Archives for posts with tag: Tweet

Speaking about Presidential staffers, from Joe Biden’s hires, do Sam Brinton & Dr. Rachel Levine ‘dress appropriately’? The female attorney here in question, Alina Habba, addressed questions following Donald Trump’s 3rd Indictment, in front of a mostly “hostile” and extremely biased media group, last week as a consummate professional and – in spite of Mr. Mitchell’s rather ignorant insinuations – handled herself AT LEAST as well as any male attorney could’ve done in the same situation.

Out of ALL my Criticisms against President Biden, THIS is perhaps by far, the MOST PATHETIC !!! The little girl in this Tweet is Biden’s illegitimate & biological granddaughter (via, Crackhead son, Hunter), Navy Joan Roberts . President Biden refuses to acknowledge this girl’s existence & refuses to put up a Christmas Stocking for her on the White House Fireplace, along with the other grandchildren – even Biden’s two White House dogs have their own Christmas stockings up on the Fireplace. And even when the girl’s mom tried to push in Court to have her daughter’s last name changed to “Biden”, Hunter pushed to block it. When he publicly makes the statement that America’s kids are ALL our kids, why doesn’t Dementia Joe set the “example” here & fully embrace this girl, Navy, as his “legitimate” granddaughter?

Hunter Biden’s Daughter and a Tale of Two Families

The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who has not yet met her father or her grandfather, is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.

By Katie Rogers

Katie Rogers reported from Batesville, Ark.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Washington.

July 1, 2023

There is a 4-year-old girl in rural Arkansas who is learning to ride a camouflage-patterned four-wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days, she wears a bow in her hair, and on other days, she threads her long blond ponytail through the back of a baseball cap. When she is old enough, she will learn to hunt, just like her mother did when she was young.

The girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden and that her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them. Her maternal grandfather, Rob Roberts, described her as whip-smart and funny.

“I may not be the POTUS,” Mr. Roberts said in a text message, using an acronym for the president, but he said he would do anything for his granddaughter. He said she “needs for nothing and never will.”

The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who is not named in court papers, is a tale of two families, one of them powerful, one of them not. But at its core, the story is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.

Her parents ended a yearslong court battle over child support on Thursday, agreeing that Mr. Biden, who has embarked on a second career as a painter whose pieces have been offered for as much as $500,000 each, would turn over a number of his paintings to his daughter in addition to providing a monthly support payment. The little girl will select the paintings from Mr. Biden, according to court documents.

“We worked it out amongst ourselves,” Lunden Roberts, the girl’s mother, said in an interview with The New York Times. “It was settled” in a discussion with Mr. Biden, she said.

Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Ms. Roberts said she dropped a request to have the girl’s last name changed from Roberts to Biden. (Mr. Biden had fought against giving their daughter the Biden surname.) Ms. Roberts would only say that the decision to drop the request was mutual. “We both want what is best for our daughter, and that is our only focus,” she said.

Though a trial planned for mid-July has been averted, people on both sides fear that the political toxicity surrounding the case will remain. Already, it has been extensively covered in conservative media, from Breitbart to Fox News, and conservative commentators assailed the Biden family after news of the settlement.

Both Hunter Biden, the privileged and troubled son of a president, and Ms. Roberts, the daughter of a rural gun maker, have allies whose actions have made the situation more politicized. There is no evidence the White House is involved in those actions.

Clint Lancaster, Ms. Roberts’s attorney, has represented the Trump campaign. He also called Garrett Ziegler, an activist and former Trump White House aide who has cataloged and published messages from a cache of Hunter Biden’s files that appear to have come from a laptop he left at a repair shop, to serve as an expert witness in the child support case. In the other corner, allies of Democratic groups dedicated to helping the Biden family have disseminated information about Mr. Ziegler and the Roberts family, seeking to highlight their Trump ties.

And then there is President Biden.

His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.

The Biden Presidency

Several of the president’s allies fear that the case could damage his re-election prospects by bringing more attention to a son whom some Democrats see as a liability. Others say the far right has focused on Hunter Biden, a private citizen, but ignored any moral and ethical failings of the former president, Donald J. Trump.

“He’s under more indictments than two Super Bowl teams’ worth of players,” the author and political strategist Stuart Stevens, who left the Republican Party in 2016, said of Mr. Trump. “But that doesn’t matter: You have Hunter Biden. It’s just anger in search of an argument.”

‘People Have an Image of Me’

Lunden Roberts, 32, comes from a clan as tight-knit as the Bidens. Her father is a red-state gun manufacturer whose hunting buddies have included Donald Trump Jr., and who taught her at a young age how to hunt turkeys and alligators. She works for the family business, which sits on a winding country road dotted with pastures on the outskirts of Batesville.

The pride of her family, the 5-foot-8 Ms. Roberts graduated with honors from Southside High School in Batesville and played basketball for Arkansas State University, where a team biography said she enjoyed hunting and skeet shooting. After graduating, she moved to Washington to study forensic investigation at George Washington University. She never completed the program. Photos from that time show her attending baseball games at Nationals Park and attending Drake and Kanye West concerts.

Along the way, she met the son of a future president who was sliding into addiction and visiting Washington strip clubs.

In mid-2018, Ms. Roberts was working as a personal assistant to Mr. Biden, according to a person close to her and messages from a cache of Mr. Biden’s files. Their daughter was born later that year, but by then, Mr. Biden had stopped responding to Ms. Roberts’s messages, including one informing him of the child’s birth date. Shortly after their daughter was born in November 2018, he removed Ms. Roberts and the child from his health insurance, which led Ms. Roberts to contact Mr. Lancaster.

She filed a lawsuit in May 2019, and DNA testing that year established that Mr. Biden was the father of the child. In a motion for custody filing in December 2019, Ms. Roberts said that he had never met their child and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”

Ms. Roberts said in an interview that she had grown used to the onslaught of scrutiny around the case: “I read things about myself that I have no clue about,” she said. But one thing she said she can’t stand is being called a bad mother. “People can call me whatever they want, but they can’t call me that,” she said.

Her public Instagram account tells its own story: “I hope one day when you look back you find yourself proud of who you are, where you come from, and most importantly, who raised you,” she captioned a photo of the two of them at the beach earlier this year. In another photo, shared to her account in April 2022, her daughter wore an Air Force One baseball cap and stood in front of the Jefferson Memorial.

“People have an image of me, but few get the picture,” Ms. Roberts wrote on another photo in July 2022.

Seen through one prism, the photos are a powerful public testament of love from a mother to her daughter. Seen through another, they are exploitative, certainly from the perspective of Biden allies, who fear the images — and the child — are being weaponized against the Biden family.

How Times reporters cover politics. Times journalists may vote, but they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. That includes participating in rallies and donating money to a candidate or cause.

For her part, Ms. Roberts said she did not bring her daughter to Washington to punish the Bidens. She said she brought her to Washington because not many little girls get to say that their grandfather is the president.

“She’s very proud of who her grandfather is and who her dad is,” Ms. Roberts said. “That is something that I would never allow her to think otherwise.”

A Troubled Son

Hunter Biden, 53, is recovering from crack cocaine addiction and is the last surviving son of the president, who lost his eldest, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015. The younger Mr. Biden has five children, and has said that he fathered his fourth at a low point in his life.

“I had no recollection of our encounter,” Mr. Biden wrote in his 2021 memoir. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”

Before Thursday’s settlement, Mr. Biden had paid Ms. Roberts upward of $750,000, according to his attorneys, and had sought to reduce his $20,000-a-month child support payment on the grounds that he did not have the money. The new amount is lower than what had been originally ordered by the court, according to a person familiar with the case.

Trial or no trial, Mr. Biden will remain one of his father’s political vulnerabilities. Since his addiction spiraled out of control and his dealings with foreign governments caught the attention of conservatives, the younger Mr. Biden’s choices have become grist for memes, conservative cable news panels and Republican fund-raising. The most recent round kicked off after he struck a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge.

On top of that, Mr. Biden has been the subject of multiple congressional investigations, and the contents of the laptop he left at a repair shop have been pored over and disseminated by activists, who say his private communications show criminal wrongdoing.

In the White House, matters involving Hunter are so sensitive that only the president’s most senior advisers talk to him about his son, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Through it all, the president has been staunchly supportive. Rather than distance himself, Mr. Biden has included Hunter on official trips, traveled with him aboard Marine One, and ensured that he is on the guest list at state dinners.

“I’m very proud of my son,” the president told reporters recently.

‘Life’s Greatest Blessing’

President Biden has worked over the past half-century to make his last name synonymous with family values and loyalty. The strength of his political persona, which emphasizes decency, family and duty, was enough to defeat Mr. Trump the first time around, and he would need to keep it intact if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.

On a proclamation issued on Father’s Day, Mr. Biden said that his father had “taught me that, above all, family is the beginning, middle and end — a lesson I have passed down to my children and grandchildren.” He added that “family is life’s greatest blessing and responsibility.”

President Biden; Jill Biden, the first lady; and their children and grandchildren watching fireworks from the White House after Mr. Biden’s inauguration in 2021.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Since they entered the White House, President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, have centered their family lives around their grandchildren, and have given them the benefits that come with living in close contact with the White House.

Naomi Biden, 29, is Hunter’s eldest child, from his first marriage, to Kathleen Buhle, which ended in 2017. Ms. Biden was married on the South Lawn of the White House last year in a Ralph Lauren dress that she called the product of her “American(a) dreams.” She and her sisters have taken trips around the world with the president and first lady. Hunter married Melissa Cohen in 2019. His youngest child, who is named for Beau and was born in 2020, is photographed frequently with his grandparents.

In April, President Biden told a group of children that he had “six grandchildren. And I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke.”

But the president has not yet met or publicly mentioned his other grandchild. His White House has not answered questions about whether he will publicly acknowledge her now that the child support case is settled.

Still, Mr. Stevens, the political strategist, said that Mr. Biden’s support of his son, even against an onslaught of Republican criticism and ugly scandals, has only emphasized his unconditional love for his family.

“The net positive of this has gone to Biden, by the way,” Mr. Stevens said of the president. “He stuck by him.”

Political Concerns

Few involved think the particulars of this case, even though it has been settled, will stay at a simmer, especially given its ubiquity in right-wing media.

“In yet another sweetheart deal, Hunter Biden got off easy in his child support case,” wrote the editorial board of The New York Post, which has followed the proceedings closely.

Aside from the news coverage and commentary, allies of the Biden family are privately worried that the involvement of right-wing operatives in the matter has made any engagement harder for the family.

Mr. Ziegler, who was named as an expert witness in the case, had a footnote role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results: In December 2020, Mr. Ziegler escorted Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the attorney Sidney Powell into the Oval Office, where a group discussed with Mr. Trump a plan to seize control of voting machines in key states. Mr. Ziegler’s White House guest privileges were later revoked.

Mr. Ziegler declined to confirm his involvement in the child support case.

Ms. Roberts’s attorney, Mr. Lancaster, also has a background in conservative activism. He is vocal on social media about his support for Mr. Trump, often retweeting criticism from conservative outlets and Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter. He also worked as an attorney for the Trump campaign during an electoral vote recount in Wisconsin after the 2020 election.

On the other side, people affiliated with left-leaning organizations, including Facts First USA, an advocacy group run by David Brock, are wary of what the team surrounding Ms. Roberts may do as the 2024 campaign gets underway.

Members of the group, which operates independently of the White House and has taken a more adversarial approach to critics than the Biden administration does, have circulated a photo of Ms. Roberts’s father posing with Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Roberts said in a text message that he has gone hunting with Mr. Trump but that he did not recall when they had first met.

The Republican pollster Frank Luntz said it was “a waste of time” for activists to focus on attacking the president’s family because voters do not care about Hunter Biden as much as they care about other issues, including Ukraine and inflation.

“You have the responsibility to hold people accountable, but I want to be clear: It will not change a single vote,” he said of Hunter Biden’s legal and personal problems.

If the Roberts family is taking political advice — outside of any that might come from the family attorney — they aren’t saying. In Batesville, the girl’s maternal grandmother, Kimberly Roberts, said in a brief telephone interview that she would not comment on the case.

She did have one thing to say, though.

“My granddaughter is happy, healthy, and very loved,” Ms. Roberts said, before hanging up.

Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting from Washington, and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent, covering life in the Biden administration, Washington culture and domestic policy. She joined The Times in 2014. @katierogers A version of this article appears in print on July 2, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Hunter Biden and the Politics Of Paternity in the Media’s Glare.

It should be noted here too that when the Miami Heat initially had a 3-0 lead in this particular Series, Hall-of-Fame Basketball legend, Earvin “Magic” Johnson posted a Tweet that he had NEVER seen the Boston Celtics simply ‘give up’ like they have thus far in the NBA Eastern Conference championship. Needless to say, Magic Johnson’s comments or Tweets have been ‘nowhere to be found’ since the Celtics managed to tie this Series up with the Heat, to force a deciding Game 7.

Worst Possible Nightmare for Democrats & Joseph Robinette Biden is now coming into Fruition — What was that thing about being an, “Election Denier” after the 2020 Presidential Election?? Something about Donald Trump’s “Big Lie”?? The “TRUTH” always hurts — Doesn’t it?

YouTube blogger Red Eagle Politics weighs-in on this controversy.

So here was my response to the Facebook Fact Checkers:

Yo Facebook Fact Checkers — Martha’s Vineyard IS DEFINITELY part of the State of Massachusetts, which is AT LEAST a part of America as Texas or Arizona are !! Check YOUR Geography books. Within 48 hours of their arrival, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker ordered the Mass. National Guard to Relocate the 50 Illegal Aliens out of Martha’s Vineyard (which as a State governor, Baker is Authorized to do). Which part of Ms. Mastrangelo’s Tweet was “False”??? Why weren’t the 50 Illegal Aliens allowed to “Remain” residing in Martha’s Vineyard ??? Why should the States of Texas, Arizona, and Florida absorb ALL the burden of the millions and millions of Illegal Aliens that have come through our U.S. Southern Border over the past 18 months? So many questions, so few answers, eh, Facebook Fact Checkers ???

OK, so these were common knowledge Facts regarding the United States of America as of January 20, 2021 (the exact same day Joe Biden was inaugurated as President). $64,000 Question: What the BLEEP has happened to our Country since that date???

#2022MidtermElection

#November8,2022

Americans need to reminisce back to those, ‘Good Old Days’

Amen!! How the vast majority of American citizens sorely miss right about now those “mean Tweets at 3 a.m.”, along with them, “$1.43 per gallon of gasoline” — in other words, what were truly, “the Good Old Days”!!! Come the Midterm Election in November, will be Step #1 to send a VERY LOUD MESSAGE to Dementia Joe along with his extremely Socialist Congress on how we plan to fully take back our Country in 2024. I can’t wait!!!!

Apparently, this young girl from Afghanistan feels that Droning Children is the much worse choice between these two.

Here we go again, ladies and gentlemen, those purveyors of “Truth”, a.k.a. Facebook Fact Checkers are still at it, this time in defense of that ‘Mensa Queen’, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who isn’t exactly a stranger to making some rather stupid statements in public.

This time, AOC, posted a Tweet on 5/20/20, urging Governors to maintain restriction on businesses till the Presidential Election on 11/3/20 (almost six months later) to ensure that Donald Trump loses his reelection bid for the Presidency. AOC continues in the Tweet that “a few business closures or job losses is a small price to pay to be free from his (Trump’s) presidency.”

AOC deleted that Tweet soon afterwards probably at the suggestion of several allies and colleagues telling her how stupid that came across by insinuating that a few businesses dissolving and people losing their jobs was no big deal if it meant Trump would soon become a “private citizen”.

Long story short, when I tried posting the aforementioned Meme on Facebook, its Fact-Checkers chimed in by calling it a, ‘Pants on Fire’ lie. Again, AOC did delete the Tweet, but why doesn’t Facebook give Donald Trump the same type of privileges as AOC — in fact, Trump is banned from posting on Facebook and has been since several months before Election?

So many questions, so few answers.

Multi millionaire Basketball star LeBron James just doesn’t get it!

About a week after a Cop in Columbus Ohio shot and killed a Black teenage girl, who was just about to stab and kill another Black teenage girl, James took it upon himself to copy/paste that Cop’s picture on his own personal Twitter account, which has approximately 50 million followers on it, with a threatening statement of Your Next, Accountability.

$64,000 Question for LeBron: What about the Black girl whose life was SAVED in that incident?

A day or so later, LeBron deleted the Tweet which he Doxed the Police Officer in question claiming he removed it because of all the “Hate” he was facing because of it. But whose fault is it that LeBron James is such an ignorant jerk?