“If I die,” he said, wiping away tears, “Delaware will be written on my heart and on the hearts of all the Prayers.”
He was back two and a half weeks later.
Because he is limited to what he calls the ‘gilded cage’ of the White House and is looking for a dose of fame, Biden has begun a regular pattern of leaving Washington on weekends. For the third time in the seven weeks he has been in office, Biden returned to Wilmington on Friday and continued a pattern of the weekend shuttle.
For Biden, the time is mostly family-oriented and private. He has not yet played a round of golf, though it may be more due to cold weather than desire; Biden is considered one of Washington’s better golfers when he served as vice president and was a member of the Wilmington Country Club in the past.
Officials said they expect Biden to drop off regularly to Delaware or Camp David on weekends. He is eager for the soothing presence of his family and more space to walk around than the highly secure grounds of the White House can offer, and follows a worn-out pattern of presidents coming to Washington on Friday afternoon.
Like them, Biden brings in only a minimal number of staff members, which includes senior advisers Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti this past weekend; Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, Yohannes Abraham; personal assistance Stephen Goepfert; and photographer Adam Schultz.
His home is equipped with secure communications equipment and facilities, but Biden has so far not faced major national security crises on the property, as Trump often did from Mar-a-Lago.
Biden’s plans for his weekend getaways away from the White House can sometimes go on for up to a day or two before he leaves. A person familiar with the president’s itinerary says a supposedly coming weekend in Camp David, for example, could rather switch to Wilmington – a change of mind the president should make, but could still scramble his support apparatus at the last minute.
“Leaving on Saturday instead of a Friday is not a big deal for a citizen and it does not change where you want to go, but the kind of change in him causes a ripple effect,” the person says. “Dozens of schedules and plans and staff need to be changed.”
In the past week, Biden has changed his destination or departure date at least three times on fast trips away from Washington, the person says.
Biden is Wilmington
Wilmington, where temperatures will turn into the mid-50s this weekend, does not offer the warm breeze of Palm Beach or the dry heat of Texas. The city, best known for its corporate banking industry, is not considered an important weekend getaway destination.
But for Biden, it’s a place where the restrictions on living in the White House, even for a few nights, are weakening. He still has instructions to run in the city, such as having his foot examined by his orthopedist. Some of his grandchildren live nearby. His church, St. Joseph at the Brandywine, is five minutes away.
“The president lives in Wilmington; it is his home. He has lived there for many, many years,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week, explaining why Biden returns so often, as do the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Medicine. prevention. still advises against non-essential travel amidst the pandemic.
“Like any president of the United States does, he takes a private plane called Air Force One to travel there,” she said. “It’s obviously unique to most Americans, but I think most Americans would see it as a unique circumstance as well.”
“I said when I was running, I want it to be president and not live in the White House,” he said, describing how limited he was in the executive mansion, despite its size. Part of the discomfort, he said, was the generous hostel staff he praised for their professionalism, yet said they got used to it.
“I was raised in a way that you did not look for someone to wait for you,” he said. “And this is where I find myself very self-conscious.”
This is not the case at the Delaware Lake House, where the Bidens do not employ a large household staff and generally take care of themselves. Before becoming president, Biden made it a habit to walk his two German shepherds, Major and Champ, around the garden before going to bed.
The dogs moved into the White House in January, where supervisor Dale Haney played a role in walking them, a duty he has assumed since Richard Nixon’s Irish Setter, King Timahoe. They are sometimes seen in the Oval Office.
So far, Biden Champ and Major have not brought Air Force One on board to Delaware again, although his granddaughter Naomi brought her brown-and-white dog named Charlie back to Washington by plane one weekend last month.
Home base
Biden’s 6,850-square-foot home, located on a lake west of downtown Wilmington, has been his base since 1996, when he bought the four-acre plot and built a home. It is located in one of the more expensive parts of the state, and a cottage on his property is rented to the secret service in an arrangement that began when he was vice president.
Unlike Trump, whose activities at Mar-a-Lago were tracked down by guests and chat members, or Bush, who took photo shoots while he was cleaning, Biden’s pursuit of his lake house remains somewhat more protected.
The house is not visible from the road, and reporters were rarely allowed at the driveway and the building visible.
In a photo released by the White House earlier this year, Biden is shown calling service members in Kabul and aboard the USS Nimitz as he watches the Super Bowl from his wood-paneled cage, with one arm over a brown Chesterfield- sofa and an archaic square tube television. presumably the broadcast of the game in the background (the screen was blurred in the image).
Other images of Biden’s home display traditional décor, such as antique tables and a grand clock, a black-and-white tile porch and shelves strewn with memorabilia from his long career and photos of his family. When he aired months away from home during the campaign, his backdrop was a library-style bookshelf decorated with a folded American flag flying over the American Capitol in honor of his late son Beau, who was in the cemetery near Biden’s house is buried.
In 2016, Biden told CNN he was considering selling the home to help care for Beau’s children after he died of brain cancer. But he said President Barack Obama had intervened in hearing the plan.
“He stood up and said, ‘Do not sell that house. Promise me you will not sell the house,'” Biden said. “He said, ‘I’ll give you the money. Whatever you need, I’ll give you the money. Do not, Joe – promise me. Promise me.’
In the years since he was vice president, Biden bought a home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which the family visited during the summer months of the campaign and during the holidays before moving to the White House for the last time.
When Biden returned to Delaware for the first time in early February, he told reporters he planned to “see my grandchildren and hang out with Jill”, referring to the first lady as he gathered his belongings ‘around our house’ to move to the other house ‘.
But since then, it has been clear that round-trip travel from the White House to Wilmington will be a more frequent occurrence, just as Biden did as senator and later vice president.
For most of his career, travel was undertaken by train, a laborious commute that became central to his political persona and earned him naming rights at Wilmington Amtrak Station. The approximately 90-minute ride between Wilmington and Washington was so central to Biden’s story that the then senator launched his first presidential bid in 1987 at his hometown train station.
When he began his travels in the 1970s, Biden was a somewhat anonymous senator traveling to work. But during his eight years as vice president, when he returned to the train, he would be flanked by the secret service and his discussion would be anonymous for security reasons.
He told CNN in 2017 when he traveled home to Delaware after Trump’s inauguration that he had made 8,200 returns by train over the years.
CNN’s Kate Bennett contributed to this report.