Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York magazine, has Hunter Biden’s laptop in her office—well, sort of. It’s a copy of what some Republican operatives say was once Hunter Biden’s laptop, which seemed to contain a whole lot of selfies, some homemade pornography, and email messages hinting at cozy relationships between him and businesspeople from China and Ukraine. If you don’t read the tabloids or watch Fox News, this laptop may have fallen off your radar, even though its emails burst onto the scene in October 2020—just before the presidential election. They suggested Joe Biden’s son was profiting off the family name, developing close ties to business people abroad and even introducing them to his father. The New York Post was the first journalistic outfit to get its hands on this correspondence, allegedly buried on Hunter’s computer; it had come to the paper from the Trump campaign. Though the story never took off in the mainstream media, this laptop has become iconic anyway, even inspiring Breitbart to make a film. On Tuesday’s episode of What Next, I spoke with Nuzzi about why more reporters aren’t talking about the laptop, how it became a lightning rod for the right, and why Democrats need to reckon with that. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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