A New York Times piece earlier in July took a deep dive into the Biden family’s abandonment of Hunter Biden’s four-year-old daughter, Navy Joan Roberts. The piece attempts to rehabilitate the Biden family’s image in spite of their shocking callousness. But in taking the rare, deeply personal glimpse into the sordid details of public figure’s life, we are forced to call the Biden family’s treatment of this little girl exactly what it is: an act of evil.
In today’s fast-paced news cycle, it may be tempting to write this story off as just another trumped-up political scandal crafted to grab headlines. Alternatively, one might view it as an exhausting function of tabloid culture. After all, Hunter Biden really is more a celebrity than a political figure. Yet viewing it either of these ways discounts its evil. (RELATED: The Prodigal Son (An Ode To Hunter Biden)
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Political scandals grab headlines because they typically spark outrage in one way or another. Often, they deal with bad behavior that is merely embarrassing or politically inconvenient. Real harm seldom occurs.
The same can be said for celebrity scandals. Affairs and divorces, secrets and lies are all too common in our celebrity-obsessed culture. Yet here too, the harm is shallow, fleeting and often designed to stoke publicity. Every celebrity scandal has an army of PR consultants fomenting outrage behind the scenes.
Alternatively, policies and ideologies can often draw outrage, as well. Both can be said to produce evil outcomes. Democrats’ border policy, for example, is driven by an open-borders ideology that leads them to ignore the very real harm of drug and human trafficking it incentivizes. Yet most politicians believe they put forward a policy in good faith. Democrats presumably think they are giving unfortunate souls a shot at a better life.
The abandonment of little Navy goes well beyond any of these scenarios. It is rare to see a celebrity or political figure do such unscripted and tangible harm to someone so vulnerable. It is not an unintended consequence but a deeply immoral act in itself. By any reasonable standard, the familial and human cost of such an act ought to transcend political concerns. But the Bidens are willing to go to great lengths to avoid the perceived political liability.
The Times details how, despite carrying on a relationship with Navy’s mother, Lunden Roberts, Hunter stopped responding to her messages when he found out she was pregnant. After Navy was born, he removed both of them from his health insurance. Walking away is bad enough, but taking active steps to diminish the physical well-being of your newborn child is hard to fathom.
That is what prompted the girl’s family to take legal action against Hunter. As a result, the Bidens won’t even acknowledge her existence. Ms. Roberts claimed Hunter “could not identify the child out of a photo line up.” Joe and Jill Biden publicly acknowledge only six grandchildren, and no one in the Biden family has ever met the girl. (RELATED: It Only Took The Media 1,326 Days To Acknowledge President Joe Biden’s Granddaughter)
A new settlement has now led to a reduction in Hunter’s child support payments, from $20,000 a month to an amount lower than originally ordered by the court. Navy will receive some of Hunter’s high-priced artwork as part of the settlement. Yet since the inflated price of the art is very likely to be part of a money laundering scheme, according to House Republicans, it is unlikely the Roberts family will receive much money from selling them.
Yet Hunter still attempts to rationalize his behavior, saying he fathered her at a “low point in his life.” That may be true, but it is no excuse.
Ask anyone with children, and they will tell you: When you become a parent, your life is no longer about yourself — it is about your children. Your trials and tribulations exist only as a function of your child’s well-being. Whatever demons Hunter was battling, he had a moral obligation to subordinate them to support his newborn daughter.
Instead, he chose to inflict a legacy of shame and trauma before she was even old enough to understand why. From the moment she was born, he ensured her life will be defined by grappling with why her rich, famous, and powerful family disavowed her with the entire world watching.
The Times, of course, chose to embrace willful blindness. It created a false moral equivalence between Hunter and Ms. Roberts. The photos she posted of Navy were “exploitative” and “being weaponized against the Biden family.”
Hunter, on the other hand, is “privileged and troubled.” His addiction “spiraled out of control” but he’s “taken responsibility for” it. Joe and Jill were praised for remaining “staunchly supportive” of Hunter and for “center[ing] their family lives around their grandchildren.”
As the Times’ own reporting shows, nothing could be farther from the truth. Hunter is certainly most at fault, but Joe, too, has a responsibility to show his “troubled” son the way a real man — a real father — should act. Instead, they all chose the coward’s way out, confident that no sin is too grave to cause the corporate media’s allegiance to waver.