New York Times columnist slams Biden for not recognizing estranged granddaughter

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a scathing opinion article criticizing President Joe Biden for not recognizing his estranged 4-year-old granddaughter, who Hunter Biden fathered with a former stripper while he was spiraling into addiction.

Dowd opened her column Saturday by stating that even her "Republican sister is not immune to Joe Biden’s gregarious Irish charm," but her sister, Peggy, recently wrote a letter to Biden about how he will not recognize his own granddaughter. 

Dowd said her sister wrote to Biden: "I watched as you told the nation that you had six grandchildren and you loved each one of them. I believe that. What I cannot believe and what I find unconscionable is that you refuse to admit or accept the fact that there is a beautiful little 4-year-old girl living in Arkansas by the name of Navy Joan who is your seventh grandchild."

Hunter Biden has said he has "no recollection" of his encounter with Navy's mother, Lunden Roberts, but she was paid by his consulting firm as a personal assistant while she was pregnant. 

Even after a paternity test confirmed Hunter Biden was Navy's father, his attorneys went to Arkansas to cut child support payments and to ensure that she could not use his last name.

"As she grows up, knowing that her father and paternal grandparents wanted nothing to do with her, she will probably be able to see a video or two showing her half sister Naomi getting married on the South Lawn and you watching the fireworks on the balcony with little Beau," Dowd's sister also wrote to Biden in her heartbreaking letter. "And if she misses that, there will be plenty of schoolmates to remind her that she wasn’t wanted. Kids can be mean that way."

She even invoked Biden's 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, who died in a car crash with her mother in 1972, and she urged Biden to not "throw away" his granddaughter now. 

Dowd said she often disagrees with her sister on politics, but the topic of Biden's granddaughter is not a political issue, but a human one. 

"What the Navy story reveals is how dated and inauthentic the 80-year-old president’s view of family is," Dowd also wrote. She said that people in the past could ignore children born outside of marriage, but that is not the case today.

"You can’t punish her for something she had no choice about. The Bidens should embrace the life Hunter brought into the world," she said, concluding: "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."

President Biden has ignored his grandchild for years. For example, Navy's name has been missing from the past two White House Christmas stocking displays, even as the first family includes stockings for their pets. 

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.