A look at the time Tucker Carlson asked Hunter Biden for a favorPart I
The Fox News host often ridicules the president’s son, but years ago, the two were close
By Matt Viser May 19, 2022 at 12:43 p.m. EDT
Tucker Carlson and his wife were looking to get their son a leg up in his college application to Georgetown University when they turned to a well-connected Washington friend who had an even better-connected father.
“I realize you don’t really know Buckley,” Susie Carlson wrote via email in 2014 to Hunter Biden, a Georgetown graduate and the son of the then-vice president. “Maybe you could meet or speak to him and he could send you a very brief resume with his interests and grades attached.”
Tucker Carlson offered that his son was a good squash player and an excellent fly fisherman. “He loves Washington for all the right reasons, I think,” Carlson added, “and really wants to go to school here.” When Biden agreed to write a letter of recommendation, Susie Carlson added a heap of praise: “Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!”
The Carlsons’ past entreaties to Biden may come as a surprise to many present-day viewers of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the highly rated prime-time Fox News show on which the host has repeatedly ridiculed Biden for seeking to profit off his family connections and at times for his history of personal troubles and drug use.
The interactions reveal the extent to which Carlson was willing to turn on a former associate as he thrives in a hyperpartisan media world in which conservatives have made Biden a prime target for attack during his father’s presidency. They also show how Carlson once sought to benefit from the elite political circles in Washington that he now regularly rails against as the “ruling class.”
“When your dad is president, you get superpowers,” Carlson said in October 2021 during a segment about Biden pursuing a new career as an artist. “Maybe Hunter Biden will invent a new vaccine next we will be required to take. Who knows? You never know. The sky is the limit when your dad is in power.”
Some emails between Tucker Carlson and Biden, saved on a device copied from a laptop that Biden purportedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019, have been previously reported. The Washington Post has verified many of those emails through a forensic analysis and corroborated additional messages, including the correspondence with Carlson’s wife, with a person familiar with the communications.
Tucker Carlson, during a 15-minute phone interview, said that he was once close with Biden, as he has stated on his show.
“Hunter Biden was my neighbor. Our wives were friends. I knew him well. I talked to him many times about addiction, something I know a lot about,” Carlson said. “And I’ve said that. I think that Hunter Biden is an addict and that’s why his life is falling apart, and I feel bad for him. I’ve said that many times, and I mean it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/19/look-time-tucker-carlson-asked-hunter-biden-favor/