10 July—So Hunter Biden was doing his late brother Beau’s widow, Hallie, after getting himself sprung from whatever recovery facility he had been visiting. When the ill-advised liaison (ill-advised for Hallie, who should have known better, anyway) ended, the prodigal asshole accused Hallie of being detrimental to his mental health (such as it may have been) and wanted her to get tested for HIV. That was about a month before he begat Navy, a little girl, with Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas State University grad and former stripper on his payroll at the time, as a personal assistant.

Hunter naturally denied the child’s paternity and consequent child support befitting the granddaughter of a sitting president until genetic testing proved he really was little Navy’s daddy. There was a little kerfuffle about Navy being Biden or Roberts; she’ll keep her mommy’s surname. The rest of the reprehensibly succulent details don’t really matter, but rest assured that the whole thing is the stuff soap operas are made of.

What does matter is that President Joe Biden, America’s self-proclaimed devoted family man and exemplary old granddad, who boasts that he contacts every one of his grandchildren “every single day” face to face, or by phone or text, is nevertheless refusing to even acknowledge his wayward son’s innocent daughter. And Joe’s White House lackeys keep up the pretense. And their jobs.

Conservative tabloids claim the West Wing lackeys have been instructed to refer to Joe’s six grandchildren (out of seven)—only the ones conceived within wedlock. It’s as if Navy doesn’t exist. Certainly a father should stick up for his children—within reasonable limits. But denying the existence of a grandchild is not within reasonable limits. So we’ll see how long that shameful, hypocritical, politically inept pretense lasts.

The conservative media are naturally having oodles of fun with this latest little Biden family scandal. It draws attention from the former scumbag-in-chief, after all. But we know the facts are there because even The New York Times and Washington Post have reported them, however reluctantly, and with not nearly as much relish as, say, The New York Post.

Hunter Biden, who had been paying $20,000 monthly child support to Lunden for Navy (despite having lied to the court about his assets, according to conservative sources), was able to renegotiate the deal. (Who didn’t gasp at that figure, by the way?) So now he’ll be giving his daughter less cash but will augment the reduced cash with his paintings.

Because Hunter, it seems, has taken up painting in a big (i.e., commercially viable) way and his paintings go for really big bucks. Like well into six figures. I won’t comment on the quality of Hunter Biden’s art, because it’s irrelevant, it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of what critics and dealers insist, what does matter in the art business is not how good it is, because that’s just a matter of taste. What really matters in the art market is who painted it, because that’s a matter of demonstrable fact.

It’s why establishing the provenance of a work of art is so important to the trade—and very big business these days. It’s why a sixteenth-century portrait of Lisa Giocondo ascribed to Giovanni Schmendricola, say, that would be worth bupkes explodes in value to over a billion dollars, according to a number of dealers, when it turns out to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

In Hunter Biden’s case, it obviously pays to be a well-publicized asshole . . .