Son of former President Joe Biden in interview about homemade crack, death and Parmesan

Not Joe Rogan. Not Tucker Carlson. But Andrew Callaghan, the man in the ill-fitting suit, got the interview. On his YouTube channel, Channel 5, Callaghan published a three-hour conversation with Hunter Biden – son of former US President Joe Biden. Hunter, a former crack addict, says he's clean now. It's Hunter Biden's first long interview in years.

What follows is a mixture of confession, reckoning, and absurd anecdotes—garnished with a bee attack in the middle of the conversation. Hunter Biden's comment: "Birds aren't real. Bees are." Birds don't exist, but bees do.

Crack, art and California

Hunter Biden recounts how he obtained crack cocaine in Washington's most dangerous neighborhoods – and eventually made it himself. He recounts a years-long high, at one point seeing crack cocaine everywhere: "I've smoked more Parmesan cheese than crack in my life." He also recounts a scene in which a still-unidentified person saved him from death at a motel party while others stole his shoes.

A life between collapse and the grotesque – for example, when a Californian investor claimed that Biden had vandalized his house and tried to pay off the debt with an art book featuring drawings made from his own feces. Elon Musk retweeted the absurd story, and it went viral. None of it, according to Biden, is true.

Biden himself provides the simplest yet most brutal answer to the question of why people take drugs: "Because it works." He denies allegations of cocaine use in the White House, but admits: In retrospect, alcohol was the most dangerous drug. Deadlier than crack. More insidious than meth. And the withdrawal? According to Biden, it's life-threatening – as is otherwise only the case with benzodiazepines.

His own family was marked by alcoholism, and many of his ancestors died as a result. But he himself has been clean for six years.

Pain as a gift from God

Things get personal when the conversation turns to the fatal car accident that killed his mother and sister. Hunter and his brother Beau survived with serious injuries. He later lost Beau to cancer as well. "What unites us as humans is not love," Biden says. "It's pain. Pain is God's gift. It creates strength. And connection."

Hunter Biden also uses the interview to refute the wildest rumors about himself:

He financed the Wuhan lab? False.

Worked as Chief of Staff for his father? Never, after all, he only spent a total of 12 days in the White House.

Indirectly supporting Hamas? Absurd.

Involved in pedophile activities? A Rudy Giuliani invention.

Instead, Biden emphasizes his humanitarian commitment: As chairman of the World Food Programme, he increased the organization's budget by 50%. This, he says, is also part of his story—only hardly anyone tells it.

Andrew Callaghan, known for his former show All Gas No Brakes, has built Channel 5, the most successful independently funded news channel on YouTube. His interview with Hunter Biden is more than a drug confession. It's a portrait of a life under constant media fire.