LOS ANGELES — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden welcomed their first great-grandchild — a 10-pound, 4-ounce baby boy — at a hospital in fire-ravaged Los Angeles on Wednesday.
"We are proud to introduce you to our great-grandson: William Brannon Neal, IV," the first lady wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of the president holding the infant.
Biden — who was out west with the intention of designating two national monuments on Tuesday and for his granddaughter Naomi Biden’s scheduled caesarean section on Wednesday — announced his great-grandson’s birth at a Santa Monica, California, fire station after being briefed by local officials alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday morning.
“I’m about to be a great-grandfather, Jesus God. But Naomi, [Hunter Biden’s] oldest, about to, I'm going out to California. She's due to have a cesarean on the 8th of January,” the 82-year-old Biden told USA Today in an interview on Sunday that was published Wednesday.
Before the fire response briefing on Wednesday, the president and first lady visited Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where Naomi Biden gave birth. While smoke has blanketed much of the city, the hospital is beyond the areas of the region where fires across thousands of acres are currently forcing thousands of people to flee their homes and burning more than 1,000 structures. One of the rapidly expanding fires, in Eaton Canyon to the northeast of Los Angeles, has killed two people.
The new mother, 31, is Hunter Biden’s daughter with his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, a nonprofit executive. Hunter Biden was spotted alongside his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and son Beau entering the hospital around 10 a.m. Pacific.
Naomi Biden, a lawyer, revealed on social media on Election Day last year that she was expecting her first child. She married her husband, Peter Neal, in a rare wedding on White House grounds in November 2022. It was the first wedding of a president’s granddaughter at the White House.
Neal is a captain in the U.S. Army serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or JAG Corps, as a military lawyer, according to his LinkedIn. He previously interned for the Obama White House, a federal appeals court judge, the Justice Department and the House of Representatives’ general counsel’s office and worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Jill Biden remarked on her granddaughter’s pregnancy at a women’s health research conference at the White House in December after discussing research into extreme morning sickness among pregnant mothers.
“I was particularly interested because my own granddaughter was going through the same thing — because we’re going to be great-grandparents,” she said to applause.
The president and first lady are set to return to Washington on Wednesday for President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral on Thursday.