Bidens help prep meals for needy

First couple to spend holiday on Nantucket

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, helped a local food kitchen prepare Thanksgiving meals for the needy before leaving town — like millions of other Americans — to resume their family tradition of spending the holiday on tiny Nantucket island in Massachusetts.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, joined the outing to DC Central Kitchen, which serves cooked-from-scratch meals alongside training for culinary jobs.

Decked out in DC Central Kitchen aprons, the four dished turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes and green beans into trays to be packed up for needy D.C. residents.

Jill Biden kicked off the holiday season at the White House on Monday when she received the official White House Christmas tree — an 18½-foot Fraser fir cut from a North Carolina farm that she declared “magnificent.”

The tree is destined for the Blue Room as the showstopper of Christmas at the White House — Biden’s

President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff arrive to assemble Thanksgiving meal kits Tuesday during a visit to DC Central Kitchen in Washington.

first as president.

The first lady also joined the president on a visit to the Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina later Monday for an early Thanksgiving with service members and their families.

The White House has not said how Biden, who turned 79 last Saturday, plans to spend his time on Nantucket.

Asked during her Tuesday briefing about the trip, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the president’s decision to leave Washington for the holiday by saying that Thanksgiving “is a time to put politics aside, spend time with your loved ones and talk about what you’re grateful for.”

She also noted that Biden is president wherever he is.