Maureen Dowd wrote a typically snotty column excoriating Joe and Jill Biden for failing to acknowledge their granddaughter, Hunter’s child by a woman with whom he’d had a brief affair four years earlier. It gave the right wingers fodder to proclaim that despite Joe’s reputation as a family man, the Biden Crime Family is cruel to little children and other living things. It seemed obvious that there was more to the story than what we knew which was already complicated.
The first family put out this statement:
President Joe Biden has offered his first statement on 4-year-old grandchild Navy Joan Roberts, the daughter of Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman who filed a paternity suit against the president’s son in May 2019.
“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 provided exclusively to PEOPLE.
Navy, one of the president’s seven grandchildren, has recently been the subject of headlines as Republicans have criticized the president for previously touting his “six grandchildren.”
“This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” President Biden’s statement continues. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”
A source familiar with the situation tells PEOPLE that the recently resolved child support dispute between Hunter and Lunden has dictated how the relationship has played out so far.
“You have to remember there were some fairly contentious legal proceedings between Navy’s parents happening until just a few weeks ago. As grandparents, the Bidens are following Hunter’s lead,” the source says, adding, “They are — and have been — giving Hunter and Lunden the space and time to figure things out.”
They were going through some ongoing legal issues there was some politics involved on the part of the mother’s family in Arkansas. (It’s MAGA, of course, so calling it complicated is an understatement.) Nonetheless it was sad to think that this little girl was being used as a pawn in a political game and not being acknowledged by her powerful paternal grandfather. It seemed obvious to me that he and Jill were following the advice of lawyers and trying to give the parties space to work out their issues without turning it into more of a political football than it already was. As much as the right wingers are trying to make Joe Biden into some vengeful mob kingpen it’s simply not believable that they would disavow a four year old girl out of animus toward her mother and her family.