President Joe Biden is spending Father’s Day at his Rehoboth Beach house, after hopping a ride to his home state on Air Force One to his second Delaware home and spending part of his 46th anniversary at a political rally.
The president was briefly back at his beach house for some relaxation time with family for a weekend trip, with plans to jet to San Francisco on Monday.
Should family conversations turn to politics around the meal table, there will be much to discuss: a new DailyMail.com poll reveals 71 per cent of Americans and half of Democrats surveyed think he is too old to be president, and surveys show him in a tight race with top Republican rivals.
He motorcaded into the small town of Rehoboth Saturday early evening, popping by his $2.7 million beach house briefly before making his way to church for a Saturday night Mass.
President Joe Biden is spending the weekend at his Rehoboth Beach, Del. home. He attended mass at St. Edmund Church Saturday evening with daughter Ashley (l) and granddaughter Natalie Biden
Visitors awaited his departure along sidewalks to snap photos and catch a glimpse. Late-arriving church-goers had to be swept by security, with some yelling ‘We love you’ when he walked outside.
When mass was over, two priests in green and white vestments walked outside and briefly visited with Biden as he left. His daughter Ashley Biden, his daughter with first lady Jill Biden, also took part in the conversation, smiling. She was accompanied by Biden’s granddaughter, Natalie, the eldest daughter of the late Beau Biden.
Biden went to church soon after arriving at his beach house on Father’s Day weekend
He spent part of his anniversary with first lady Jill Biden at a union rally in Philadelphia
The first lady was seen sporting a corsage when she boarded Air Force One in Philadelphia
Jill Biden also spoke at the union rally, Biden’s first public campaign-style event since announcing his reelection run in April
Daughter Ashley Biden and husband Howard Krein were spotted getting off Air Force One
Ashley Biden, a social worker and activist, keeps a low profile, and is spending the weekend with her parents
The down time comes before a spring that will mix campaigning, governing, and diplomacy over the summer – although a White House official told DailyMail.com the Biden camp isn’t expected to open a campaign office in his home state until later this summer.
‘There’s a reason we’re doing this a whole year and a half before election day,’ Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) told reporters at Biden’s union event. ‘We have a record now. It’s one thing to run for president in 2020 to talk about the things you will do or you’re promising to do It’s another to have a concrete record to point to.’
Still, his team has bristled at questions about why Biden hasn’t done more campaigning since launching his reelection. The White House official noted that Barack Obama didn’t do his first event until 2012, the year of his reelection win.
Much of the media attention has been sucked up by the legal woes of his potential rival, former President Donald Trump.
But Biden isn’t yet ready to say who he’ll face, when asked about facing a potentially brutal campaign. ‘Well, it depends on who the nominee is,’ he told DailyMail.com.
The president wasn’t able to tune out diplomatic challenges on his trip, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken starts his high-stakes trip to Beijing.
Biden may have stroked Blinken’s audience by cutting China’s leaders some slack on the spy balloon the U.S. military shot down over the Atlantic.
‘I don’t think the leadership knew where it was and knew what was in it and knew what was going on. It was — I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional,’ he told reporters Friday.
Next month he heads to Vilnius, Lithuania for the annual NATO summit as Ukraine carries out its counteroffensive to try to expel Russian forces from their territory in the brutal war.
