WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – While standing in the Rose Garden to celebrate his first major victory in legislation, President Joe Biden points to the White House, saying it is a ‘beautiful building’ to live in.
Except on weekends.
Of the eight weekends since Biden’s adoption, he has spent three in his longtime home outside Wilmington, Delaware, including the weekend. Preliminary plans for another weekend visit have been scrapped due to the Senate’s action on Biden’s $ 1.9 billion coronavirus relief plan.
Biden also spent a weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.
Many presidents have complained at one point or another about feeling confined to the White House. Biden has previously paid tribute to presidents by comparing the experience to a “gilded cage”.
Swapping the 132-room presidential residence for a less restricted, more relaxing hangout over the weekend could help presidents relax, said William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
“What he wanted to be was president,” Howell said. “It is not the White House per se that is the draw.”
The White House is defending Biden’s leisure trips at a time when he and federal health officials have pleaded with the public to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, among other things by avoiding unnecessary travel.
“The president lives in Wilmington. It’s his house. This is where he has lived for many, many years, “said Jen Psaki, press secretary, recently. “And as you know, he, like any president of the United States, takes a private plane called Air Force One to travel there.”
“I think most Americans would also consider it a unique circumstance,” she said of the government aircraft available to Biden.
However, no president travels alone, no matter how private the plane is. It requires many other people to travel as well. And the cost is rising fast.
In addition to the air force flight crew, the president’s travel party includes secret service agents, White House staff, journalists and family. Depending on the destination and purpose of the trip, legislators, cabinet secretaries, or other guests may fly with the president.
Biden sometimes brought some of his six grandchildren on trips when he was vice president, as well as during last year’s presidential campaign.
Presidential travel does not come cheap.
Federal agencies have spent an estimated $ 13.6 million on four trips that then-President Donald Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida in February and March 2017, the government’s accounting office reported in 2019.
The report includes $ 10.6 million for the management of government aircraft and boats, and $ 3 million for transportation, accommodation, meals and other expenses for government personnel supporting the president on the road.
But not all presidential trips are the same.
Trump took the more familiar version of Air Force One, a custom 747, on the two-hour flight to the commercial airport in West Palm Beach, Florida. Biden flew a smaller version of the plane for the half-hour flight to Delaware Air National Guard Base. He undertook the weekend’s voyage with the Marine One presidential helicopter.
Trump’s home in Florida is on the water, which needs Coast Guard security.
Biden returns to his longtime home near Wilmington, where he lived as a senator before being elected vice president in 2008 and where he returned after his time in that office was over.
The home now serves as Biden’s weekend getaway and watch Tom Brady, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ new quarterback, win a record seventh Super Bowl series in February. While there, Biden regularly meets counselors, attends church, and enjoys Sundays with the family.
“We’re trying to have Sunday night dinners,” Jill Biden told TV talk show host Kelly Clarkson. ‘I mean, it’s been a bit busy lately. We’re still doing it, and the kids are looking forward to it. ”
Biden owns a second home in the beach community of Rehoboth, Delaware. He has been visiting it since he became president, but he can see more action as the weather warms up.
During a tearful farewell in January when he left Wilmington for Washington, Biden credited the state by helping shape his values, character and worldview. “It’s all coming from Delaware,” he said.
Biden lived most of his 78 years in Wilmington after his parents moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania, when he was a boy. He represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for 36 years and was a regular passenger on the Amtrak train to and from Washington.
“Getting out of the White House has been as cumbersome as it is now,” said Doug Wead, a former White House assistant and author of books on presidents and their families.
Early presidents were sent to bumpy trains, he said. But garages, Air Force One and Marine One all help ease the way for a modern president out of the country’s capital.
But there is no presidential playbook for how and where to spend the weekend.
Trump has spent many weekends in Mar-a-Lago or his Trump Golf Club in central New Jersey, and critics have accused him of trying to run for president.
Barack Obama spent most Saturdays and Sundays in Washington because his young daughters belonged to weekend football and basketball leagues.
George W. Bush had his farm in Crawford, Texas.
Howell said Biden – who has cultivated his image as an ‘ordinary Joe’ – has strong ties to his family, many of whom are in Delaware, which he wants to maintain.
The president’s first wife, Neilia, and their baby daughter, Naomi, who died in a car accident in 1972, and their son Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46 in 2015, are buried in a cemetery at the church where Biden visits it. services.
People close to Biden also note the strong affection he has for Delaware.
When he left the state in January, Biden, who is of Irish descent, alluded to an Irish poet who allegedly said that Dublin would be written on his heart when he died.
Biden overcame with emotion, saying, “If I die, Delaware will be written in my heart.”