Just hours after Tuesday night’s first presidential debate, a Twitter thread from Democratic nominee Joe Biden‘s granddaughter, Naomi Biden, regained traction. Initially posted on Sept. 23, just days before the 90-minute event, the thread was a personal tribute to her father and Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Hunter had proven to be a controversial topic of conversation Tuesday night as President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked him. Trump, in one moment, brought up Hunter’s history with drugs. Addressing those remarks, Biden said, “my son, like a lot of people we know at home had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it and I’m proud of him.” Trump also brought up recent allegations that Hunter received $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch while his father was vice president in 2014.
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Given that those very allegations were what sparked Naomi’s Twitter thread in the first place, the controversy on the debate stage regarding them immediately had people going back to her thread, in which she showcased “truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles.”
Though the whole world knows his name, no one knows who he is.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
Here’s a thread on my dad, Hunter Biden – free of charge to the taxpayers and free of the corrosive influence of power-at-all-costs politics. The truth of a man filled with love, integrity, and human struggles: pic.twitter.com/GGeOexmtTV
My dad has never sought the spotlight. Growing up, when I attended political events with my pop people would ask if I was Beau’s daughter or “Beau’s brother’s daughter.” He liked it that way. He found his purpose in doing everything in his power to help Beau achieve his dream.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
He and Beau were one. One heart, one soul, one mind.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
They grew up with the weight of knowing that each day they lived was a day that their sister, my namesake, and their mother lost. But they had each other and that would be enough. They would make sure it was enough.
After graduating college, not certain what he could do well but certain he wanted to do good, he joined the Jesuit Volunteer Core – A catholic organization working on behalf of marginalized groups and devoted to community and social justice. This is where he would meet my mom.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
His dream was to attend Yale Law School, but he was rejected. He started his 1L year at Georgetown instead, he and my mom simultaneously preparing for the start of a family. I was born not just the day of, but in the middle of his civil procedure final exam.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
He left the exam and rushed to meet my mother in the hospital. A good family friend still likes to joke about picking him up to take him to the hospital – dressed in a suit too big for him and still in the early days of a life of unknowable adventure.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
Later that year, he applied to Yale as a transfer student. He thought he had no chance, but my mom believed in him and, more importantly, them together. For his personal statement, he wrote a poem. Something they encourage you strongly against doing.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
He received a letter from Yale saying that the dedication and hard work he had devoted to his study of the law at Georgetown made him more than qualified, but that the poem, unlike anything else they had ever received, earned him a spot at Yale Law.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
The 3 of us moved to New Haven into a house that, although no bigger than my freshman year dorm room, was all we needed to call home. Every night they put me to sleep to our anthem – 3 Is A Magic Number, from Schoolhouse Rock.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
Supporting the three of us off nothing more than his student loans and the cash he saved working summers through high school and college (often w/ beau, including at a meat packing plant – long story lol), he* graduated from Yale Law.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
*the three of us
After graduation, he put his dreams on hold to take a job that would ensure that anything was possible for me and my sisters. He used that money to pay off not only his own student loans, but my uncle Beau’s college and law school loans so that he could pursue his dreams too.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
When my uncle got sick, my dad never missed a single doctors appointment or chemo treatment. When he got sicker, my dad lived out of a suitcase and slept in the chair next to his hospital bed for two months. He held his hand as he lost his brother and a big piece of himself too.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
The pain he has endured would be enough to make a lesser man give up on life all together. But despite the best efforts of an cruel few to destroy a private man, he is sober, happy, and as at peace as ever today because as long his family needs him, he has not lost his purpose.
— Naomi Biden (@NaomiBiden) September 23, 2020
In the wake of the debate, as Twitter users revisited Naomi’s thread, many applauded it.
This was beautiful.
— yvette nicole brown (@YNB) September 30, 2020
I hate that it was necessary @NaomiBiden ❤️#Thread https://t.co/UvSHtBnyNm
POWERFUL.#VoteBidenHarris2020 #BidenHarrisLandslide2020 #BidenCalm https://t.co/hUbHJSyaXa
— Blackearthangel/#IVoted (@blackearthangel) September 23, 2020
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