Many people have already made up their minds about Hunter, and others aren't interested in knowing anything more, but I think his first-hand account of drug addiction, tabloid culture and political craziness is incredibly informative. It's one of those "you think you know, but you have no idea" types of stories. For example, Hunter's big paychecks for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma? He reveals that "Burisma turned into a major enabler" of his "steepest skid into addiction" by providing cash for all the crack cocaine.
This is not the way we're used to reading about a child of the president. Hunter's accounts of drunken benders and crack-fueled odysseys are downright scary. And his recollections of his brother -— "wish you could've known Beau" — are sorrowful.
'Where's Hunter?'
Chapter after chapter puts the "Where's Hunter?" heckling into an entirely new context. Some of the book's boosters, like Stephen King, have appropriated it to promote "Beautiful Things." King wrote: "Where's Hunter? The answer is he's in this book, the good, the bad, and the beautiful."
But the scrutiny of what pro-Trump media shouters sometimes call the "Biden crime family" continues to this day, and Hunter acknowledges it in the book. Regarding his Burisma role, which was at the heart of President Trump's first impeachment, he writes, "I did nothing unethical, and have never been charged with wrongdoing. In our current political environment, I don't believe it would make any difference if I took that seat or not. I'd be attacked anyway. What I do believe, in this current climate, is that it wouldn't matter what I did or didn't do. The attacks weren't intended for me. They were meant to wound my dad." Still, he says, in retrospect, for optics reasons, he wouldn't take the board seat again.
Here's where Hunter is
Later this week Hunter will be on the BBC and on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," but he seems to be avoiding more overtly political and partisan spaces. Fox talks about him practically every hour, but there's no word of a Hunter book interview on Fox, nor do I think there will be.