Love is love is love is love is love. For Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden, this is especially true even when it blossoms in the most unexpected of places — between the widow of his oldest son, Hallie, and his youngest son, Hunter.
Except now, the couple is reportedly donesville. Maybe that’s a soothing piece of news for Biden’s candidacy — one less completely weird piece of baggage to explain.
When the news of their relationship first emerged in March 2017, a little less than two years after Beau Biden died of brain cancer, Joe and Jill issued a strange-sounding statement in which they gave the budding couple with fairytale first names their blessings. They were glad they’d found each other.
Found each other? It was hardly a world-wide search for love. They kept things within the family. You know, sort of Flowers in the Attic style with a twist. (Biden Family Drama Has Everything: Sex, Hookers, Debt, And A Son Sleeping With His Dead Bro’s Wife)
Hallie and Hunter aren’t siblings. But they were, for 22 years, a forbidden relationship within the fam. That is how long Hunter was married to Kathleen in this episode of After the Final Rose when they separated.
But bad news — or good news, depending how you look at this weird coupling — Hunter and Hallie are dumpster fire. Their relationship is reportedly over.
Love and politics tend to be rocky. Few presidential families float without a scandal or four hiding in the woodworks. So, Biden is in good company.
Former California Democratic Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently showed up to California’s Pepperdine University for the college graduation of his son, Joseph, who is the spitting image of him and the family’s former housekeeper. The truth surfaced during a therapy session in which Arnold spilled the news to Maria that he’d had a son with their housekeeper, Mildred Baena. At the time, the son was 14. Shortly after that session, Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver divorced in 2011.
Or take Donald Trump Jr.‘s 13-year marriage to Vanessa Trump, whose split seemed highly amicable. Five children later, the pair, by all appearances, had made peace. This made public relations a breeze when Don Jr. got grief for his new relationship with then-Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle that reportedly began shortly after Vanessa filed for divorce in March 2018. It was Vanessa who shut the love haters down.
When a New York Daily New columnist attacked Guilfoyle for dating Don Jr. and working at Fox News, Vanessa kindly tweeted, “The lengths people will go to attack a woman simply because she’s dating Don. We’ve been separated for over 9 months and respect each other’s decisions & privacy. We’ll focus on raising our great kids. Would be nice if the press did the same rather than obsess over our [private] lives!”
Before Don Jr. came calling, Guilfoyle‘s fleeting relationship with ex-White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci seemed fun, but it went nowhere, except for Rome. (RELATED: Scaramucci and Guilfoyle Together In Rome)
At nine-months pregnant, Scaraucci’s wife, Deirdre, filed for divorce and gave birth to a boy in 2017 while Mooch was out campaigning for then-candidate Donald Trump. Her main reason: Scaramucci had taken a job with Trump without consulting his wife. The couple appeared on Dr. Phil in 2018. Yada Yada Yada … Scaramucci is back with his wife and they’ve got an adorable podcast called Mooch and the Mrs. With Anthony and Deirdre Scaramucci.
DonFoyle, meanwhile, is stronger than ever. In April, they hit their one-year mark. They recently went house hunting for a gorgeous $4.5 million, seven-bedroom home in the Hamptons. To top off all this happiness, Guilfoyle just landed a high-powered job as a senior adviser with her boyfriend’s fathers’ reelection effort.
Relationships in politics are as normal as they can possibly be.
They come. They go. They come back.
And sometimes they happen in the weirdest places.