Joe Biden has a grandchildren problem.
During a recent interview with Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, the former vice president was asked about communicating with his grandkids while locked in a basement due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"I talk to them every [incomprehensible] day," Biden said. "I have five grandchildren, and every single day I either talk to them or we text."
FACT CHECK: FALSE!
Biden has at least seven grandchildren. His renegade son Hunter, a 2019 Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year, celebrated on March 28 the birth of his fifth declared child—the seventh of Biden's known grandchildren. The baby boy is the first child of Hunter's second wife, Melissa Cohen, whom Hunter married six days after meeting.
Hunter, who is currently trying to make a name for himself in the Los Angeles art scene, has three daughters from a previous marriage. He was recently determined "with scientific certainty" to be the father of a child born in 2018 to an Arkansas woman with whom he denied having a sexual relationship. Hunter recently settled a child support lawsuit with the woman after a judge blasted his repeated attempts to delay court proceedings.
As Joe Biden correctly told Fallon in the interview: "I got family scattered around."
Whether Biden's false claim about his grandchildren was simply a gaffe, or something more sinister, was not immediately clear. Biden, 77, is afflicted with what some experts have dubbed "verbal diarrhea," a condition that causes a steady stream of gibberish to be expelled via the mouth.
During a recent livestream address, for example, Biden described his approach to combating the coronavirus pandemic as follows: "We need to build an arsenal of democracy, as we did in 1940.... We can take, we can make a personal productive equipment."
It's also possible that Biden is actively refusing to acknowledge Hunter's two youngest children, who have done nothing wrong and would like nothing more than to meet their grandfather and be accepted into the family. Biden snapped at a reporter in November who asked about Hunter's paternity suit, describing it as a "private matter."
Either way, Biden's remark on the number of grandchildren he has leaves a lot to be desired, both factually and morally. Journalists should continue to press him on the issue until he can produce a satisfactory response.