A (Psychological) Reaction to the Biden Pardon

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson takes an in-depth look at the presidential pardon for Hunter Biden issued by his father. He presents the psychology and pathology associated with narcissism, addiction, infantilization, enablement, and an unyielding ability to lie, all of which have mixed perfectly to forever tarnish the Biden legacy and upend the current iteration of the Democratic Party. The only question left unanswered: Will they learn? This episode was filmed on December 5th, 2024 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jordan B. Peterson?

  So I thought I'd take a crack at assessing the psychological significance of Joe Biden's pardon of his son Hunter.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  He said I'd abide by the jury decision, and I will do that, and I will not pardon him.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  And have you ruled out a pardon for your son?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:15Speaker 03

  Is there any possibility that the president would end up pardoning his son?

• 0:19Speaker 04

  Our answer stands, which is no. No. It is a no, and I don't have anything else to add. Will he pardon his son? No.

• 0:36Jordan B. Peterson?

  Part of the reason I'm doing this, you see, is because there's been a variety of claims justifying the pardon emerge in the aftermath of its manifestation, including the claims that Joe only did what any loving father would do. And the, I think, less egregious claim that while other presidents have done things that were equally bad or worse. It's the former one that particularly, I find particularly appalling and telling. And so I think I can explain why. So we're going to walk through the pardon, and then I'll make comments where I think that would be helpful and appropriate.

• 1:19Jordan B. Peterson?

  Today I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. Okay, well, there's obviously a problem there because that's a conflict of interest that could hardly be clearer. And so the moral improprieties, and therefore the psychological improprieties, make themselves known in the opening of the written statement itself. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making. That's half-truth at best.

• 1:54Jordan B. Peterson?

  It is the case that President Biden did say he wouldn't interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making, but he said much more than that. He said he would not pardon his son. And he said that repeatedly, and so did his press secretary. And so, although it may be technically true that he's not interfering with the Justice Department's decision-making, it's completely inappropriate of him to extract out a moral stance from the fact that he's keeping his word in the most minor way and breaking it in the most major way. Because he is pardoning his son, and he said repeatedly that he wouldn't do that. The pardon is bad enough, and we'll

• 2:34Jordan B. Peterson?

  get to that, but the pardon in the face of the repeated denials that that pardon would be forthcoming, in combination with the fact that the Biden administration, including the press secretary and the Democrats in general, made a case for the outstanding moral quality of Joe Biden, who insisted even under substantive familial distress, that he wouldn't give in to these emotionally challenging, admittedly emotionally challenging, family circumstances, and use his privilege as the nation's top executive. That's just, all of that's just too much to take. The pardon's bad enough, but the pardon in the aftermath of the lies

• 3:15Jordan B. Peterson?

  about the fact that the pardon would not be forthcoming, and the moral grandstanding that was accrued to the Democrats and to Biden in consequence of that grandstanding, that just makes this, as far as I'm concerned, unforgivable. And we haven't even got to the psychological element yet. And I kept my word. Yeah, no, you didn't. Even as I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted. Okay, now this gets a little closer to the psychological issue at hand. You see, the Biden narrative has been that, the Biden narrative is poor Hunter. Poor, unfairly treated, misunderstood, desperately

• 3:58Jordan B. Peterson?

  trying, failing heroically Hunter. Now, I took a good look at the laptop, and I read Miranda Devine's work on Hunter and Joe, and here's what I have to say as a psychologist.

• 4:13Jordan B. Peterson?

  Joe and Jill have enabled their son's pathology. And they've capitalized on that enabling politically by presenting their son as a heroic victim, which is something the Democrats are very apt to do to everyone, including the criminal types, who are akin in many ways to Hunter. And so, they're replicating in their family what the Democrats do politically. And the consequences for their family are akin to the social consequence of the Democrats' insistence that criminals are victims. Now, some criminals, sometimes, are victims in a way that might

• 4:58Jordan B. Peterson?

  motivate someone who was attempting to be both just and merciful to moderate, let's say, their attitude with regards to a given crime. But even if that is true in some cases, as it is, there are a variety of criminal types. The repeat offenders, the psychopaths, in whose existence the hyper-empathic Democrats refuse to even admit to they're not victims, they're perpetrators, and they use claims of victims, they use claims of victimhood to victimize. That is what psychopaths do. That is what narcissists do. Every clinical psychologist worth his or her salt knows that. Every criminologist knows that.

• 5:42Jordan B. Peterson?

  And when you turn a perpetrator, especially a repeat perpetrator, or a repeat sadistic Machiavellian manipulative perpetrator into a victim, you're nothing but an ally or pawn of the perpetrators. And if that's your social policy, as it is in the case of the Democrats, who have no imagination whatsoever for evil, then all you do is amplify the consequences of criminality. Now, what happens if you do that within your own family? If you constantly make excuses for the criminal misbehavior of your children? Well, you might say, "Well, everyone would make excuses for their son if he was engaging in criminal conduct."

• 6:26Jordan B. Peterson?

  And the proper response to that is, "That's a complete bloody lie." And it's a deceptive and destructive lie.

• 6:35Jordan B. Peterson?

  Look, there are a subset of children who at the age of 2 are tilted in a criminal direction. Now, everyone's temperament predisposes them to their own particular temptations. So if you're high in neuroticism, that's negative emotion, and you're dependent, you're unlikely to be criminal, but you're quite likely to develop depression or pathological anxiety or dependent personality disorder. If you're a more aggressive person, so lower in agreeableness, for example, you might be very competitive and you might be very... What would you say? You might be useful if your aggression is socialized

• 7:18Jordan B. Peterson?

  so that you strive forward with your anger in a positive direction, like you might if you were a very good team player, for example, in a sports situation. But that innate aggressiveness, if unsocialized, can lead in a criminal direction. Now, I'm not saying that this necessarily happened in the case of Hunter, because I don't know what Hunter was like when he was a little kid. But I do know that there are little kids who have the precursors to criminal tendencies and the parents that bring them under control and socialize them properly don't make excuses for their aggression or enable it. What they do instead is encourage their children to interact in a pro-social direction

• 8:02Jordan B. Peterson?

  and limit them selectively and stringently in the manifestation of their aggression. So if you have a 2-year-old boy, because it's almost always boys, it's about 5% of boys, by the way, who in the presence of other 2-year-olds would kick, bite, hit, and steal, which is a pretty good definition of childhood criminality, then you remove the rewarding consequences of that behavior. And you often do that by careful punishment of various sorts. Certainly not by reward. You don't reward it. You don't feel sorry for it. You don't enable it. You don't justify it. And you certainly don't proclaim that your bratty 2-year-old, who's aggressive and pushy,

• 8:46Jordan B. Peterson?

  is a victim who should be...

• 8:51Jordan B. Peterson?

  Pited because of his pathological behavior and that you are a kind of hero for feeling sorry for being empathic toward the behavior on the part of your child that will do nothing but make his life a misery over the long run and do the same to others. Now, I read the Biden laptop book, Miranda Devine's book, Laptop from Hell, and the Bidens have been making excuses for Hunter of the sort that a relatively unsophisticated dependency enabling parent could make with some justification the first time their 14-year-old son committed

• 9:34Jordan B. Peterson?

  a juvenile offense. But the manner in which they discuss Hunter's transgressions, or Hunter as a person, is reminiscent of exactly the language that you might use for a 14-year-old juvenile delinquent. And the problem with that is, I don't know if you've noticed, but he's not 14. He's 50. And whatever excuses might have been made for his behavior when he was a juvenile delinquent, they're completely off the table at 25, let alone 50. The Bidens portray Hunter as a victim of addiction and his criminal actions as a consequence

• 10:14Jordan B. Peterson?

  of that victim-producing addiction. He's not a victim. And addiction's no excuse for criminality. And making excuses for your son, "I have watched my son being selectively and unfairly prosecuted," making excuses for your son when he's acting at 50 like a very badly behaved juvenile, isn't an indication of your admirable empathy as a parent. It's an indication of your codependency, to use a relatively cliched term, and your pattern

• 10:58Jordan B. Peterson?

  of pathological enabling of your son. Now, here's a hypothesis, and I'm not saying this is right. One of the things that really struck me about the Biden laptop story was that... In the Biden family, Beau had always been put forward as the golden boy, who was destined for glorious things such as the presidency. Whereas Hunter was always mopping up the lavatory, so to speak. He was the, he was the black sheep of the family,

• 11:27Jordan B. Peterson?

  from which little was expected, let's say. And, you know, if you end up playing that role, it's like you're the criminal shadow of your father. If you end up playing that role, I'll tell you what that's gonna do. That's gonna make you unbelievably angry. It's gonna produce a kind of hatred of your parents, however unconscious, that's deep beyond belief. And maybe that accounts for why Hunter dropped off three water-damaged laptops. How do you water damage three laptops? A week before his father announced that he would run for the presidency, well knowing comprehensively

• 12:10Jordan B. Peterson?

  just exactly what kind of horror show, multi-dimensional horror show, was available for view on those laptops. Now, you know, as a psychoanalytically-minded psychologist, I can't help but see motivation there. There's a psychoanalytic dictum, which is, if you don't understand the motivation, look at the outcome. Okay, so why would Hunter drop off three laptops full of compromising information to a repair clinic a week before his father ran for presidency? Okay, what was the consequence? The emergence of a massive scandal surrounding Joe Biden. What was the motivation? How about that? Okay, and you think, well, you know,

• 12:54Jordan B. Peterson?

  Dr. Peterson, you're reading too much into it. No one would possibly act like that. And first of all, if you think no one would possibly act like that, you know nothing, that's for sure. And you certainly don't know anything about malevolence or psychopathology. And then we could add another interesting detail to that, that I think lends credence to my hypothesis, which is that it was very shortly after Beau Biden died.

• 13:19Jordan B. Peterson?

  So the golden boy disappeared from the scene and there was no one left but the bagman. That Hunter had an affair with his brother's widow, despite the fact that they both had children. Then enticed her into a co-op addiction. Then filmed them having sex and then uploaded the video to [BLEEP] Hub with the title Lonely Widow. Now, you see, both of those patterns of action are, you might regard as circumstantial evidence, but they're strong circumstantial evidence pointing in the same direction, which was revenge, revenge, revenge.

• 13:59Jordan B. Peterson?

  And my reading is it's Hunter was taking his revenge, maybe with his entire style of life, on the enabling idiocy of his parents. Something which they have yet again engaged in. And now so all the many Democrats have come out and said, "Well, any father would have done what Joe did." And that's not true. It's simply not true. At some point, if you're dealing with not only someone who's addicted in a manner that's tilting them very hard in at least quasi-criminal directions. So consorting with strippers and hookers and so forth, and spending way too much money in every possible mafia-like manner,

• 14:42Jordan B. Peterson?

  as well as tangling himself up, becoming tangled up in all sorts of nefarious and quasi-nefarious business affairs. Your obligation as a parent is to stop making excuses and put up some bloody boundaries. And yet again, Joe failed in that. And the Democrats who've come to his support, have come to his side, proclaiming his virtues as a loving parent, have enabling and love seriously confused, which is actually a pathological element of the Democrat political platform. They do exactly the same thing with so-called trans children,

• 15:26Jordan B. Peterson?

  confusing their empathy for those children and the...

• 15:30Jordan B. Peterson?

  Moral capital they can generate by proclaiming that empathy with care for those children, which if actual care was being manifested, the care would be, don't let 12 and 13 year olds make decisions about their bodies, their sexual function, their reproductive capacity, and their long-term marriage and partnership, when they're too young to be legally allowed to make any important decisions whatsoever. That's not love, it's not empathy, it's not admirable, it's enabling. And it's precisely the kind of enabling that people do when they have no imagination whatsoever for evil. And that means that they're naive cowards.

• 16:14Jordan B. Peterson?

  And it's certainly the case that what Joe and Jill Biden manifested in the case of this pardon was the continuance of a pattern of

• 16:25Jordan B. Peterson?

  unforgivable enabling of their quite seriously gone astray son. And they do treat him like a kid. He's not a kid, he's a 50-year-old man. And what he does is not excusable. He passed the line from victim to perpetrator long ago.

• 16:47Jordan B. Peterson?

  Now, was he selectively and unfairly prosecuted? Yeah, I don't think so.

• 16:53Jordan B. Peterson?

  The penalties such as they were that were levied against Hunter were not particularly egregious. And he was found guilty in the course of a perfectly credible legal investigation, as the people involved in the investigation have insisted in the aftermath of the pardon. I don't think that he was selectively and unfairly prosecuted at all. I think that Hunter and Joe, maybe the whole Biden family, were unfairly and selectively shielded from prosecution despite the remarkable magnitude of their continued multi-decade transgressions. And I would say the fact of this pardon, which is blanket, which covers crimes that may have been committed

• 17:37Jordan B. Peterson?

  and for an 11-year period, is very strong evidence.

• 17:42Jordan B. Peterson?

  in favor of that hypothesis. So then there's some boilerplate excuses without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser. People are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Um, yeah, that's minimization of the magnitude of offense of exactly the sort that you would expect from precisely the sort of people who enable their children's pathological criminal behavior while claiming to be moral while doing so. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, ah, the thing about

• 18:25Jordan B. Peterson?

  that is that as far as I have been able to determine, Hunter was not in the throes of addiction when he was late paying his taxes. And late only means that he decided to pay them after he got caught for not paying them. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, let's note, under duress, are typically given noncriminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently. Yeah, it's not so clear. And it's easy to make an argument as credible that Hunter was let off very lightly with

• 19:06Jordan B. Peterson?

  nothing more than a rap on the knuckles, as it was that he was prosecuted meanly by people who didn't understand the depth of Hunter's victimization and his heroic attempts to straighten himself out. The charges in his cases came about only after several of my, that's Joe Biden's, political opponents in Congress, instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Yeah, no, I don't think so. I think that the charges in his case arose after the Biden laptop scandal emerged, after it was attributed falsely by the FBI and 50 major members of the intelligence community,

• 19:49Jordan B. Peterson?

  falsely attributed and consciously so, knowing it wasn't false in a long-term campaign as Russian disinformation, even though that was a complete lie. This was after the New York Post was kicked off Twitter for reporting what was strictly the truth. And after evidence had mounted substantively that Hunter was a distasteful character, to say the least, and that there were all sorts of shady things going on on the Biden family front with regards to the business dealings that Joe should have never allowed Hunter to be involved in, given Joe's knowledge of his

• 20:30Jordan B. Peterson?

  addictive propensity and his tilt towards at least quasi criminal behavior. So, no, that doesn't fly either. And I would say that letting Hunter off the hook by saying that my poor son, who isn't poor, and who's not really even a son anymore, in that he's not a child, he's an adult and should be treated as an equal, to attribute that prosecution to the malign intent of Joe Biden's political opponents, while refusing to take any responsibility as a father for the behavior and the enabling of that behavior

• 21:09Jordan B. Peterson?

  by his son, points to precisely the pathology in the Biden family that generated the and abetted the misbehavior of Hunter in the first place. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the courtroom. Yeah, well, that's lie, that's lie by omission of detail, I would say. With a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, which it didn't, by the way, and there's no evidence that there was any impropriety in that, apart from the fact that it didn't turn out the way the Bidens would have wished it to, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter's cases.

• 21:52Jordan B. Peterson?

  Well, that isn't what the people who were involved concluded. No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion. Then Hunter was signaled out only because he is my son. Um, yeah, no. I mean, I don't see how any reasonable person could review the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop and conclude anything other than, um...

• 22:21Jordan B. Peterson?

  Then there was something seriously rotten in the state of Denmark, so to speak. I mean, that bloody laptop reads like a mafia crime movie. It's really ugly, and it's ugly in a low-rent, pathetic, cringing, victim-claiming, despicable, hooker-toying-with, cocaine-snorting sort of manner that has nothing whatsoever heroic about it, and nothing that speaks of anything approximating victimization. Quite the contrary. So, I would say, any reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases would reach the conclusion that there were plenty of reasons to single Hunter out.

• 23:03Jordan B. Peterson?

  And the fact that he was Biden's son mitigated strongly against the detrimental consequences that he should have reasonably faced, not least on the reputational front. The fact that the bloody story was suppressed, and the New York Post seriously punished for daring to put the facts forward, and then that it was blamed on the Russians, means that it isn't reasonable people who look at the facts of Hunter's cases and conclude that, "Poor Hunter Biden, poor Hunter, poor Hunter Biden was signaled out because he was Joe Biden's son." Yeah, no. And then, here we get to the real meat of the matter, as far as I'm concerned, from a psychological perspective.

• 23:45Jordan B. Peterson?

  There has been an effort to break Hunter. Well, first of all, I don't think anybody's particularly interested in breaking Hunter. And if anybody has broken Hunter, it was Hunter, and it was his parents, who has been five-and-a-half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. Well, what's the subtext there? Well, any person radically less heroic and admirable than Hunter certainly would have succumbed to addiction and criminality of the most...

• 24:23Jordan B. Peterson?

  Second-rate and low-rent type because they were unrelentingly attacked and selectively prosecuted. I don't know, Hunter was doing pretty well, living the high life with millions of dollars in high-flying apartments and hotel rooms for a very long period of time. And as I said, he's not 16, or 18, or even 25, or even 30. He's actually a relatively old man, you know? And he should be able to tolerate a little bit of unrelenting attack and selective prosecution because that's part of life.

• 25:02Jordan B. Peterson?

  And so, the idea that there has been some kind of conspiracy to break poor Hunter, who's been doing nothing but striving mightily to put his life together in the face of insuperable obstacle, is the kind of sob story that the Democrats love to, what would you say? Love to worship, let's say, and that the Bidens have been making political capital of for decades. And the thing that appalls me as a clinical psychologist is, this is what they've done. They have sacrificed their son to their own moral pretensions. And now they've done it on a national scale and as publicly as possible.

• 25:45Jordan B. Peterson?

  I think that Joe Biden and Jill hurt their son more desperately with this latest knife in the heart than they have with anything else they've done in their entire life. And that's really saying something. If Joe loved his son, he would have shut the hell up about what happened to him on the legal front, and he would have let him take his medicine. And he would have stood by him and encouraged him when he was attempting to do the right thing in the midst of his despair, and he would have let him take his bloody medicine. Because that's actually what you do with someone you love. You don't make pathetic excuses for them. And the reason you don't is because you care for them.

• 26:30Jordan B. Peterson?

  And you care for who they should be. And so, this whole idea that any father would have done that? Nope, wrong. No good father would have done what Joe did with Hunter. And certainly not This final travesty. I'm telling you, everything I know as a clinic psychologist tells me deeply, that's why I'm making this video, that Joe did something last week to make his son hate him even more than he already does. And all that's going on underneath the surface. And it breaks out in Hunter's affair with his brother's widow.

• 27:12Jordan B. Peterson?

  And it breaks out in Hunter's release of the laptops just before his father's presidency. And in all the misbehavior that Hunter has made manifest and documented and recorded and stored on his computer, which is not what a wise person would do if they weren't trying to cause a lot of trouble for everyone around them while they're engaging in their low-rent quasi-criminal behavior.

• 27:38Jordan B. Peterson?

  And trying to break Hunter, more whining, more victim claiming. And if you can't see the pattern of Democrat policy in that, you're not looking. In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me. God, what a way to end the pardon. That's so pathetic. It's so self-serving and self-congratulatory and victim proclaiming. All with this insistence that underneath that I'm bravely, what would you say? I'm bravely striving forward along with my son, arm in arm, in the face of these pathological attacks on the integrity of our admittedly imperfect family. Yeah, no, no, absolutely not.

• 28:24Jordan B. Peterson?

  You know, I think pity is the wrong emotion to feel with regard to Hunter because at some point you cross the line from victim to perpetrator. He crossed that long ago, but I gotta tell you, man, I thank God that I wasn't cursed with the kind of father that Hunter Biden was cursed with. How does he conclude? And there's no reason to believe it will stop here. That's true, Joe. There is no reason to believe it'll stop here because what you've done with your latest act is to continue the patterning of enabling that has encouraged your son to make his most pathological side manifest for the last 30 years of his adult life. And that won't stop because you didn't allow it to stop. And not only that, you

• 29:08Jordan B. Peterson?

  accrued moral capital as a father, loving his son and therefore pardoning him. You accrued moral capital to yourself, as you indicate in that last sentence, by the way, in a manner that's extraordinarily destructive to your son. You know, you think that pity is the right emotion for your intelligent and privileged 50-year-old son. It would have been better if you would have punched him. It would have been better, you know? That would have been a much more compelling demonstration of love. Enough is enough. Yeah, well, that's what you should have bloody well said. Instead of saying that to your son, you said it to the people who were holding him accountable for his actions because you

• 29:52Jordan B. Peterson?

  wouldn't. It should demolish whatever little reputation you have left as the leader of the United States, because it's a hell of a note to go out on. For my entire career, I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. Yeah, right. Like, you said repeatedly, as did your press secretary, that you wouldn't pardon your son. And so, that was a lie. And you did pardon your son, and that's going to hurt your son. And that's the unforgivable part of that. And then, you know, the example that you're giving to the American people, that, well, if you're a loving father, what

• 30:33Jordan B. Peterson?

  you do is you violate the principles that should govern your conduct as the holder of the highest office in the land. And you do that to pretend that you love your son while enabling his participation in an ever-ending sequence of self-destructive behaviors. So...

• 30:53Jordan B. Peterson?

  You haven't followed a simple principle for your entire career. The simple principle of telling people the truth, and you certainly haven't followed that principle with your son. In fact, everything you've done with your son has encouraged the development of the worst in him. And it's no wonder he released those laptops, because you probably deserved it. They'll be fair-minded. I think that's true. In all things considered, the American people as a whole will be fair-minded. But I don't think the conclusion they're going to draw, Mr. Biden, with all due respect, is that what you did was appropriate or loving. It was neither appropriate nor loving. It was unbelievably self-serving.

• 31:37Jordan B. Peterson?

  You sacrificed your son to your own delusions of morality, and you've done that your whole life. And you've done that in part to have a compelling story about the depth of your love that you could tell the American people and yourself. It's quite sickening to be blunt. Here's the truth: I believe in the justice system. Yeah, do you? But as I have wrestled with this, yeah, have you? I also believe raw politics has infected this process. Yeah, that's certainly the case, but not in the way that you're leading the American people to believe. And it led to a miscarriage of justice. Yeah, many, but not the ones you're pointing to. And once I had made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. Yeah, I know, you're just as decisive as hell, aren't you?

• 32:22Jordan B. Peterson?

  When you decide to go back against your word and to stab another knife into the heart of your son. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. Yeah, well, I think I understand it, but I don't think my understanding is the same as yours. So shame on you, Mr. Biden, seriously. And as I said, man, I thank God I didn't have a father like you.