After the November 2022 legislative elections, in which the Democratic Party obtained a better than expected result, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, appeared at a press conference at the White House. When they asked him if he would run for re-election, he pointed to his wife, sitting just a few steps away, and answered in plural: “Our intention is to run again.” The first lady, 73, is not only the president’s main personal supporter, but she has become his closest political advisor. She has taken on a growing role in the campaign, making notable appearances at rallies. After the disastrous intervention of Biden, 81, in the debate against Donald Trump last week in Atlanta, many see her as the only person capable of convincing the president to withdraw from it. She doesn’t seem up to the task.
Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, did not attend the CNN debate. Jill Biden was there. When she finished, she shook hands with her insecure and defeated husband to help him down the only step of the platform where the debate was taking place, in images that went viral. That physical support quickly became moral support. Both came to greet a Democratic party, designed to celebrate what was supposed to have been Biden’s success in demonstrating to the world – but, above all, to the voters – that he is in perfect condition to renew his office for four years. mandate at the head of the world’s leading power. It was not so.
At the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Atlanta, the crowd tried to ignore what they had just seen. Jill Biden took the microphone with her husband at her side. “Hasn’t the president done a great job? Yes,” she told supporters, who began chanting, “Four more years!” “Joe, you did a great job,” she continued. “You answered all the questions, you knew all the facts. And let me ask the crowd: What did Trump do?” “Lie!” she replied, along with the crowd.
The next day, Jill Biden opened for the president at his rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. She appeared in a dark dress with the word “vote” written in white dozens of times, a clear statement of intent. “Some of you may have heard that I didn’t agree to marry Joe until the fifth time he asked me, but the truth is that I wanted him from the beginning. I saw in him then the same character that I see in him today. And even though he has faced unimaginable tragedies, his optimism is unwavering; his strength, unwavering, his hope, undaunted,” she began.
“Over the past few years, Joe has helped heal our country, helping us all recover from the chaos of the last Administration. We don’t choose our chapter in history, but we can choose who guides us through it. Right now, with these dangers the world is facing, there is no one I would rather have sitting in the Oval Office right now than my husband,” he continued. The first lady then referred to the face-to-face. “What you saw yesterday in the debate is Joe Biden, a president with his integrity and character, who told the truth, while Trump told lie after lie after lie.”
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
Edward M. Pio Roda (EFE)
Then, at a fundraising event in New York, he returned to what happened on Thursday: “Let’s talk about last night’s debate, because I know it’s in your head. As Joe said earlier today, he is not a young man. And after the debate last night, he said to me, ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that good.’ I said, ‘Look, Joe, we’re not going to let 90 minutes define the four years you’ve been president.’
That has been Jill Biden’s consistent position. This Saturday, the president and the first lady participated in another fundraising event at the luxurious mansion of businessman Barry Rosenstein, in East Hampton (New York). Among the hosts were Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Michael J. Fox. Jill Biden insisted on her message: “Joe is not only the right person for the job. He is the only person for the position.”
The president’s family has taken advantage of a Sunday meeting at Camp David to urge him to stay in the race and continue fighting despite the debate. Some family members criticized the way Biden’s advisers prepared him for the face-to-face meeting, according to four people familiar with the discussions cited by the AP. Biden spent the day isolated with the first lady, Jill Biden, and her children and grandchildren at the presidential retreat in Maryland. It was a previously scheduled trip for a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
A long marriage
Joe and Jill Biden have been married for 47 years. They met in March 1975 through the president’s younger brother, Frank, who had been a student at the University of Delaware. Jill was in the process of divorcing her first husband. Joe was already a senator and trying to recover from a family tragedy. His first wife, Neilia, was driving the Bidens’ white Chevy on Dec. 18, 1972, to pick up the Christmas tree when they were struck at an intersection by a trailer loaded with corn cobs. Neilia and her one-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed, while her other two sons, Beau and Hunter, were injured, with Hunter suffering a severe skull fracture.
When the senator called Jill, the first thing she asked was: “Who gave you my phone number?” It was Saturday and she suggested he get out of it. She said she already had a date and Biden asked her to break it. She asked for a couple of hours. “She broke the date and then she broke my heart,” the president said last Valentine’s Day on a TikTok account about couples’ first dates. There were two years in which Biden asked her five times to marry him. The final one was an ultimatum. She accepted. What made her doubt, she explained, was that after the family tragedy, she had to be sure that it was going to work, that if they got married it would be forever, because Hunter and Beau had already suffered enough. Joe and Jill have another daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.
Jill Biden kept a very low profile for most of her husband’s long political career. They lived in Wilmington, from where Biden could travel to Congress daily by train to fulfill her obligations as a senator. The first lady continued to work as an English teacher when her husband became Barack Obama’s vice president in 2008, and despite her 73 years of age, she has continued working after assuming the role of first lady. She teaches at a community college in Virginia, outside Washington.
She was already actively involved in the 2020 presidential campaign. Now, she has thrown herself into the re-election campaign. Beyond education and women’s rights, her key role is to accompany the president, transmit energy at his campaign events and advise him in private. She sees Trump as a threat to the United States. When Frank Biden spoke to his brother Joe about Jill, to arrange their blind date, he told him: “You’re going to love her: she’s beautiful and she doesn’t like politics.” Perhaps that was true then.
Follow all the information about the elections in the United States onour weekly newsletter.
.
.
_
