New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd blasted Joe Biden in a weekend column published Saturday about the shunning of his granddaughter Navy Joan Roberts, the daughter of First Son Hunter born in 2018 after an affair with Lunden Roberts. Dowd accuses Biden of “callously scarring Navy’s life, just as it gets started,” concluding with: “The president’s cold shoulder — and heart — is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it’s out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead.”
Dowd based her column on a letter her Biden-voting Republican sister Peggy recently wrote to Joe Biden.
The D.C. press corps has protected Joe Biden for years since it became apparent that he was snubbing his granddaughter despite his campaigning as a family man beloved by his “six grandchildren.” Even when Jill Biden hung Christmas stockings for only six grandchildren at the White House two years in a row, reporters were largely silent.
White House photo, November 29, 2021.
Dowd’s column comes days after the Times in a news report reported that Biden staffers are under instructions to publicly acknowledge Biden having only six grandchildren, not seven.
Then there is President Biden. His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.
Lunden and Navy Joan Roberts:
Excerpts from Dowd’s column (alternate “Gift link“):
Even my Republican sister is not immune to Joe Biden’s gregarious Irish charm.
She met him at media holiday parties over the years and was so impressed that she got seduced to the other side for a time, voting for the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and writing in Biden’s name for president in 2012. She sent out a Christmas card one year with a picture of herself cheek to cheek with Biden — and some of her Republican friends stopped speaking to her.
So I was surprised recently when I discovered my sister writing a letter to President Biden, a plea that she had started in the middle of the night, after mulling over the matter for quite a while.
“I watched as you told the nation that you had six grandchildren and you loved each one of them,” she wrote. “I believe that. What I cannot believe and what I find unconscionable is that you refuse to admit or accept the fact that there is a beautiful little 4-year-old girl living in Arkansas by the name of Navy Joan who is your seventh grandchild.”
Peggy wrote about Hunter’s high-priced lawyers going down to Arkansas to make sure Navy could not use the Biden name and to slash child support payments.
“She has the Biden blood running through her veins, and all she is going to have as a reminder of this are some of Hunter’s original paintings; sounds like a lousy trade-off, if you ask me,” Peggy wrote, referring to the agreement that assigned some of Hunter’s artwork to the daughter he has never met, even though DNA testing in 2019 established his paternity.
…“As she grows up, knowing that her father and paternal grandparents wanted nothing to do with her,” Peggy wrote, “she will probably be able to see a video or two showing her half sister Naomi getting married on the South Lawn and you watching the fireworks on the balcony with little Beau. And if she misses that, there will be plenty of schoolmates to remind her that she wasn’t wanted. Kids can be mean that way.”
Video of Joe and Jill Biden watching 4th of July fireworks at the White House last week with their two children Hunter and Ashley and their two young grandchildren–but not Navy Joan.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ducked a question about Navy Joan: