A 2020 clip of President Joe Biden speaking on the phone because he will “always answer a call from [his] grandchildren” has resurfaced amid accusations of “callously scarring” Hunter Biden’s four-year-old daughter Navy Joan.
A New York Times op-ed published Saturday slammed Biden for not publicly acknowledging his seventh grandchild, who is the daughter of former dancer Lunden Alexis Roberts and Hunter Biden, confirmed by DNA test in 2019.
The recent round of criticism Biden is facing over Navy Joan comes in the wake of Hunter Biden reaching a settlement in an Arkansas court with Roberts in late June over child support payments. As part of the settlement, Roberts dropped her demand that Navy Joan take the Biden family name.
“What the Navy story reveals is how dated and inauthentic the 80-year-old president’s view of family is,” wrote columnist Maureen Dowd. “Once you could get away with using terms like ‘out of wedlock’ and pretend that children born outside marriage didn’t exist or were somehow shameful. But now we have become vastly more accepting of nontraditional families.”
And a resurfaced 2020 clip of Biden purporting to talk to his grandchildren on the phone is infuriating Twitter, with many users referencing the president’s snubbing of Navy Joan.
“Offer not valid in the state of Arkansas,” commented one user in response to Biden’s assertion that he would “always answer a call” from his grandchildren.
“Well, six of them anyway,” said another.
Despite the ardent criticism, it doesn’t appear that the president is planning to acknowledge his seventh grandchild.
Asked last week if Biden recognizes “this little girl as his granddaughter,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had a one-line response: “I don’t have anything to share from here.”
