For the first time in an interview, Joe Biden acknowledged he has seven grandchildren, including Hunter Biden’s four-year-old daughter Navy.
“I have seven grandkids,” the president said, “five of ’em old enough to talk on the phone, you know, every day I either text or call them.”
The president was speaking to On Purpose with Jay Shetty, a podcast, about the importance of mental health.
Navy Biden is the daughter of Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts, whom Hunter Biden, the president’s surviving and scandal-ridden son, met while struggling with addiction.
In his 2021 memoir about such struggles, Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden wrote that “women I’d been with since my divorce were hardly the dating type. We would satisfy our immediate needs and little else. I’m not proud of it.”
Calling Roberts “the woman from Arkansas who had a baby in 2018 and claimed the child was mine”, he wrote: “I had no recollection of our encounter.”
Roberts sued. In 2019, a DNA test confirmed Hunter Biden’s paternity. As part of a support settlement finalised this year, Hunter Biden will “assign to the child” some of the paintings he now sells, some for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Joe Biden’s failure to publicly count Navy Biden among his grandchildren came to the fore last month, particularly via a column by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.
Under the headline, It’s Seven Grandkids, Mr President, Dowd wrote: “Joe Biden’s mantra has always been that ‘the absolute most important thing is your family’. It is the heart of his political narrative. Empathy, born of family tragedies, has been his stock in trade. Callously scarring Navy’s life, just as it gets started, undercuts that.”
Noting personal and official references to Joe and Jill Biden having six grandchildren, Dowd added: “What the Navy story reveals is how dated and inauthentic the 80-year-old president’s view of family is …
“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.”
Biden recognised Navy for the first time on Friday, saying in a statement he and his wife “only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.
“This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter. 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.”
Biden reportedly wants to meet Navy. When and how is not clear.
The president’s grandchildren range in age from three to 29. Hunter Biden has three adult daughters from his first marriage, to Kathleen Buhle Biden, and two children under five years old. Beau, his son with his second wife, Melissa Cohen, was born in 2020 and named for Hunter’s brother, who died in 2015.
Speaking to Shetty, Biden said he called or texted his grandchildren, “five of ’em old enough to talk on the phone”, every day.
“I just think being there is important and it makes such a difference,” he said. “Knowing that someone’s gonna be there for you. Just to hold you. Just to hug you.
“… Half of it is just showing up. Even people you don’t know that well, but you’ve met – the fact you’d call. And say, I’m thinking of you.
“I’ve learned this from my experience.”
