Phelim McAleer: Mercifully, Jill Biden’s memoir is short, but it conveniently omits the dark parts such as the rejected fourth granddaughter

The Clinton team had given the authors extraordinary inside access, expecting a triumphant victory narrative that would cement Hillary’s place in history. Instead, the book became the day-by-day account of the biggest American political shock in modern history – the night Donald Trump won. What was meant to be coronation literature turned into an unputdownable portrait of arrogance, infighting (there was a lot of infighting), and catastrophic miscalculation.

Then there was Chasing Hillary by Amy Chozick. This was the inside/outside view: the story of a New York Times reporter embedded with the campaign while simultaneously battling infertility and the everyday perils of marrying an Irishman. Chozick wove her own raw, somewhat messy life into the story of a historic run that was sure of success but somehow still lost. The result was a very human, very interesting story of why Hillary was beaten.

And then there are the truly awful books. I’ve just read one of them: View from the East Wing by the former first lady, Jill Biden. Mercifully, it’s short. Some of it is just plain funny – unintentionally so.

She describes Hunter Biden, Joe’s son and her stepson, as a successful lawyer “teaching at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and serving as board chair of the World Food Programme, USA.”

That’s one way of putting it. What she conveniently omitted is that Hunter was also a full-blown meth and cocaine addict who mysteriously landed high-paying positions with Ukrainian, Russian, and Chinese companies – while his father was vice-president, in a position to influence those companies’ dealings with the United States and shield them from scrutiny.

She also failed to mention exactly how Hunter secured those cushy gigs at Georgetown and the World Food Programme.

The selective memory continues. She offers tortured descriptions of the vice-presidential selection process – interviews with Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and a whole array of candidates – while pretending Joe Biden had never publicly pledged to choose a black woman. That was why he chose Kamala Harris – but Jill neglects to mention this.

Jill Biden appears to be obsessed with race. There is no white person she won’t do down in order to favour a minority.

She recounts rejecting a white Harvard poet for the inauguration in favour of a black woman. At the inauguration mass, she highlights, not the power of the ceremony, but the fact that it was officiated by the first-ever black cardinal of Washington, D.C.

But the book’s most glaring omission is far darker.

There is a seven-year-old girl in the United States who has been publicly abandoned by her very famous father and grandmother. Her name is Navy Joan Roberts.

Navy Joan Roberts is Hunter Biden’s daughter and Jill Biden’s granddaughter. She is the daughter of Lunden Roberts, whom Hunter met while she was working as a waitress in a strip bar. They had a year-long relationship. In Hunter Biden’s memoir, he says he is the father of three daughters. This is not true. He never mentions his fourth daughter’s name anywhere in the book.

Navy Joan has been publicly rejected again and again by the Biden family. Jill Biden fails to mention her anywhere in the book.

She further adds unnecessary cruelty by dedicating the book to her “three granddaughters: Naomi, Finnegan and Maisy.” She has four granddaughters.

Jill and Joe have publicly rejected a seven-year-old girl. Jill devotes so many words to telling us how she cares about minorities – but seven-year-old Navy Joan, blonde and white, doesn’t make the grade.

To compound this abuse, the mainstream media protects the powerful Bidens, not the child. Jill Biden has been doing the press circuit, promoting her new memoir. Not one of the journalists she talked to bothered to ask why her book opens with a dedication that will traumatise an innocent seven-year-old.

Navy Joan Roberts won’t be seven forever. She will find these books, these memoirs, see these words in print, and have to live with the knowledge that the Biden family tried to deny her existence. This will probably cause serious damage to her well-being as a child and young adult.

And Jill Biden doesn’t care. Quite a legacy.