President Joe Biden served in the United States Senate for more than 30 years and then served as vice president for Barack Obama for eight years. But until he moved last month, he said Tuesday night, he had never been inside the White House presidential “residence” area.
Biden made the disclosure during a city hall event in Milwaukee, hosted by Anderson Cooper of CNN.
“I was in the Oval Office a hundred times as vice president – more than that – every morning for the initial meetings, but I had never been to the residence,” said Biden.
“I had been in the Oval Office a hundred times as vice president – more than that – every morning for the initial meetings, but I had never been at the residence.”
Until he became president, Biden said, he also did not have the experience of having the White House team fully available to meet all of his needs.
“I was raised in a way that you didn’t look for anyone to wait for you,” Biden told the audience, adding that trusting the team has made him feel “embarrassed” since he moved to the White House.
“Have you never been to the White House residence?” Cooper asked, looking surprised.
“I was just up there in the Yellow Room, Oval upstairs,” replied Biden.
“I don’t know, I was never there either,” joked Cooper.
Biden’s revelation suggests that no president – whether Barack Obama or anyone else – has invited him to the area where the country’s chief executive shares private time with his family.
It also seemed to add support to claims that Biden’s relationship with Obama, his former boss, was not as close as the two have always publicly portrayed.
Some reports have suggested that Joe Biden and Barack Obama are not as friendly to each other as they appear to be in public. (Associated Press)
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to screw things up,” Obama once said privately about Biden, Politico reported last August.
Obama also denied his endorsement of Biden for president until April last year, after his former vice president had been campaigning for months.
Later on Tuesday, Cooper asked Biden if living in the White House for the past four weeks has been different than he expected.
“You know, I don’t know what I expected it to be. It’s different in that, um – [I don’t want to] have problems here – I said when I was running, I didn’t want to be president to live in the White House, but to be able to make decisions about the future of the country.
“So, living in the White House – as you heard [from] other presidents who were extremely flattered to live there – it’s a bit like a golden cage in terms of being able to go out and do things. “
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He said the vice president’s residence was “totally different”, being on a larger property, with space for cycling and a swimming pool.
At the beginning of the discussion, Biden joked about living on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“I wake up in the morning, look at Jill and say, ‘Where the hell are we?'”