President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged the daughter his son, Hunter, fathered with a woman from Arkansas.
The president told reporters in April that he has “six grandchildren” he is “crazy about” and speaks to “every single day.” That total included the late Beau Biden’s children, Natalie and Robert “Hunter” Biden, as well as Hunter’s children with ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, Naomi and Finnegan Biden, and Hunter’s toddler son, Beau, with his current wife Melissa Cohen.
The Biden family has steadfastly not acknowledged Hunter’s daughter, Navy Joan, who was born in August 2018 even after a DNA test confirmed his paternity. Hunter and Lunden Alexis Roberts, Navy’s mother, met while she was working as a stripper at the Washington D.C. men’s club The MPire.
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” President Biden said in a statement to People Magazine on July 28.
“This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” he continued. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
After a lengthy legal battle – during which the younger Biden claimed to be unemployed while holding a board position at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma – Hunter agreed to pay 13 months of back child support installments in 2020, per Business Insider.
Most recently, Hunter Biden has fought to prevent Navy from using the Biden last name and asked the court in Arkansas to lower his child support payments due to a change in his financial circumstances. Roberts had said her daughter would benefit from being known as a Biden because the last name is “now synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially acute and politically powerful.”
Hunter counterargued that Roberts was actually interested in waging “political warfare” against his family, per The Independent.
The Biden administration has consistently dodged questions about the young girl. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in May that she would not “speak to” the reason why the president and First Lady never acknowledged Navy.
President Biden’s refusal to acknowledge his youngest granddaughter has been viewed as evidence of his uncaring nature.
“Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that an abortion extremist like President Joe Biden—who has backed legislation that would make abortion legal over all nine months of pregnancy if the mother’s health is at risk—should view a seemingly unplanned child’s life as disposable, as not demanding that he step up as a grandfather,” wrote Katrina Trinko for The Daily Signal.
“While Navy Joan is alive, Biden seems to think that he can just ignore her—and he won’t face any accountability,” she continued. “He won’t face awkward questions about whether he thinks children conceived out of wedlock are less deserving of love. He won’t have to answer as to why he thinks it’s OK that his own granddaughter can be brought to D.C., as she was last year, and not get to meet her grandfather. Infuriatingly, he might be right that he won’t ever be held accountable.”
