Conservatives and family-first voters say president should go public, others call it a 'private matter,' poll shows
- US public polled about the seventh Biden grandchild for the first time
- Parents and conservatives say Navy Joan Roberts' bloodline should be known
- The four-year-old currently gets no perks from being in the Biden fold
US voters are split over whether President Joe Biden should publicly acknowledge his granddaughter, bringing his son Hunter's four-year-old lovechild into the fold of America's First Family, a poll shows.
Conservatives, parents, Republicans, and religious Americans say the president should go public about Navy Joan Roberts — the granddaughter he and his wayward son have never met.
But the US public is divided over the sensitive issue. Many others, including Democrats, liberals, and those without children, call it a 'private family matter' that the Bidens must manage for themselves.
The TIPP Poll of nearly 1,500 Americans was carried out after Hunter's court appearance this month in Independence County, Arkansas, over how much child support the First Son should pay.
Hunter, 53, wants to reduce his monthly $20,000 payments to Navy Joan's mother Lunden Roberts, 32, claiming he is poorer now than when the deal was struck and that he can no longer afford such hefty sums.
Both parents will sit for depositions in June ahead of a July trial to reach a new arrangement.
For some Americans, this is the right time for President Biden to acknowledge the existence of the biological granddaughter he has never met and never mentions, despite fawning over his other grandkids.
The survey shows that half of Americans believe this is a 'family matter,' while 40 percent say the president should come clean about the lovechild in Alabama. Another 10 percent say they're not sure.
But attitudes are partisan. Nearly two thirds of conservatives say Biden should acknowledge the child's bloodline. So do half of the country's Protestants, as well as those who are parents themselves.
Conversely, liberals by wide margins say it's a family issue for the Bidens. Democrats, the non-religious, and people without any children were more inclined to say it's a private matter.
President Biden often talks adoringly of his 'six grandchildren' and brings them along for events and speeches — but critics say he omits all mention of his seventh grandchild, Navy Joan.
The cherubic, blonde-haired girl was born in August 2018, but remained a secret until Roberts sued Hunter for child support in her native Arkansas 10 months later.
She is the fourth of Hunter's five children, but neither he, nor his parents Joe and Jill Biden, have ever met the child or publicly acknowledged her existence.
She gets none of the perks, nor the round-the-clock Secret Service protection, enjoyed by the rest of the Biden brood.
The long-running paternity suit between the president's son and Roberts seemed to have been resolved in 2019 when a DNA test proved Hunter had fathered Navy Joan and agreed to a reported $2.5 million settlement.
But the recovering drug addict reopened the case in September by claiming he had suffered 'a substantial material change' in his income and couldn't afford the payments.
Roberts refused to budge and raised the stakes by petitioning the court to officially rename her daughter Navy Joan Biden to 'benefit from carrying the Biden Family name.'
Hunter called that move 'political warfare.'
Roberts also served the First Son with a discovery request covering everything from his shady business dealings in Ukraine and China to the names of the mystery art lovers who paid huge sums for his amateur abstract paintings.
After Hunter blew through multiple deadlines to turn over those documents, Judge Holly Meyer ordered him to appear at Independence County Circuit Court in person for the May 1 contempt hearing.
At the hearing, Roberts accused the Biden scion of hiding assets and posing as a 'destitute' artist in the latest court filing. She says he has plenty of cash to make child support payments.
The feisty single mom, who studied crime scene investigation at George Washington University, noted that he can afford to pay a team of super lawyers up to $855 each per hour across his various lawsuits and congressional probes.
Roberts has retained Garrett Ziegler — a former Trump administration staffer and longtime Hunter nemesis who produced a 644-page analysis on the contents of his notorious abandoned laptop — as an expert witness.
In his own filings, Hunter has opposed Navy Joan becoming a Biden, insisting he wants a 'peaceful existence' for her, free of the political scrutiny associated with his family dynasty.
Hunter fathered a son he named Beau after his late brother with his new wife Melissa Cohen just 17 months after Navy was born.
It was initially reported that Hunter met Roberts while she worked as a stripper at a DC club that Hunter frequented.
But texts retrieved from his abandoned laptop proved that she was in fact on the payroll at Rosemont Seneca, Hunter's Washington, DC investment firm.
Hunter has never seen Navy Joan and could not pick her out of a photo lineup, according to court filings.
She and Hunter conceived Navy Joan around December 2017 while he was still in a relationship with his brother Beau's widow, Hallie.
Hunter claimed in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, that he went on such a 'rampage' in the wake of his 2017 divorce from Kathleen Buhle that he couldn't remember the names of the women he bedded.
'It's why I would later challenge in court the woman from Arkansas who had a baby in 2018 and claimed the child was mine – I had no recollection of our encounter. That's how little connection I had with anyone,' he wrote.
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