During a debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump invited as guests women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. These sorts of family-focused attacks aren’t necessarily a surprise to Democrats. Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, tweeted last month that Biden’s failure to recognize his grandchild was “abhorrent and heartbreaking.’ In a podcast interview with Jay Shetty that aired Monday, the president said that his own father had an expression: “Family is the beginning, middle and end.” In the same interview, he mentioned his “seven grandkids” - and said that he routinely talks or text with the older ones. Instead, a White House aide referred to Friday’s statement and called the issue a “private, family matter.” NBC News spoke to a representative for Hunter Biden and reached out to an attorney for Lunden Roberts, who did not respond.įamily looms large in Biden political lore. The White House declined to comment on any of the family developments, including whether Biden wants to meet his granddaughter in person. It’s why I would later challenge in court the woman from Arkansas who had a baby in 2018 and claimed the child was mine - I had no recollection of our encounter.” We would satisfy our immediate needs and little else. Hunter Biden wrote dismissively of Roberts in “Beautiful Things," his memoir : “The other women I’d been with during rampages since my divorce were hardly the dating type. (He has three adult daughters with his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle.) Hunter Biden has so far not publicly disclosed if he has met his youngest daughter. Would it take place at the White House and would the child's mother and father both be present? In June, Hunter Biden and Roberts both offered sworn depositions in the long-running child support case and afterward met privately, agreeing to move forward with a speedy resolution to avoid any further entanglement of their child in politics, according to two people familiar with the matter. Still to be worked out are the logistics of a potential visit. More than three years after a DNA test confirmed the girl’s Biden bloodline, the president issued the simple, definitive statement that he had been withholding until that point: “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”īiden’s belated affirmation that he has seven grandchildren - not six, as he had been saying in public appearances - hardly puts the matter to rest. White House aides put together a statement that sat for days, the people familiar with the matter said, and was released Friday, in the wake of a court filing detailing some of the terms of the settlement between Hunter and the mother, Lunden Roberts. Dowd, a journalist he has known for more than 30 years, wrote that “the president can’t defend Hunter on all his other messes and draw the line at accepting one little girl.” A July 8 column by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times weighed on him, a person familiar with his response said. Yet Biden faced criticism from other quarters that got his attention. With the dispute reaching a settlement, the president wanted to speak out and his son agreed he should do so, a source said, in part because, he told his father, it would help negate a Republican line of attack. In doing so, they could chip away at a central part of his narrative as he runs for re-election.īiden largely followed his son's guidance in keeping quiet as the legal case unfolded, sources familiar with the matter said. Republicans have shown that they plan to target Biden's messy situation, betting the saga will engender so much distaste in voters that it will sully his image as someone who rededicated himself to family after losing his first wife and a young daughter in a car accident a half century ago. Politically, however, it also serves to blunt a GOP line of attack. Publicly claiming Navy Joan as a member of his family may offer Biden a measure of peace. A president who has wrapped himself in family throughout his career is now, in an improbable twist, having to explain why he publicly ghosted a young girl who is as much his grandchild as any of the others whose high school graduation s he attends or who playfully call him " Pop." Now, the president wants to meet little Navy Joan Roberts of Arkansas and dispel the notion that he was ignoring a vulnerable member of the Biden family tree that is at the root of his political identity, according to the people familiar with the matter.įamily dramas typically play out in private - though rarely when the nation's first family is involved.
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