WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – While standing in the Rose Garden to celebrate his first major legislative victory, President Joe Biden gestured to the White House and said it is a “beautiful building” to live in.
Except on weekends.
Of the eight weekends since Biden took office, he has spent three at his old home outside Wilmington, Delaware, including this weekend. Tentative plans for another weekend visit were dropped due to Senate action over Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus contingency plan.
Biden also spent a weekend in Camp David’s presidential retreat in Maryland.
Many presidents have complained about feeling trapped in the White House. Biden has repeated previous presidents by comparing the experience to living in a “gilded cage.”
So swapping the 132-room mansion for a less restrictive, more relaxed weekend hangout can help presidents unwind, said William Howell, political scientist at the University of Chicago.
“He wanted to be president,” Howell said. “It’s not necessarily the White House that has the appeal.”
The White House defends Biden’s leisure travel at a time when both he and federal health officials have begged the public to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, including by avoiding unnecessary travel.
“The president lives in Wilmington. It is his home. He lived there for many, many years, ”said press secretary Jen Psaki recently. “And as you know, like any president of the United States, he’s taking a private plane called Air Force One to travel there.”
“I think most Americans would see that as a unique circumstance too,” she said of the government jet available to Biden.
However, no president travels alone, no matter how private the plane. It requires a lot of other people to travel too. And the costs add up quickly.
In addition to the Air Force flight crew, a president’s tour group includes Secret Service agents, White House personnel, journalists, and family. Depending on the destination and purpose of the trip, legislators, cabinet secretaries, or other guests can fly with the president.
Biden occasionally took some of his six grandchildren on trips while he was vice president, as well as during last year’s presidential campaign.
Presidential travel doesn’t come cheap.
Federal agencies spent an estimated $ 13.6 million on four trips then-President Donald Trump made in February and March 2017 to his waterfront Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, the Government Accountability Office reported in 2019 .
The figure includes $ 10.6 million to fly government jets and boats, and $ 3 million for transportation, accommodation, meals, and other expenditures for government personnel supporting the president along the way, the report said.
But not all presidential trips are the same.
Trump took the more famous version of Air Force One, a modified 747, on the two-hour flight to the commercial airport in West Palm Beach, Florida. Biden has flown a smaller version of the plane for the approximately half-hour flight to the Delaware Air National Guard Base. He made this weekend’s trip in Marine One’s presidential helicopter.
Trump’s Florida home is on the water, requiring the addition of Coast Guard security patrols.
Biden returns to his old 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 up.
Now serving as Biden’s weekend retreat, is the home where he watched Tom Brady, the new Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, win a record for the seventh Super Bowl ring in February. While there, Biden often meets counselors, attends church, and enjoys Sunday dinner with the family.
“We try to have Sunday night dinners,” Jill Biden told Kelly Clarkson, the TV talk show host. ‘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 yet to visit it since he became president, but it could see more action as the weather warms.
In a tearful goodbye in January when he left Wilmington for Washington, Biden gave the state credit for shaping his values, character and worldview. “It’s all from Delaware,” he said.
Biden lived in Wilmington for most of his 78 years after his parents moved from Scranton, Pennsylvania, when he was a boy. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate for 36 years and was a regular passenger on the Amtrak train to and from Washington.
“Leaving the White House was more cumbersome than it is today,” said Doug Wead, a former White House assistant and author of books about presidents and their families.
The first presidents were sent to bumpy trains, he said. But motorcades, Air Force One, and Marine One all help ease the path of a modern-day president from the nation’s capital.
But there is no presidential script for how and where you spend the weekend.
Trump spent many weekends at Mar-a-Lago or his Trump golf club in downtown New Jersey, where critics accused him of trying to take advantage of the presidency.
Barack Obama spent most Saturdays and Sundays in Washington because his young daughters attended soccer and basketball leagues on the weekends.
George W. Bush had his farm in Crawford, Texas.
Howell said that Biden – who has cultivated his image as a “regular Joe” – has strong ties to his family, many of whom are in Delaware, whom he wants to keep.
The president’s first wife, Neilia, and their daughter, Naomi, who died in a car accident in 1972, and their son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, are buried in a church cemetery where Biden is present. Services.
People close to Biden also notice the strong affection he has for Delaware.
Leaving the state in January, Biden, who is of Irish descent, alluded to an Irish poet who is believed to have said Dublin will be written in his heart when he dies.
Overcome with emotion, Biden said, “When I die, Delaware will be written in my heart.”