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WASHINGTON — Retiring President Biden became a great-grandfather Wednesday when his granddaughter Naomi gave birth in Los Angeles — with Biden announcing the “good news” as three large wildfires raged nearby.
“The good news is, I’m a great-grandfather as of today,” Biden, 82, said during a briefing on the blazes in the Pacific Palisades, which have killed at least two people and left dozens more homeless.
“I’ll remember this day for a lot of reasons,” the president told reporters at a Santa Monica fire station before declining to answer questions from the press about the natural disaster, which has destroyed at least 1,000 buildings.
Those destroyed buildings did not appear to include the Malibu home of disgraced first son Hunter Biden, according to the president.
“It’s astounding what has happened,” the commander in chief said. “Only one piece of good news: my son lives out here and his wife. They got a notification yesterday that their home was probably burned to the ground. Today, it appears that it’s still standing, they’re not sure.”
Biden visited Cedars-Sinai Hospital for the birth in the morning before receiving the fire briefing as smoke filled the sky of America’s second-largest city.
Details about the new arrival, including the baby’s name and sex, were not immediately clear.
Biden initially said Naomi, 31, gave birth to a “10-pound baby girl” before wincing and saying “baby boy.”
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom attended Biden’s event hours after President-elect Donald Trump blamed Newsom for the crisis, citing the unavailability of water to firefighters.
The 46th president revealed in an interview published hours earlier on Wednesday that he was set to become a great-grandfather following a scheduled C-section.
Biden spilled the details to USA Today’s Susan Page in his first sit-down interview as president with a reporter from a daily newspaper — just days before leaving office on Jan. 20.
“I’m about to be a great-grandfather, Jesus God,” he said.
“But Naomi, [Hunter’s] oldest, [is] about to, I’m going out to California. She’s due to have a caesarean on the 8th of January.”
Biden’s trip to California ostensibly was to deliver a speech on conservation, which had to be canceled Tuesday due to the raging wildfires driven by high winds.
“She works for one of the major law firms, mega firms, same one [former Connecticut Sen. Chris] Dodd’s with. She went to Penn, at Columbia Law School,” the president gushed.
The first granddaughter, an attorney for international law firm Arnold & Porter, has been particularly close to the country’s oldest-ever sitting president.
After living at a DC apartment building with a rare view of the White House, Naomi and her then-fiancé moved into the executive mansion ahead of their wedding on its lawn in November 2022.
She then moved into a home in nearby Georgetown — about a block from the Four Seasons hotel, where her father Hunter and grandfather Joe allegedly lunched with a Chinese government-linked businessman in 2017 before millions of dollars flowed to Hunter Biden and his uncle James.
Naomi’s husband Peter Neal, 27, was recently spotted loading a moving truck outside the Georgetown house, which became well-known publicly after an attempted carjacking in 2023 that was foiled by the Secret Service.
Biden has seven grandchildren — including Hunter’s out-of-wedlock daughter Navy Joan Roberts, whom he belatedly acknowledged in 2023 after he was slammed for repeatedly saying he had only six grandkids.
