Meet the Bidens, America’s new ‘first family’
WASHINGTON: President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill will become the new White House residents when he takes office tomorrow.
Biden has made his family a major focus throughout his career and his 2020 presidential campaign thrust them fully into the spotlight.
Here is a look at the members of America’s new “first family”.
Jill Biden, an educator, is set to transform her new role before she even moves into the White House.
While first ladies traditionally only fulfil ceremonial duties, “Dr B”, as her students call her, intends to keep her full-time job as an English professor.
As first lady, Jill is expected to work on education issues and relaunch Joining Forces, a mission to rally around military families that she and predecessor Michelle Obama started in 2011.
The Bidens met in 1975 and got married in 1977, a few years after the Delaware senator lost his young wife and daughter in a car crash.
Biden has often spoken about how his relationship with his sons, Hunter and Beau, helped him cope with grieving as he built his political career, as well as when he married Jill.
Beau was seen as inheriting his father’s public service ethos and political skills. He served in the military in Iraq and became Delaware’s attorney-general.
But Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at 46, less than two years after he was diagnosed.
Biden refers to his late son often in speeches, and he regularly visits Beau’s grave, as well as those of his first wife and daughter.
Biden’s other son, Hunter, has stayed farther from the spotlight. He struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, and was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
He became a regular focus of Donald Trump’s attacks ahead of the Nov 3 vote for his business dealings in Ukraine and China.
Hunter, 50, now an artist based in Los Angeles, has admitted to displaying “poor judgment” in some of his business dealings but denied any wrongdoing.
Biden, however, has been unwavering in his support for his son. During the final presidential debate, when Trump mocked Hunter’s cocaine use, the former vice president simply said: “I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”
After Trump was the first president in more than a century not to have a dog, the Bidens are bringing two with them.
German shepherds Champ and Major, as well as a cat, whose breed and name have not yet been revealed, will move into the White House on Jan 20.
Champ has been with the Bidens since 2008. The family fostered and then adopted Major in 2018. According to Biden’s team, Major will be the first foster dog to live in the White House.