{"id":584062,"date":"2023-07-23T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/republicans-up-the-personal-attacks-on-biden-and-his-family\/"},"modified":"2023-07-23T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T10:00:00","slug":"republicans-up-the-personal-attacks-on-biden-and-his-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/republicans-up-the-personal-attacks-on-biden-and-his-family\/","title":{"rendered":"#Republicans up the personal attacks on Biden and his family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Joe Biden\u2019s family story has long been one of his greatest strengths politically. Republicans are starting to think they can turn it into a liability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has had no shortage of issues on which he\u2019s attacked Biden \u2014 immigration, the military or \u201cwoke\u201d policies. But speaking to a group of Republicans about parental rights in Tennessee last weekend, he made it more personal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you spend some time with your granddaughter in Arkansas, or at least recognize her existence before you start worrying about our kids?\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n

He also tweeted a jab<\/a> at Biden on the issue on Friday.<\/p>\n

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley floated this attack on Thursday as well when she talked about her call for mental competency tests of presidents and quipped<\/a> that they should include a question about \u201chow many grandchildren you have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 2024 presidential candidates were referencing the child fathered by the president\u2019s son, Hunter, and a woman named Lunden Roberts<\/a>. Hunter Biden, who has described his relationship with Roberts as a fling while he was battling addiction, recently settled a much-publicized paternity case with Roberts in an Arkansas court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in recent comments, the president didn\u2019t count the child among his grandchildren \u2014 making him the target of criticism<\/a> and the subject of ongoing conservative news<\/a> coverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NBC News reached out to the White House, Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee. All declined to comment for this piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The attacks on the Bidens over their family are not new. Just this week, Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene held up nude photos of Hunter Biden during a House Oversight Committee hearing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That they have now boiled over to the presidential campaign trail and focused on this young girl and her role in the Biden family underscores how Republicans are leaning into a deeply personal issue for the president \u2014 and that it isn\u2019t going away. Republicans say it reveals the president\u2019s true colors and exposes the hypocrisy of a president who has made family a central tenet of his political persona.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt runs counter to the narrative that he tries to create. He talks about being such a great family man, how he calls all of his grandchildren, how he loves his family, how he\u2019s a devout Catholic,\u201d former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in an interview. \u201cAnd yet, this doesn\u2019t portend. And the thing that\u2019s weird about it is there\u2019s nothing to be ashamed of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter Biden initially denied he was the father of the child, but in court filings, Roberts said a paternity test \u201cestablished with scientific certainty\u201d that he was. Hunter Biden recently settled\u00a0the paternity case with Roberts, who withdrew a request that her daughter take the Biden name. The settlement includes child support, a college fund and an undisclosed number of Hunter Biden\u2019s paintings, which have drawn scrutiny because they fetched up to $500,000 apiece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The president himself often speaks of his grandchildren publicly and has said he talks of his close relationship to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have six grandchildren and I\u2019m crazy about them,\u201d Biden said<\/a> at a Take Your Child to Work Day event at the White House in April. \u201cI speak to them every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the president should acknowledge the grandchild has also been the subject of conservative talk shows and news panels<\/a>. Last week, Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity dispatched a reporter<\/a> to Batesville, Ark., whose whole report involved asking people on the street how they felt about Biden\u2019s granddaughter and the president \u201crefusing to acknowledge her existence.\u201d In another report, Fox News cameras staked out the entrance to the U.S. Capitol\u00a0and asked members of Congress whether the president should publicly count the girl among his grandchildren.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A front-page, deeply reported story in The New York Times<\/a> about the granddaughter followed by a column penned by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd entitled, \u201cIt\u2019s Seven Grandkids, Mr. President<\/a>,\u201d reinvigorated the conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president\u2019s cold shoulder \u2014 and heart \u2014 is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it\u2019s out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead,\u201d wrote Dowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Dowd\u2019s column helped offer Republicans a \u201croadmap\u201d on how to attack the president over the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obviously low-hanging fruit for Republicans to reference as they question the authenticity of Biden\u2019s messaging,\u201d Bonjean said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Republican National Committee has hit the president repeatedly on the issue, including over social media<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBiden\u2019s refusal to recognize his own granddaughter is abhorrent and heartbreaking. Biden has no empathy,\u201d RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel tweeted <\/a>on July 9th.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The group said that wasn\u2019t about to stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery lie Biden tells, whether that he only has six grandchildren or that his Afghanistan withdrawal was a success, will haunt his campaign,\u201d RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said in a statement. \u201cRepublicans in Congress and on the campaign trail will continue to hold this failing and dishonest president accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s even as the bulk of the party has offered a muted response to GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump\u2019s many legal troubles, including having been found liable for sexual abuse, and criminally indicted twice with a third case looming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really difficult for them to defend. There are lots of pots calling the kettle black here when it comes to having problems,\u201d Bonjean added. \u201cBut I think this is all about Republican primary voters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not all Republicans are on board. Conservative Ann Coulter wrote on Substack<\/a>: \u201cthe idea that a crack-fueled roll in the hay entitles the mother to be treated like an honored member of the family is absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Focus group guru Frank Luntz, a Republican, cast the criticism as a personalization of politics with which he couldn\u2019t get on board. He\u2019s heard nothing from voters in his focus groups about the criticism facing the president over the issue of his grandchild.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one cares,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And a piece on The New Republic, a liberal publication, castigated the press<\/a>, arguing Republicans would never be held to the same standard: \u201cThat is today\u2019s real media bias. It\u2019s a bias of expectations, and it always mitigates in favor of the people of whom nothing is expected in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans have lost many of their core attacks against Biden as president. So it means that they need politically to develop more attacks on him as a person, as a father, or grandfather, because the attacks on him as president are becoming less effective,\u201d longtime Democratic operative Simon Rosenberg said. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised to see greater investment or some of this ongoing obsessive investment of the Republicans trying to take him down as a man and as a dad and as a grandfather because it\u2019s basically all they have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rosenberg added, \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be enough.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n