Hunter Biden criticized key elements of his father’s presidency in a new interview, faulting the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and acknowledging failures on immigration policy, breaking from the family’s typically unified public defense of Joe Biden’s record.

Appearing Monday on The Shawn Ryan Show, the former first son said his father did an “exceedingly well” job overall as president but conceded there were “real failures,” singling out the chaotic 2021 pullout from Afghanistan as the most glaring.

“I think one of the failures was the way in which they executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Hunter Biden said, calling the operation an “obvious failure.” He pointed to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and said the exit could and should have been handled differently. “I think there was a better way to do it,” he said.

The Biden administration’s withdrawal culminated in a deadly ISIS-K suicide bombing outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport as U.S. forces scrambled to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies. A subsequent 2022 Defense Department report found that the Taliban seized more than $7 billion worth of U.S. military equipment left behind after American forces departed.

Hunter Biden said his father understood the gravity of the moment and accepted responsibility for the outcome. While he acknowledged that President Biden could have blamed military leadership, he said the former president knew “the buck stops with him” and accepted that the operation was a failure.

At the same time, Hunter Biden defended the decision to leave Afghanistan after two decades of war. “I think leaving Afghanistan was the right thing to do,” he said, adding that his father believed 20 years of conflict was enough and no longer served the interests of U.S. troops or the country.

The former first son also addressed immigration, criticizing what he described as lax enforcement that coincided with a surge in unauthorized immigration. The undocumented immigrant population in the United States reached an estimated record high of 14 million in 2023, during the Biden administration.

“We need vibrant immigration,” Hunter Biden said, “but we don’t want immigrants coming here illegally, draining resources, and being prioritized above people who are actual heroes”—including veterans still recovering from years of war.

He noted the Biden administration had reached a bipartisan agreement with Republicans on a sweeping border bill, only for it to collapse amid election-year politics. Donald Trump intervened ahead of the 2024 election, warning Republican lawmakers he would support primary challenges against those who backed the deal.

Republicans, however, argued the legislation amounted to an election-year maneuver to address an issue Democrats had long neglected, and the bill ultimately failed to advance.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)