, before we get into your findings, I'm wondering if you could sort of talk us through the story that Biden has traditionally told about his family.
- [03:10]
Adam Entes
Well, it starts with Richard Ben Cramer's book, which comes out in 1992, what it takes, a section of which is devoted to Biden. In there, Cramer tells the story of Joe Biden's father for the first time. Basically, he's born in Baltimore. He's very close to these relatives, the Sheens. The Sheens are wealthy and then During World War II, they become war contractors and they become very rich. And the war ends. And without really any explanation, the money's gone and Biden Sr. Moves his family back to Scranton and they're penniless. And that's the beginning of the story that we all know about Joe Biden kind of growing up without much money in Scranton and then Wilmington.
- [03:59]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
And what else has been written about Biden? I mean, Biden himself has written memoirs and that kind of thing. Right, Right.
- [04:05]
Adam Entes
So, yeah, so it starts with Richard Ben Cramer's book and then Biden when he's running for president against Obama and he obviously he loses to Obama in the primaries, he comes out with a book to introduce himself again to voters, Promises to Keep, which comes out in 2007, 2008. And he repeats almost verbatim the stories that appeared in Cramer's book. That shouldn't be any surprise because Biden spoke to Cramer at length. They had actually the same researcher, the researcher that worked on Cramer's book. The fact checker on that book ends up being hired by Joe Biden when he writes his book. And so the stories are basically the same. And aside from that, nothing has been written. Every book that's come out since, every article has come out since, basically repeats that same story over and over again.
- [04:56]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
So what tipped you off to the possibility that there might be more to this story? I mean, I feel like, it's a really interesting situation that you were in as a reporter because you have Joe Biden, who's been in the public eye for so long. And as you say, there have been all of these books and pieces of reporting that sort of repeat the same thing. How did you know that there was more there? And where did you even figure out how to start?
- [05:16]
Adam Entes
Yeah, honestly, I didn't know that there was more there when I began. What happened was, is in 2019 is there was a lot of attention to Hunter Biden in the press. I was assigned by my editor to look into his business activities, particularly in Ukraine. My strategy with these interviews is I don't go right for the main topic that I'm interested in going for. I tried it like, where were you born? You know, tell me about your grandfather. Tell me about your father. You know, they don't see through that. Yeah. And he would tell me these kind of stories about his grandfather. And he would describe him as sort of a James Bond character, kind of this mystery man. He really enjoyed talking about those things because that was the thing that he probably had the most fond memories of, as opposed to the difficult things that he was going through with his addictions. You know, I couldn't use everything in the piece, but I made sort of a mental note about his grandfather and the story that we use at the very beginning of this about how him and his brother on Sundays would go with their father to look at mansions. Even if they were not open, they would literally kind of break into these mansions in order to kind of poke around themselves. And stories like that just struck me as just really weird and interesting. Like, why would Working Class Joe be so obsessed with things that undermine his image as working Class Joe, you know, which would be these mansions. And, you know, why did his father have this secret compartment where he kept these mementos from his days of polo playing and things like that in his closet? Why wasn't he more open about it? So there's this element of shame that came across, and I knew from covering Biden when he was vice president and from when he was a senator, this sort of issue with class with him. He's got a bit of an inferiority complex. You know, contacts of mine and friends who have worked with him over the years who went to places like Yale, you know, or Harvard, he would always make these snide remarks in meetings. Cause he went to University of Delaware and he went to Syracuse Law School, which are not like top tier universities. He always likes to make these snide remarks in meetings about people who went to sort of Ivy League schools, at the elite schools. He's got this thing about the elites and the wealthy.
- [07:45]
Tyler Foggatt
But that thing is also part of why voters like him so much.
- [07:48]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Right. I mean, it's a big part of how he relates to the middle class and to the working class, people who, you know, oftentimes have been the biggest.
- [07:55]
Tyler Foggatt
Part of his base.
- [07:56]
Adam Entes
Right. No. And I just was sort of perplexed by this notion that his own father was elite. Right. And yet he is anti elite. And obviously, what you find is that this is a rift in the family between the two sides. His mother's side, Jean Finnegan's side, they're Irish, very proud Irish. They look down on the English, they look down on the elites. And Joe Biden's dad comes from a side that was exactly what the Finnegan side didn't like, which is elites, English, very prideful of that. And so you had kind of this rift in the family that sort of intrigued me. And I saw Joe Biden as sort of kind of stuck between these two branches, trying to figure out who he actually was. And he got a little bit of each that was sort of intriguing to me. And I also, from talking to Hunter, was just sort of curious about his experiences and his challenges and the idea that he is not an outlier, that history is just repeating itself over and over again. Those same challenges about alcohol, those same conflicts about class and wealth are the same things that cause Hunter and his brother Beau, issues when they're growing up. So Hunter piqued my interest and helped make introductions for me. You know, I talked to other relatives in the family, such as Valerie and Jimmy Biden, the president's younger siblings. And basically what I learn is that they don't know anything, frankly, about him. Kind of shockingly nothing. Which, again, just makes me think, oh, God, there's gotta be something potentially juicy there to explain why he was so circumspect with his own children. You know, this is the kind of thing you'd think that they would be interested in getting for just the history books. Right? So anyways, bottom line is, is I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere with the Bidens because as far as I could tell, they didn't know anything. I couldn't get access to Joe Biden himself. So I set out to find the Sheens, which are referenced in both Kramer's book and in Biden's book and in every other book since. And the Sheens, the way they spell it is S. H een like Charlie Sheen.
- [10:17]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
When you say they, do you mean Biden and Kramer? Yeah, exactly.
- [10:21]
Adam Entes
Yeah, yeah. And so I go on Nexis, Lexis. I type in Sheen and William and Bill and different varieties of the combination. And I'm seeing Bill Sheen's all over the country, none of which, you know, seem to be the ones that. That I need. And I kind of reached a dead end with it and was pretty close to giving up. But I decided, you know, I would get in the car and drive up to Baltimore where there's the grave site where Joe Biden's grandfather and grandmother are buried. And literally, next to Joe Biden's grandfather's gravestone was a small marker which spelled Sheen with an e at the end. So then I do my Nexus Lexus search again with the new spelling, and then suddenly I'm seeing the family in Wilmington, Delaware. And it was that breakthrough of getting the phone number for Bill Sheen III that really allowed me to open the story up. He was able to tell me things that allowed me to go to the archives and try to figure out what actually did happen to the businesses.
- [11:27]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
And could you talk a little bit more about, I guess, why the Sheens are so important to this story? I mean, what is their relation to the Biden family in terms of. Are they cousins and then also their business partners as well? Right. So sort of, why are they so key?
- [11:43]
Adam Entes
So what happens is there are two sisters. There's Alice and Mary Robinette. The last name Joseph Robinette Biden, is basically his maternal grandfather. Grandmother. Right. And so the Robinettes were this family that came from England. They basically were colonists. And this was that family's sort of claim to fame was that they were early settlers in the United States. And, you know, by the time you get to Baltimore at the turn of the century, they're a very prominent family in Baltimore. And there are two daughters, Mary and Alice. Alice meets Bill Sheen Sr. And they get married. And then later, her baby sister Mary, which is the President's maternal grandmother, she meets Joseph Harry Biden and they get married. So it's through this marriage between the Robinette sisters, one of them with the Sheens and the other one with the Bidens. That brings these three families together. And within this family, there is also a class issue. The Robinettes are a high class family, or at least they think they are. Right. The Sheens trace their roots back to, like, allegedly an English castle, which I could never find. They had their own family crest, The Sheens did. And so they also had this Idea that they were aristocrats, the Bidens really not. You know, they were sort of the bottom of the barrel family in some ways. They had terrible alcoholism problems. They had a very messy and public divorce that Joseph Harry's father and mother went through. And so Joseph Harry Biden, when he marries Mary Robinette, he's marrying into a much more stable family with resources.
- [13:36]
Tyler Foggatt
So the president's grandfather married into a higher class.
- [13:40]
Adam Entes
Yeah, you know, with a more established reputation, with political influence in Baltimore and with money. They had a beautiful home in an important part of the city, whereas the Bidens were always kind of renting kind of run down places on the other side of the tracks. And so Alice and her husband, Bill Sheen Sr. They have a son, which they named Bill Sheen Jr. And Joseph Harry Biden and Mary Robinette, they have a son, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. Who's the president's father. I like to think that the journey kind of begins with the birth of the two cousins who are inseparable. And basically their fathers have their different kind of paths. One of them, Joseph Harry Biden, ends up working at Amoco, which is an oil company. And he's very close to the owner, and he's like one of the first employees. And so he's like a company man, maybe because his father's an alcoholic. And he didn't have a lot of stability growing up. He really liked the stability that he got from working at this company. Whereas Bill Sheen Sr. He's an entrepreneur, he's a scrambler. He's always trying to make a buck. He's always trying to get rich. And so that's sort of the divide in the family. And you have Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. And his cousin, Bill Sheen Jr. Growing up with this dynamic in the family. And as his own father struggles at Amoco, he is drawn closer and closer in with the Sheens, who become very wealthy in the 1920s. That is sort of when really the two trajectories of the family diverge. The Bidens are struggling, but the Sheens are really rolling in money and they're living large, and he gets kind of sucked into their universe.
- [15:25]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
I see. So the president's father sort of watches his own father work this pretty thankless job, not making that much money. He goes into business with his rich uncle and cousin, and that's when they start getting into trouble. Right. So could you talk a little bit about the issues with the Sheens businesses and how Joe Biden's father was involved with that?
- [15:44]
Adam Entes
Right. So the Bidens were sort of, you know, happy with kind of less wealthy. But, you know, we're looking for stability. And the Sheens were looking kind of boom bust, trying to make a lot of money. The common denominator was alcoholism. On the Biden side, it's only whispered about Joseph Harry Biden's dad, George T. Biden, you know, the president's great grandfather. On his paternal side, he is an alcoholic. That's clear from documents that I was able to find. But really, on the Biden side, joke with Joseph Harry Biden, it. You don't see a lot of evidence of alcoholism in the documents I was able to find. You could see economic distress, and you can see that he's demoted at Amoco, and you can see he's becoming increasingly embittered about his treatment there. On the Sheen side, every couple years, there'd be a headline in the paper about another drunken brawl in which Bill Sheen Sr. Was arrested. And the lawsuits are piling up. It's. You know, there's a lot of material about that I was able to find in the archives about Bill Sheen Sr. I would say that he was not an honest person. Maybe that's because of the alcoholism. I don't know. But he strikes me as not particularly honest. And so just as we're getting to the point of World War II starting, steel is becoming something that's not readily available. It's being restricted. So he begins to diversify and to look at another way to keep the money coming. And so the British Admiralty had invented a substitute for steel to help protect the crews of merchant marine ships from enemy aircraft fire. And it's a substance they call plastic armor. It's a bit of a misnomer. It's really an asphalt like substance that when it's heated, it's pliable. Hence the word plastic.
- [17:33]
Tyler Foggatt
I was gonna say plastic armor doesn't sound very reassuring.
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Adam Entes
Yeah. And so basically, he realizes that this is where he could make money, and so he goes into that business. And Joe Biden Sr. Goes to work for his uncle, his rich uncle.
- [17:51]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
So this is when he chooses the Sheen path, I guess is how you would put it, the path of wealth and maybe dishonesty.
- [17:59]
Adam Entes
Yeah, he's choosing the path to make money. And whether it's honest or not, that's open for debate. Certainly, I think later on, it's pretty clear how dishonest it becomes. I think that there are periods when they're trying to do the right thing and to bring things under control. And I think a lot of their conduct later reflects when they're drinking. So basically, they're struggling with addiction, and they're heading into business together. And. And there's a ton of money to be made during World War II. And that's the mix that Joe Biden's father gets pulled into.
- [18:37]
Tyler Foggatt
And so Joe Biden's father ultimately ends.
- [18:40]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Up being the second highest paid employee at this plastic armor outfit.
- [18:44]
Tyler Foggatt
I'm wondering if you could talk about.
- [18:45]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Sort of what happens to the plastic armor business. I mean, eventually the government comes after them, but what were they doing wrong? And how was Joe Biden's father implicated, if at all, in the corruption of the business?
- [18:56]
Adam Entes
Yeah, so they're making a ton of money in 1942, which is the first year that they're in business. But as they're getting into 1943, they put plastic armor on a number of ships, and they're realizing that in order to keep the money coming, they're gonna have to diversify. So they decide that they're gonna become a welding and repair company as well. And they open a division up in Boston, and Joe Biden Sr. The president's father, is sent up to basically run the new division. Now, Joe Biden Sr. Was not a partner in the business. He was the number one employee. He was their representative with labor in other cases. He was their representative in court cases. So he clearly was somebody that the Sheens relied upon and trusted. He was a member of the family. He's the godson of the owner of the company. He's the best friend and best man to. To Bill Sheen Jr. His cousin, also a partner in the company. And so he was as close to a partner as you can get without being a partner. And so, you know, the government begins to come after the Sheens and basically find that the company was paying wages that were significantly higher than what was allowed and that this was creating instability in this industry, the shipbuilding industry. And they basically demand repayment of some of this money that they had been paying over what was allowed. And the Sheens basically cut a deal to avoid having to pay that large amount. And it sort of lays the ground for the second investigation, which is more existential, if you will, for their finances.
- [20:37]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
And that was the investigation into excessive profits. Right. So the company was taking too high a profit margin on its war contracts.
- [20:46]
Adam Entes
So in addition to there being rules capping wages that the company was in breach of, just like, really, when they're settling that case, the U.S. maritime Commission, which has several of the contracts for the plastic armor with this company, they're looking at many of their contractors. You know, the established rate is 8% profits on these war contracts. And what they found was that in some cases this company, they were charging the government and pocketing a 50% profit, not 8%. So what happened was, and this takes about two years, they basically say to them, you have to pay two thirds of your profits back. We're talking about the equivalent of many millions of dollars. Meanwhile, they have been spending like crazy with mansions and estates and limousines and chauffeurs and private airplane yachts, you name it. They didn't exactly have all that money sitting in the bank for them to pay back the government when the government came after the money. And so this leads to basically the beginning of the end where the government is pursuing them to get those ill gotten gains back. And they're basically kind of living the last moments of their Great Gatsby lives before reality sets in.
- [22:05]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Yeah, and obviously none of this is in Joe Biden's book. You know, the stuff about the excessive profits and the. Yeah, the issues with the war contracting businesses. And it sounds like from what you said earlier that Joe Biden's siblings had basically no idea that their father was involved in all of this.
- [22:22]
Adam Entes
Yeah. I would tell Jimmy or Hunter what I had found and like Jimmy would go, oh shit, you know, I mean, at least as far as I could tell, they had no idea. Now, I didn't speak to Joe Biden, the President, maybe he knows some of this stuff, I don't know. I suspect that basically this was the family secret, that the business was not kosher. And the reason why Joe Biden grows up without money in Scranton and later in Wilmington is basically because Joe Biden Sr. S mistake was attaching himself to these relatives who were alcoholics and were not trustworthy and who got into trouble. And he married Jean Finnegan, who I would call almost a moralist. And their family were borderline priests, almost with their very ethical family that believes in service and sacrifice and you know, the Catholic teachings. And so you basically had an incredibly upright family that prized things like education and doing the right thing. And then you had this other side of the family that really was just trying to get ahead, make money, be rich, drink themselves silly and live like kings. And so you had this real clash between these two sides of the family. And I'm positive that this is the reason why Joe Biden's dad is given such a hard time by his in laws. And I think Joe Biden Sr. This is why he doesn't tell anybody about this. This is why he hides the fact that he used to have these glory days right in his closet. It's because he's internalized this kind of shame about what he was wrapped up in. Not to say that he's like as to blame as the Sheens, but he certainly was complicit and went along with something that the government at least deemed to be, you know, they literally call it illegal activity. And so this is the rift where Gene Biden basically decides, you know, I want to isolate my family and protect my family from the Sheens and particularly the Sheen men, who she saw as a terrible influence, both because of the alcoholism and I believe, also because of the philandering and the cheating, as well as their kind of notorious reputations in business.
- [25:03]
Tyler Foggatt
We'll have more with Adam Entes on the political scene from the New Yorker in just a moment.
- [25:10]
Katie Drummond
What the hell is going on right now, and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative, and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview. Conversations are fun.
- [25:38]
Adam Entes
I want a shark that.
- [25:39]
Katie Drummond
That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.
- [25:43]
Adam Entes
So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every.
- [25:52]
Katie Drummond
Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false. You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False.
- [26:10]
Adam Entes
Tell me more.
- [26:11]
Katie Drummond
Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find Wired's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:23]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
When you describe Joe Biden's mother's side of the family, the Finnegans, I mean, Irish Catholic from Scranton, humble upbringing. I mean, all of those things, those are like the exact qualities that I think of when I think of Joe Biden, or at least when I think of his political Persona, and that's no coincidence. You sort of establish that there were these two paths. There was the Finnegan way, which was noble. They were almost like priests, very public service oriented. And then there was the Biden. Was there a moment at which Joe Biden seemed To pick one instead of the other one, or what do you think happened there?
- [26:58]
Adam Entes
What I know is that at one point, and I believe Richard Ben Kramer has this right, that the two wives, Jean and Marie Sheen. Marie Sheen is married to Bill Sheen Jr. The two wives basically say, screw this. We can't put up with this anymore. What's going on with their husbands. And so Marie leaves Long island, leaves Old Westbury, and goes back to Baltimore and takes her two children with her. Jean and Marie were best friends. And so she also leaves, according to Kramer, and goes to Scranton, presumably with the two kids. At that point, it's Joe Biden Jr. The future president, and Valerie, his younger sister. Now, I don't know exactly what the last straw is. It may be this one incident that takes place in early 1948. Bill Sheen Jr. Is in a nearby commercial area and he sets off a false fire alarm. This is written up in the newspaper. It's quite a embarrassing write up. Bill Sheen Jr. Is sort of mocked for basically being a rich, irresponsible drunk. Bill Sheen III, the son of Bill Sheen Jr. Told me that Joe Biden Sr. Was with his father when they did that prank. And I think it just was embarrassing. Jean and the Finnegans took pride in sort of being these upstanding citizens. And the Sheens, particularly when they were drunk, were the opposite. You know, they were jackasses, basically. And so I think she just was humiliated and she wanted to protect her two kids, and she was about to have a third and later a fourth. She just didn't want them to grow up that way. I mean, this is an opinion that's shared by both the Sheens and the Bidens that at one point she basically gives an ultimatum to her husband and basically says, you have a choice to make. You can either be with your family or you can be with the Sheens. You have to make a choice. And I don't know if he would have made the same choice he made if the Sheens weren't broke, but the Sheens at this point were broke. And so he goes with his family. It's not like the Sheens had much to offer him at that stage. I don't want to give him more credit than he deserves, but he decides to go back and join his family in Scranton, where Jean's family is, and he lives kind of in this very uncomfortable, cramped house where he is treated like an outcast on the Finnegan side because they know he was a war profiteer, because they read the stories in the newspaper, right? And they heard the stories from Jean, so I think it was tough for him. And he's taking these very modest jobs fixing boilers and working, selling knickknacks at a fair, stuff like that. And there's this really telling story, I think, where Gene happens to go to this fair and sees her husband wearing one of his perfect suits and selling knickknacks and. And other little things. And she says something to the effect of like, I've never been so proud of you. And it's always been like a story that Joe Biden tells that really doesn't make any sense until you understand what I think she's referring to, which is we're not rich, but at least we're honest.
- [30:14]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Yeah.
- [30:14]
Tyler Foggatt
I mean, when you put all the.
- [30:15]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Stories about Joe Biden's family together, you know, the story that you just told, I mean, your piece is really interesting because you have these details about the family's history of alcoholism and then these anecdotes about Biden's father playing polo and doing all these incredibly bougie things, which almost feel like tropes of an American old money family. But then at the same time, the broader narrative arc of your story is one of a family that is rising and flush with cash and spending money on a beautiful house and then suddenly loses all their money and is trying to kind of recreate the situation that they had before. You talk in your story about how Joe Biden himself, by the time he was, I think, 28, he had borrowed money from his father in law. He owned a mansion, but at the same time, he couldn't really afford to have that mansion. He had overextended himself in order to buy it.
- [31:05]
Tyler Foggatt
And so I'm wondering where you sort.
- [31:08]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Of landed at the end of your reporting when it comes to this idea of middle class Joe. I mean, is that wrong? Is he not middle class Joe, or is he middle class Joe? Because even though his family did have money at this point, you know, at a certain point he grew up not really getting to enjoy the benefits of having money. And then also, you know, when he was a young man and had children and whatnot, seemed to be falling into the same patterns of sort of being like a middle class driver who wanted to have more money than he actually did.
- [31:34]
Adam Entes
Yeah, I mean, I see him as sort of conflicted. So, you know, he's growing up, he knows what his father considers to be success. Those are his big houses. Right. And they could tell that he was ashamed of the middle class lifestyle that he was able to give Them in Wilmington. And so I think, you know, growing up, Joe Biden Jr. The president thinks that in order to really be a success, you have to have those grand things. And he had this, you know, notion later on of dynasty. He's attracted to this idea of dynasty. The Kennedy dynasty was an inspiration to him in terms of his politics. And he sort of had this idea of dynasty for his own family. That's where Beau came in. Like Beau was going to be his successor. You know, they were always compared to sort of the Kennedys of Delaware, but without the money. And even we talk a little bit about, in the story about this Bible that Joe Biden uses at his. All of his swearing in ceremonies starting in 1972, it looks almost exactly like the Kennedy Bible. So it's a symbol of aristocracy. So at the same time, he wants to be middle class Joe. And frankly, he is middle class Joe in a lot of ways. He seems to be sort of drawn to things that are trappings of wealth. And it's sort of almost ingrained in him. And frankly, it's not just him, it's also his brother. It's also his kids. Right. Beau and Hunter. And so they, for some reason, they idealize that and they crave it.
- [33:17]
Tyler Foggatt
I see. So it's not like they're trying to.
- [33:19]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
Have their cake and eat it too by saying that they're middle class, but then secretly owning a mansion. It's that they feel like they're middle class. They probably are middle class based on the amount of money that they have, but at the same time, they can't help but lust after these status symbols and objects that. That would seemingly be representative of a higher class.
- [33:38]
Adam Entes
Yeah, I mean, the reality is Joe Biden, especially since he's a senator, is surrounded by wealth. Hunter, the son of a senator, is surrounded by wealthier families. They are constantly surrounded by moneyed families. There's this sense of almost inadequacy that they feel now they have this heritage of Joe Biden Sr. At one point being one of those families. Right. Or at least aspiring to be one of those families. But he couldn't deliver. He couldn't deliver it because the Sheens were corrupt family or whatever, and basically that dream was wiped out. And so they're surrounded by all this wealth. They both want to be the Finnegans, but they also want to be the Bidens, and they want to be like a wealthy family. And this is a conflict within the family, and I would say an unresolved one, you know, one that actually contributes, I think, to Hunter's addiction issues later. The stress of trying to keep up with the Joneses is the main reason why he ends up having relapses is because he's constantly trying to provide that wealthy lifestyle to his family, which requires him to take jobs that, you know, are very risky, potentially risky, but also puts him under a lot of personal stress. And so keeping up with the Joneses is a big part of the dynamic here. You had this dynamic, for example, when Obama was president, Joe Biden was sort of ridiculed in the Onion, the satirical newspaper, you know, wearing a wife beater T shirt and, you know, cleaning his Corvette on the driveway of the White House. The idea is, is that Joe Biden is not elite, and he both takes pride in that, but is also offended. Right. I remember being told of a conversation once where it was Obama was a senator and Joe Biden was a senator. And they're having a meeting in Biden's office, and Biden invites him to go have dinner with him at this Italian place in D.C. that was very cheap but very good. And so he invited Obama to come to this restaurant. And Biden says, I can pay the bill. And Obama says, listen, I'm a lawyer. I mean, I can pay the bill. And Obama was offended by what Biden had said, and Biden was offended with what Obama said. So there's a class insecurity on the Biden side that I think is actually rooted in this conflict between the Finnegans and the Bidens that goes back to that marriage in 1941, basically. And it's something that hasn't really been fully addressed in the family, and it plays out in each of the generations over and over again.
- [36:35]
Tyler Foggatt
So it sounds like President Biden prioritizes.
- [36:37]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
The Finnegans, and not only has that been a big part of his Persona, but it's also affected his policy just in the sense that he. He seems to really focus on the middle class. What do you think his takeaways would be if he wasn't just focusing on the Finnegans, but also sort of contended with the Biden side as well?
- [36:55]
Adam Entes
Honestly, like, if you look at the way Joe Biden has lived his life, he has lived, at least as far as I can tell, like the Finnegan ideals that he sort of prizes. So, you know, obviously, what his father did does not reflect on him the way I see the choices that he made, such as not drinking, such as deciding to go into a career of service, you know, being a politician, if you want to call that service, basically Living on a salary that was not a high salary. Right. You know, you can respect Joe Biden's discipline for sure. You know, having a father who was involved in something that was untoward is not something that any politician wants to have as part of their history. I don't know how it would have affected things if the information was out there. Obviously, the key, at least from my perspective, is he has run for president three times. He's run for senator, I don't know, eight times or whatever. He has been a candidate so many times, he's had many opportunities to tell his story. And over the years, you know, journalists should have checked his story. And repeatedly over all this time, he's basically not been subjected to this sort of scrutiny that you think somebody in his position would have been subjected to. Now, why certain things in his biography, in his memoir, why they are the way they are, I don't really know. Like, why does he misspell the Sheen name? If he had spelled it correctly in Richard Ben Cramer's book, maybe reporters would have figured this out a long time ago. I don't know. I think we sort of took for granted that the story he told was correct and complete, and that was a mistake, because it wasn't. And if earlier on this story had come out, maybe it would have had political implications in his various campaigns for public office.
- [38:57]
Tyler Foggatt
Thank you so much, Adam.
- [38:58]
Adam Entes
No, it's a pleasure.
- [39:04]
Tyler Foggatt
Adam Entes is a reporter who covers intelligence, national security, and foreign affairs. Thanks for listening to the political scene from the New Yorker. The show is produced by Michelle Moses with editing assistance from Catherine Winter. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Allison Layton Brown compose our theme music. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next Wednesday.
- [39:37]
Katie Drummond
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's global editorial director.
- [39:40]
Adam Entes
I'm Michael Colori, Wired's director of consumer tech and Culture.
- [39:43]
Tyler Foggatt
And I'm Lauren Good.
- [39:44]
Interviewer from The New Yorker
I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show, Uncanny Valley, is all about the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [39:53]
Katie Drummond
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech.
- [40:02]
Adam Entes
Right? So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you.
- [40:13]
Katie Drummond
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [40:24]
Adam Entes
From prx.