It Is Utterly Bizarre That the Biden White House Won’t Acknowledge One of the President’s Granddaughters

Last weekend, the New York Times reported that neither Hunter nor Joe Biden had ever met the former’s daughter with Lunden Roberts, a former assistant of the younger Biden, though the child “speaks about both” of them “often.”

It was also revealed that in the Biden White House, aides are “told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren,” excluding the child in question, who lives in Arkansas with Roberts.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal‘s Catherine Lucey asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “Does the president acknowledge this little girl as his granddaughter?”

“I don’t have anything to share from here,” replied Jean-Pierre.

WSJ’s @Catherine_Lucey: “There was a story in the NYT over the weekend about Hunter Biden’s daughter in Arkansas. Does the President acknowledge this little girl as his granddaughter?”

KJP: “I don’t have anything to share from here.” pic.twitter.com/ck8PuaOBht

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 5, 2023

It was a baffling, incomprehensible, and utterly insufficient answer that fails on a human level — as well as from a cold, professional communications point of view.

Under no circumstances is it normal for the president to have never met his granddaughter. That is a story of some significance, and if you doubt it, ask yourself if you would think otherwise if Eric Trump had a daughter that neither he nor former president Donald Trump had ever met, and who White House staff were implicitly told not to acknowledge.

Then imagine that Kayleigh McEnany had declined to put a rest to the story by inexplicably refusing to give the easy answer to Lucey’s simple question: “Of course the president acknowledges and loves his granddaughter very much.”

If Biden had a strict policy of never discussing his family with the press, perhaps Jean-Pierre’s dodge would be fathomable, but as the Times put it: “His public image is centered around his devotion to his family.”

A month before his son admitted to having committed federal tax and gun crimes, the president insisted he had done “nothing wrong.” And on the very day Hunter agreed to his plea deal with the Department of Justice, the president professed to be “very proud” of him.

In fact, Biden also boasts about his relationship with his other six grandchildren, mistakenly claiming to having only six whom he speaks with “every single day.” So Biden has no official policy precluding him from acknowledging his granddaughter.

The child’s heritage is not disputed, either. Roberts filed a lawsuit in 2019 after Hunter Biden stopped responding to her messages and a subsequent DNA test confirmed the child to be his shortly after Biden took the new mother and newborn off of his health insurance. So this is not a case of the president simply distancing himself from a situation in which all of the relevant facts are yet to be established.

In sum, then, Biden has habitually misstated the number of grandchildren to exclude a 4-year-old he hasn’t met while projecting a reputation as a family man.

Families — famous or not — suffer from all sorts of complicated dynamics deserving of empathy rather than scorn. But all that is being asked of the president of the United States is that he correct his provably false statements about his family and acknowledge the life of his granddaughter.

Those in the media asking for as much aren’t the cruel ones.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.