The president’s wife, Jill Biden, surprised members of the National Guard at the U.S. Capitol on Friday and delivered cookies, a gesture of kindness “to keep me and my family safe” during President Biden’s inauguration earlier this week.
“I just want to thank President Biden and the entire Biden family,” she told a group of Guard members during a first public appearance after accepting her new post.
“The White House baked you some chocolate chip cookies,” she said before joking that she could not say she had baked them herself.
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President Jill Biden says: ‘The Biden’s are a National Guard family’, greeting members of the National Guard with chocolate chip cookies on Friday 22 January 2021 at the US capital in Washington. (AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
Nearly 25,000 troops descended on Washington, DC in the days leading up to the inauguration, while officials remained on their guard for raw actors who wanted to incite violence. The ultra-defensive stance came after rioters stormed the Capitol building earlier this month in protest of Biden’s presidential victory.
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Jill Biden’s visit to the National Guard was particularly sentimental for her when she recalled her late stepson Beau Biden, a former member of the Delaware Army National Guard who spent a year in Iraq. He died later in 2015 at the age of 46 after being diagnosed with glioblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer.
‘So I’m a national guard mother,’ she told the crowd, adding that the baskets were a ‘small thank you’ for leaving their homelands and coming to the country’s capital. President Biden thanked his chief of staff to the National Guard Bureau in a call Friday.
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“I appreciate everything you do,” the first lady added. “The National Guard will always occupy a special place in the heart of all the Prayers.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.