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In a candid, wide-ranging exclusive interview with the BBC’s *Newsnight*, Hunter Biden has opened up about one of the most controversial acts of his father’s presidency, the spread of Joe Biden’s cancer, and his own decades-long battle with addiction, offering unflinching insight into the personal and political turmoil that shaped the end of the 46th U.S. president’s term.

The interview, one of Hunter Biden’s most extensive public appearances since Joe Biden left office, addressed the full and unconditional presidential pardon Joe Biden granted him in December 2024 — a decision that broke the former president’s previous public pledge not to use executive power to interfere in his son’s federal legal cases.

Acknowledging the widespread bipartisan criticism the pardon sparked, Hunter Biden admitted the move was not beneficial for the American public, the U.S. Constitution, or his father’s political legacy. “It’s something that is easily criticised and for good reason,” he told the BBC. “It’s not fair… All I know is that I’m grateful that he did it for me.” While he accepted the legitimacy of public pushback, he pushed back against claims that the pardon demonstrated blatant nepotism, arguing that Joe Biden’s choice stemmed from a genuine, personal fear: that Hunter would become a political target of incoming President Donald Trump’s administration. He also emphasized that the pair never discussed the possibility of a pardon before it was issued, noting that any pre-pardon conversation would almost certainly have been leaked to the public. “I was the only one in the world that could have gotten what I got from the only person in the world who could give it, my father,” he said. The blanket pardon covered all federal offenses Hunter Biden committed between 2014 and 2024, including his prior federal gun conviction and the tax charges to which he had pleaded guilty. In justifying the pardon when it was announced, Joe Biden had argued his son had been the victim of selective, politically motivated prosecution.

The conversation turned deeply personal when Hunter Biden addressed his father’s ongoing battle with cancer, growing visibly emotional as he shared updates on the former president’s health. He confirmed that the cancer has metastasized, spreading to Joe Biden’s bones and other areas of the body, causing severe, constant pain and significant disability. “Cancer is really hard. It’s really sad to watch,” he said, pausing to clear his throat. Despite the grim diagnosis, Hunter Biden described his 82-year-old father as the unshakable center of their family, praising his stoicism through relentless pain: “My dad is, to this day, the centre of our family. He’s the best father, the best husband, the best grandfather. The only thing that I say about my dad, about his health right now, is I wish he would complain more.”

Hunter Biden also reflected on the June 2024 presidential debate that ultimately forced Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign, saying that watching the performance from his California home left him immediately alarmed. “I was shocked. I knew something was wrong,” he recalled. He previously attributed the poor performance to extreme physical fatigue from a grueling campaign travel schedule, but now he says the undiagnosed cancer likely already impacted his father’s performance that night. He added that despite his illness, Joe Biden remains actively engaged in political discourse and committed to speaking out on public issues.

Opening up about his own well-documented struggle with addiction, Hunter Biden described the darkest days of his substance abuse, recalling that at his worst, he drank nearly a full gallon of vodka daily and smoked crack cocaine every 15 minutes. “It was hell on earth. There’s nothing glamorous about it,” he said. Rejecting claims that his addiction stemmed from a sense of privileged invincibility as the son of a powerful politician, he explained he turned to drugs and alcohol to escape crippling feelings of anxiety and isolation. What began as a coping mechanism quickly became a fatal threat: “The drugs and alcohol initially felt like a solution before becoming ‘the thing that almost killed me,’” he said.

When asked about persistent speculation that he would pursue a career in elected politics, even a potential presidential run, Hunter Biden flatly ruled out any bid for public office. “I have no interest in elected politics,” he said, pushing back firmly on the rumors. Instead, he plans to dedicate his time to advocacy for addiction recovery, a cause he argues can transcend America’s toxic partisan divides. “I believe that addiction and the hope of recovery are something that connect us all,” he said.

When asked what trait of his father he is most proud of, Hunter Biden did not point to Joe Biden’s decades of public service, but to his relentless resilience in the face of repeated personal and political hardship. “I’m most proud of his resilience. He’s proven time and time again that when you get knocked down, you can get up. He’s the toughest man I know,” he said.

Four months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his first attempt to narrow access to U.S.-born citizenship, former President Donald Trump has rolled out a new pair of executive orders targeting what his administration calls “birth tourism” and expanding carve-outs to the longstanding principle of birthright citizenship. Signed during a formal White House ceremony on Thursday, the orders mark the latest high-profile push by the Trump administration to reshape U.S. immigration and nationality policy without congressional approval.

The first of the two orders expands the legal definition of non-citizen parents whose children born on U.S. soil are excluded from automatic birthright citizenship. Under the new framework, babies born in the U.S. to two non-citizen parents will be denied automatic citizenship if one parent falls into any of several specified categories: members of a designated foreign terrorist organization, foreign government officials, individuals who have previously sought U.S. immigration status through fraud, or residents of unincorporated U.S. territories where federal law does not grant birthright citizenship. While some of these categories were already excluded under longstanding rules, the new provision related to terrorist group membership has already sparked legal and policy ambiguity, according to Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Putzel-Kavanaugh notes that the order fails to clarify critical procedural details: how terrorist affiliation will be verified, which government body will bear the responsibility of determination, and whether the burden of proof will rest with the government to confirm membership or the individual to disprove it.

The second executive order directly targets the practice of birth tourism — the process through which foreign nationals travel to the U.S. specifically to give birth, so their child can obtain U.S. citizenship by birth. The order directs the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to tighten existing regulations and ramp up enforcement efforts against the birth tourism industry, which the order argues relies on deceptive marketing to attract expecting parents. The order claims that industry operators frequently advertise guaranteed U.S. citizenship, access to public benefits, and specialized maternity accommodation, but often fail to deliver on these promised services. Notably, traveling to the U.S. for the explicit purpose of giving birth is already classified as a violation of immigration law.

Birthright citizenship, formally known as *jus soli* (the right of the soil), is codified in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in the aftermath of the American Civil War to guarantee citizenship to formerly enslaved people born in the U.S. Under current longstanding interpretation, almost all individuals born on U.S. soil receive automatic citizenship regardless of their parents’ own citizenship or immigration status, with only a handful of narrow exceptions. These existing exceptions include children born to foreign diplomats on official assignment, children born to enemy occupying forces, and children born in unincorporated U.S. territories where Congress has not extended birthright citizenship. For example, people born in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands receive automatic U.S. citizenship, while those born in American Samoa are classified as “non-citizen nationals” rather than full citizens.

In announcing the new orders, Trump claimed that “hundreds of thousands” of babies are born in the U.S. each year via birth tourism, offering no evidence to support the figure and no clarification on whether the number reflects an annual total or cumulative count. Official data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that just over 9,500 babies were born in 2024 to women listing foreign residential addresses, accounting for roughly 0.25% of the 3.7 million total births recorded in the U.S. that year. However, MPI analysts argue that official CDC figures are almost certainly an undercount, as birth tourism participants often use a temporary U.S. address to register the birth rather than their permanent foreign address. After a broader analysis of U.S. Census data, MPI estimates that between 20,000 and 26,000 babies are born annually in the U.S. as a result of birth tourism, equal to between 0.5% and 0.7% of total annual U.S. births. Putzel-Kavanaugh emphasized that exact counts are inherently difficult to capture, because birth tourism is defined by the traveler’s private intent to give birth in the U.S. — a detail that is rarely recorded in official administrative data. Some unplanned births also occur when traveling pregnant people experience unexpected medical emergencies that require delivery in the U.S. even if they originally planned to give birth in their home country, she added.

The Trump administration’s legal challenge to broad birthright citizenship reached the Supreme Court earlier this year, with oral arguments held in April. The administration’s case centered heavily on the argument that unconstrained birthright citizenship has allowed the birth tourism industry to grow, creating a cohort of U.S. citizens with no meaningful connection to the country. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued during arguments that the 14th Amendment’s framers never intended for the provision to enable mass birth tourism, arguing that modern air travel has created a situation where “eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.” When Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether Sauer agreed that birth tourism’s existence has no bearing on the legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment, Sauer countered that the practice proves the amendment carries unforeseen consequences that its authors would never have endorsed. The Supreme Court’s majority rejected the administration’s interpretation in June, with the majority’s reasoning summed up by Roberts’ remark: “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is nearly unique among major nations in granting unrestricted birthright citizenship. In reality, more than 30 countries around the world practice automatic unrestricted *jus soli*, including most nations in Central and South America such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. The U.S. and Canada are the only two IMF-classified developed economies that grant nearly unrestricted birthright citizenship; other major countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia use a modified system that only grants automatic birthright citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.