Joe Biden among many US presidents with embarrassing family
While his son’s ‘laptop from hell’ heaps one humiliation on another, Joe Biden is but one among many US presidents dogged by embarrassing family.
From the moment he entered the White House, President Joe Biden has fended off scandal around his son, Hunter.
The stream of stories from Hunter’s “laptop from hell” – the affair with his brother’s widow, his addictions and his foreign business dealings – have heaped one humiliation on another.
This week it emerged that federal agents investigating Hunter, 52, believe they have sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and making a false statement when he bought a gun in 2018.
The White House has denied Biden had any knowledge of his son’s business affairs, but allegations that the President covered up Hunter’s indiscretions still swirl.
Biden, though, is far from the first president to be dogged by embarrassments at home.
“I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both,” Theodore Roosevelt said of his impetuous eldest child, who would barge into the Oval Office to offer advice and was notorious for flirting with men at parties as her pet garter snake, Spinach, coiled on her blouse.
“I have more influence over members of the US Senate than I do over Billy,” Jimmy Carter said, echoing Roosevelt when reflecting on his younger brother.
Described as “a beer drinker of Olympian status”, Billy urinated on the runway at Atlanta airport in front of press and dignitaries and opened his own diplomatic relations with Colonel Gaddafi’s government in Libya to resolve money troubles.
During the Watergate era, Richard Nixon bugged his younger brother, Donald, who had borrowed $US200,000 from the film producer and magnate Howard Hughes to prop up a failing fast-food business.
Lyndon Johnson kept his younger brother, Sam, a virtual prisoner in the White House to try to rein in his drunken carousing and leaking of confidential information.
It was not appreciated, with Sam quipping that “anyone who works for Lyndon more than 30 days ought to receive a Purple Heart”.
George W. Bush, himself a reformed party boy, had to endure reports of his younger brother Neil’s antics as his divorce went public in 2003.
Neil claimed that on business trips to Hong Kong and Thailand he had slept with several mysterious women who showed up at his hotel door, unaware that they were prostitutes because he did not ask them any questions.
Most past presidents were at least fortunate that their family’s dirty laundry was not aired in an age of the internet and social media.
Bill Clinton was the first of the computer age to grapple with an embarrassing relative, as his half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr, veered between attempts to become a movie star – appearing in the straight-to-video horror sequel, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings – and serving jail time for dealing cocaine.
Bill pardoned his brother’s drug conviction before leaving office, only for Roger to be arrested for drunk-driving a month later.
By then Clinton’s presidency had been overshadowed by his own failings, in the shape of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The Times
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