And finally US President Joe Biden has persuaded himself to speak publicly about his seventh grandchild, the little Navy Joan Roberts, the secret daughter of Hunter Biden who for a long time refused to recognize her and to whom the head of the White House had never mentioned. Navy Joan Roberts, a beautiful 4-year-old blonde girl, is the seventh and so far least known granddaughter of the President of the United States, who broke her silence for the first time today, in the face of growing criticism from Republicans who they reproached for not having dared to recognize her.
The baby is the daughter of the president’s most troublesome scion, Hunter, and Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman Hunter met during his years battling a drug addiction. So far neither the president nor Hunter Biden had spoken publicly about the Navy, although it is known that the president is very close to his other six grandchildren (to the point of having gone so far as to say that he is “crazy” about them). But on Friday, the president sent a memo to People magazine in which he admitted for the first time that the girl existed.
“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother Lunden are working together to foster a relationship that is in her daughter’s best interests while preserving her privacy as much as possible into the future,” Biden said. “It’s not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” she added, alluding to the criticisms of the Republicans. “Jill and I only want what’s best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.” However, Biden did not say whether she intends to welcome her nephew to the White House or meet her in person one day.
For months, the president has faced growing criticism that he ignores the child, a choice that starkly contrasts with his image as a kindly politician and ‘grandfather-in-chief’. “I have six grandchildren,” he said at a White House event in April, “I’m crazy about them and I talk to them every single day.” Two days ago, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is also a candidate for the Republican nomination, publicly denounced the fact that Biden “doesn’t talk about his niece in Arkansas or even admit that he exists”. The media close to the Republicans went so far as to call the president a hypocrite» and even the more progressive press stressed that the president had never spoken of the little girl. The fact is that Lunden and Hunter faced off in court over Navy’s paternity; in 2019 a judge ruled, despite Hunter denying it, that his baby was his, which was confirmed by a DNA test. Hunter at first even denied ever knowing Lunden, a former stripper. But she also engaged in a battle to give the Biden name to the little girl, that name that she – she says – “now is synonymous with being well educated, successful, financially gifted and politically powerful”. Finally, in January 2020, Hunter Biden agreed to pay the woman support retroactively until November 2018, but the case was not resolved until the past few weeks, as Lunden had accused his former partner of ignoring the court orders and only last month the two reached an agreement, with the payment of an amount to the woman whose amount has not been made public.
Hunter Biden has four other children: Naomi, 29; Finnegan, 23; and Maisy, 22, the fruit of his marriage to his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, and another son, Beau Jr, who is only three, with his current partner, the South African environmental activist, Melissa Cohen. The president has two other grandchildren, Natalie, 18, and Robert ‘Hunter’ Biden II, 17, the second son of his son Beau, who died in 2015, struck down by a tumor, and his partner, Hallie. Joe Biden has a very close relationship with his grandchildren, so much so that the eldest of them, Naomi, got married in the White House in November 2022.
According to the New York Times, Navy knows that his father is Hunter Biden and that his paternal grandfather is the president of the United States, he often talks about it, even if at least until July 1 of this year he had never met him. However, from his father, who has a passion for painting, he owns some paintings, the result of the judicial agreement reached last month by his parents. Now she Navy will be officially considered Joe Biden’s seventh granddaughter.