Hunter Biden identifies two biggest mistakes of Joe Biden’s presidency, admits one decision left his father ‘crushed’

Hunter Biden recently spoke about the worst moments of his father’s time as president. He pointed to two specific failures that he called disastrous. The first was the 2024 debate against President Donald Trump, and the second was how American troops left Afghanistan. The 55-year-old gave an honest interview where he discussed both the good and bad parts of his father’s presidency.

According to The Sun, Hunter made it clear that the Afghanistan withdrawal still affects his father deeply. “I think the failure, one of the failures was the way in which they executed the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Hunter said in the interview.  “I think it was an obvious f***ing failure.” While Hunter believes leaving Afghanistan was the right decision, he thinks “there was a better way to do it.”

The chaotic exit led to the Abbey Gate terrorist attack in August 2021. This attack killed 13 American soldiers and more than 170 Afghan people. Hunter said that even though people might want to blame the generals or other officials, his father knows the responsibility falls on him as president.

The Afghanistan exit haunts the former president to this day

Hunter explained that his father is still deeply hurt by what happened during the withdrawal. He said Joe Biden is “crushed by it, just absolutely crushed” because of the lives lost that day. The emotional weight of those deaths continues to affect the former president even now.

However, Hunter strongly believes that ending the 20-year war was necessary. He talked about the “twenty years of blood” and eight trillion dollars spent in Afghanistan. He called the region a “killing ground for empires” and said there was a constant push to keep spending money and lives on the war. So leaving was right, but the execution was the biggest mistake.

The other major failure Hunter mentioned was the 2024 debate against President Trump. He called it a complete disaster. During the debate, Joe Biden struggled with his words and mixed up facts while answering questions. This was particularly damaging since he was trying to win a second term as president. Some political observers have since defended Biden’s overall presidential record despite this moment.

Hunter said his father managed to finish the debate, but the poor performance confirmed every negative opinion people had about him. The debate basically ended his chances of winning re-election. Both Democrats and Republicans immediately started asking him to drop out of the race.

Despite these failures, Hunter insisted his father’s presidency was very successful overall. He said no other candidate challenged Joe Biden in the primaries because he had led such a successful presidency. 

But about three weeks after that debate, Joe Biden was replaced by Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate. One bad debate performance ended up overshadowing everything else. Notably, when Biden’s term ended, Trump did not attend his inauguration, breaking with presidential tradition.