Global Courant
PHILADELPHIA – Louis Snip admires President Joe Biden. He has a very different opinion about that Grandpa Joe Biden.
Snipe, a Lyft driver who spent years repairing pool tables for his job, credits Biden with that rebuild the economyy and the restoration of the dignity of the White House.
Still, Snipe struggles to settle his support with one of Biden’s family decisions: Biden’s refusal to acknowledge the existence of his four-year-old granddaughter who lives in Arkansas and his son Hunter Bidenconceived out of wedlock.
“If my kids have kids, they’re my kids,” said Snipe, himself a 70-year-old grandfather of five. “I’m surprised — I’ll put it this way,” Snipe said, speaking over a Curtis Mayfield jam on the radio and through a face mask to a passenger in the backseat.
Biden’s image as a family man who values decency and compassion is central to the political identity he has nurtured in public office for five decades. But those virtues have taken a hit, as Biden publicly acknowledges only six grandchildren and fails to mention Hunter Biden’s little girl and 32-year-old Lunden Roberts, whom Hunter met during the height of his well-documented battle with drug addiction.
“If that’s the case, that’s fine, but just admit you have a seventh grandchild,” says Beth Binns, a 78-year-old grandmother of seven and a retired Philadelphia receptionist who votes Republican. “You can’t leave that kid out in the cold. I think it’s a shame. And he calls himself a Christian, a Catholic?’
having Republican candidates attacked the president on the matter, suggesting it shows a lack of empathy.
But even among Democratic supporters in Philadelphia — a city that Biden won with more than 80% of the vote in 2020 and where he kicked off his 2020 campaign — the issue has not gone down well with everyone, especially fellow grandparents who can put themselves in the shoes of the president.
In interviews with about two dozen Philadelphians, most Biden supporters shrugged at Biden’s failure to acknowledge the granddaughter as a “personal decision.” Some were unaware of the situation.
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But other Biden backers said they disagreed with him about his handling of the matter.
“That’s one area where I think I disagree,” said Herron Miller, a 66-year-old grandfather of two who works as a steel technical coordinator at Philly Shipyard, where Biden visited last Friday to tout his efforts to boost domestic production. “I think he should recognize that that’s another granddaughter. But I’m not sure how important that is for national policy.”
President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and Hunter Biden watch the Independence Day fireworks with his son Beau from the Truman Balcony of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 4, 2023.
‘Hypocrite’: Some Biden supporters think he should be open about grandchild
Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts settled a dispute over child support last month, but the issue remains highly sensitive to Biden’s aides and the White House, who have declined to answer questions on the subject.
If you listen to Biden, you wouldn’t know that he has a seventh grandchild.
“I have six grandchildren. And I adore them. And I talk to them every day,” Biden told a group of children on the South Lawn of the White House during “Take Your Child to Work Day” in April.
During the Biden’s first Christmas at the White House, the first pair showed six stockings with their grandchildren’s names, but not the grandchild in Arkansas.
First lady Jill Biden dedicated her 2020 children’s book “Joey: The Story of Joe Biden” to her grandchildren, naming only six of them.
“I have nothing to share here,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this month when asked if Biden recognizes Hunter Biden’s child in Arkansas as the president’s granddaughter.
David Basenow, a 71-year-old former writer and publisher in medicine from Philadelphia, supports Biden but said the president’s reluctance to acknowledge his granddaughter is “a little hypocritical.” He also sees no political disadvantage in recognizing a grandchild that his son had out of wedlock.
“It happens in every family,” Basenow said, “and makes him more like the people who are likely to vote for him … He’s someone who’s not on a pedestal. He’s got issues in his family and they’ve come to terms with it.”
“I have six grandchildren. And I love them. And I speak to them every day,” President Biden told a group of children on the South Lawn of the White House during “Take Your Child to Work Day” in April.
Hunter Biden, 53, met the girl’s mother, Lunden Roberts, when she was working as a dancer at a Washington strip club and he was going through a cycle of destructive behavior fueled by addiction. Their daughter was born in 2018, and Roberts filed a paternity suit against him in Arkansas a year later.
Biden challenged the lawsuit, writing in his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things” that the women he had been with during that period “were hardly the dating type”. Biden said he could not remember meeting Roberts, whom he did not name.
“I had so little connection with anyone,” he wrote. “I was a mess, but a mess that I took responsibility for.”
The child support arrangement kept Biden’s name out
Lunden Roberts could not be reached for comment on this story and her lawyers did not respond to requests to interview her.
A judge in 2020 ruled that Biden was the girl’s biological father after a DNA test, and he agreed to pay child support that would later amount to $20,000 a month, for a total of $750,000. But last September, he asked the court to reduce the amount due to changes in his income.
Roberts filed a motion last December asking the court to change the girl’s last name to Biden, arguing that taking her father’s name would “have a major impact on and preserve her legacy as a member of the Biden family.”
“The name Biden is now synonymous with being educated, successful, financially acute and politically powerful,” Roberts’ attorney wrote in the lawsuit.
Biden fought the name change, with his attorney claiming that Roberts was waging “political warfare against the defendant and his family.”
A trial in the child support case was scheduled for July, but the parties reached a settlement in June, about a week before Biden agreed to plead guilty to two federal counts of tax evasion in Delaware.
As part of the settlement, Biden, who had success selling his artwork, agreed to give his daughter several paintings, and the girl’s mother agreed to withdraw her request that the child be given Biden’s last name.
“We both want the best for our daughter, and that’s our only focus,” Roberts told the New York Times.
Democratic voters not afraid of a morality contest with Trump
Lunden Roberts and her daughter live in Batesville, Arkansas, where she grew up. A star basketball player, the 5-foot-8 Roberts graduated with honors from Southside High School and played a season in Western Illinois before moving to the state of Arkansas. A team ambiography said she also enjoyed hunting and shooting clay pigeons.
Roberts’ Instagram account is filled with photos chronicling her young daughter’s life. In a post posted on July 4, the blonde girl waves a small American flag and is dressed in a white jumpsuit decorated with stars and stripes. In another, the child wears a white baseball-style Air Force One cap while standing on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington. In yet another, the girl stares lovingly at her mother as they pose on a sandy beach.
“I hope that when you look back, you will one day be proud of who you are, where you came from and, most importantly, who raised you,” Roberts wrote in the photo caption.
In her interview with the New York Times, Roberts said she brought her daughter to Washington for a visit because not many little girls can say their grandfather is the president.
“She’s very proud of who her grandfather is and who her father is,” Ms Roberts said. “That’s something I would never let her think otherwise.”
President Joe Biden walks the South Lawn with his grandchildren Natalie Biden (L), Hunter Biden (3R), his wife first lady Jill Biden (2L) and a friend upon returning to the White House in Washington, DC on March 14, 2021.
Republican presidential candidates have stepped up their attacks on Biden’s refusal to recognize his seventh granddaughter and incorporated it into their brutal attack on the Biden family and Hunter Biden in particular.
“Why don’t you spend some time with your granddaughter in Arkansas, or at least recognize her existence before you start worrying about our kids?” So said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this month in Nashville at a dinner hosted by the Republican Party of Tennessee.
But if Republicans want a morality contest with Biden, the president’s supporters say they’re happy with it.
The frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination remains Donald Trump, the twice-imposed, twice-indicted former president who was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in a civil suit brought by author E. Jean Carroll.
“Trump has been guilty of everything possible,” said Rich Henry, an 80-year-old former music teacher in Philadelphia and grandfather of five. “It’s a problem, yes,” Henry said of Biden’s seventh grandchild as he watched a chess match outside Philadelphia City Hall, “but it’s a personal problem.”
Linda Katz, a retired grandmother of two who previously ran a children’s literacy nonprofit in Philadelphia, called Biden “the best president of my life.”
Katz called voters to volunteer for Biden’s 2020 campaign — and the controversy over Biden’s granddaughter won’t stop her from helping out in 2024.
“I think he’s in a difficult position. He has to respect his son,” Katz said, pointing to the brothers of former presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon who brought controversies to their administrations. ‘I mean, it happens. It’s personal. And I’m sure he treats it with compassion and grace as always.”
Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison and Collins @mcollinsNEWS.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden supporters grapple with refusal to acknowledge granddaughter
