Hunter Biden accused former Vice President Kamala Harris of failing to stand by his father and dismissed her as "not a very good politician", the sharpest public break yet between the Biden family and the woman who replaced Joe Biden atop the 2024 Democratic ticket.
In a sit-down interview with Zeteo editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan in Los Angeles, Hunter Biden said Harris was not "loyal to a fault" to the former president, despite what others in Democratic circles had told him. When Hasan pressed him on what, specifically, Harris had done wrong, Biden declined to elaborate. "That's between me and her," he told Hasan.
The interview marks the latest and most pointed salvo from Hunter Biden, who has made a string of media appearances in recent months. His willingness to go on the record against Harris, the party's most recent presidential nominee and a possible 2028 contender, lays bare a rift inside the Democratic coalition that its leaders have tried to paper over since Joe Biden's exit from the 2024 race.
Hasan put the question directly: wasn't Hunter Biden "throwing her under the bus"? Biden laughed. "Oh, boy," he said. Then he offered a carefully worded answer that stopped short of specifics but left no ambiguity about the verdict.
"Let me just state it exactly clearly. I think that she was loyal to my father, and I don't think that she was loyal to a fault, however."
He said unnamed "people" would tell him Harris "was so loyal to your dad." His reply to them, he said, was blunt: "Well, maybe from your perspective, but maybe not from mine."
When Hasan asked the obvious follow-up, "How is she not loyal to your dad?", Biden shut the door. He said the matter was private, then added that he "ain't running for anything" and can "say whatever the f*** I want."
It was not the first time he had taken aim at Harris. In a podcast appearance last month on "Amped Up," Hunter Biden questioned why Harris would distance herself from the Biden administration's record. "I don't see how she possibly thinks that distancing herself from Joe Biden is even possible," he said. "And why would you, if you really believed in the record that you had left?"
The friction between the Biden family and Harris has a clear paper trail. Harris's campaign memoir, 107 Days, described Joe Biden's decision to seek reelection as "recklessness" and accused Biden staffers of "adding fuel" to negative stories about her. Hunter Biden called those passages "personally painful" during a separate three-hour interview.
Harris also wrote that Biden called her just before her debate against Donald Trump and made it "all about himself." "I just couldn't understand why he would call me, right now, and make it all about himself," Harris wrote. For a family already stung by the manner of Biden's departure from the race, the memoir read less like a political accounting and more like a public rebuke.
Harris has continued to distance herself from Biden's record in other ways. At a Nashville conference, she named her picks for America's most effective presidents, and left Joe Biden off the list entirely.
Joe Biden stepped aside from the 2024 presidential race after a debate performance against Trump that prompted calls from Democratic lawmakers, donors, and prominent figures, including actor George Clooney and former President Barack Obama, for him to withdraw. Harris replaced him at the top of the ticket.
The circumstances of that exit remain a sore point. Jill Biden has since revealed in her own memoir tour that she feared Joe Biden was having a stroke during the June 2024 debate, a stark contrast to her public statement at the time that "he did great." As Just The News reported, Jill Biden told CBS she "was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never. I don't know what happened. As I watched, I thought, oh my God, he's having a stroke." After the debate, the Bidens went to a Waffle House, not a hospital.
That pattern, privately alarmed, publicly reassuring, has fueled the sense among Biden loyalists that the people closest to the former president failed him when it mattered most. Hunter Biden's public grievance against Harris fits squarely in that narrative.
Hunter Biden has also been candid about his father's current health struggles. He has disclosed that Joe Biden's prostate cancer has spread to his bones, adding a personal dimension to his recent media visibility.
Hunter Biden's willingness to speak publicly about internal Democratic disputes is not new behavior. A recent book about the 2024 campaign revealed that he played a far larger role inside his father's White House than the public was told. The Washington Examiner reported that Hunter Biden secretly joined a White House video call discussing the president's response to the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, shocking senior staff who had no idea he was on the line.
White House counsel Ed Siskel told colleagues afterward that Hunter Biden's presence was "inappropriate." Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Dawsey, a co-author of the book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, described Hunter as "a major figure in the president's orbit" who "would pipe in to calls" and was "helping him make campaign decisions."
That level of involvement makes Hunter Biden's public commentary about Harris something more than family grievance. He was not a bystander watching from the sidelines. He was, by multiple accounts, in the room, or at least on the call.
A former Jill Biden press secretary has already said she does not believe Harris can win in 2028, a view that aligns with Hunter Biden's own assessment of Harris's political skills.
Hunter Biden's broadside lands at a difficult moment for Harris. Some Democrats have described her as a liability in the 2026 midterms, even as others, including Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who faces reelection, have expressed gratitude for her support. Harris has revamped her social media presence to advocate for Democratic causes and mock the Trump White House, but the party remains divided over whether she helps or hurts.
Hunter Biden acknowledged that Harris could have "a deep, rich future in politics" and might run for president again. But he was clear about where he thought she'd land: "not the frontrunner." And then the gut punch: "She's not a very good politician."
Harris has not responded publicly to Hunter Biden's comments. Several questions remain unanswered, chief among them, what specific acts of disloyalty Hunter Biden believes Harris committed, and whether the Biden family's grievances will harden into an organized effort to block her path in 2028.
When the people who shared a White House with you start telling the press you weren't loyal and can't win, the problem isn't the messenger, it's the record they're describing.
