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    Biden to participate in final Christmas tree lighting ceremony as president

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    Joe Biden is set to take part in the annual national Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Washington DC on Thursday evening, for the final time before leaving the White House.This year, the centerpiece of the 102-year tradition will be a 35ft red spruce from the George Washington and Jefferson national forests in Virginia.The event, which is scheduled to begin at 6pm ET, will be held at the Ellipse park just south of the White House and will feature performances by Adam Blackstone, Stephen Sanchez, James Taylor, the War and Treaty, and others.For the Bidens’ last Christmas at the White House, Jill Biden chose the theme A Season of Peace and Light for the holiday decorations, which she unveiled on Monday.“As we celebrate our finally – final holiday season here in the White House, we are guided by the values that we hold sacred: faith, family and service to our country, kindness toward all of our neighbors, and the power of community,” the first lady said.Inside the White House, one of the centerpieces of the holiday decorations is the Christmas tree.This year, it is an 18.5ft Fraser fir tree from Cartner’s Christmas Tree Farm in North Carolina.The farm is in Newland in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a region that was recently devastated by Hurricane Helene.“The Cartner family lost thousands of trees to the storm,” the first lady said last week at the tree arrival ceremony. “But this one remained standing – and they named it Tremendous for the extraordinary hope that it represents.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the tree arrival ceremony, Jill Biden was joined by the congresswoman Virginia Foxx, as well as members of the North Carolina national guard and their families, who are working to rebuild after Hurricane Helene.“This tree recognizes your tremendous strength and service,” she told them.In an interview with the Associated Press, Sam Cartner Jr, one of three brothers who owns the farm, said that they wanted to be “an uplifting symbol for the other farmers and other people in western North Carolina that have experienced so many losses”. More

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      Biden will attend Trump’s inauguration in January, says White House

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      President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a White House spokesperson said on Monday.“The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whomever won the election,” said Andrew Bates, senior deputy press secretary at the White House, Reuters reported.“He and the First Lady are going to honor that promise and attend the inauguration.”The president-elect did not attend Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, which came days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.Earlier this month, the US president welcomed Trump back to the White House – another tradition Trump eschewed after losing the 2020 election- with Biden promising a transfer of power that is “as smooth as it can get”.“We’re looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated, what you need, and we’re going to get a chance to talk about some of that today,” Biden said earlier this month. “Welcome back.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s decision to skip Biden’s inauguration was not without precedent, but he was the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration in more than 150 years and his then outgoing administration was represented by then outgoing vice-president Mike Pence. More

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      ‘We had no political agenda’: the White House hosts a West Wing TV reunion

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      The marine band struck up a familiar theme. The door of the Oval Office swung open. Out strode the president and first lady to address an expectant crowd – that is, the real first lady, Jill Biden, and the president that fans of the TV show The West Wing used to secretly crave: Jed Bartlet, alias actor Martin Sheen.After a decade in which US politics has often felt like the work of a hyper-imaginative screenwriter, with ever more unlikely plot twists including the election of a reality TV star, it felt strangely natural to see Sheen stepping into the shoes of Joe Biden as his show’s theme music filled the Rose Garden.“We just came from the Oval,” said Jill Biden. “But even though Joe is away hosting leaders of Australia and India and Japan in Delaware, he wanted to make sure that President Bartlet and his staff had a chance to see the Oval Office again.”Sheen and fellow cast members had come to the White House to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first episode of The West Wing, the seven-season drama about an idealist liberal president and his fast-talking staff.On Friday, in warm sunshine, there were references to “big blocks of cheese” – a tradition on the show of requiring presidential staffers to meet with eccentric or offbeat constituents – and the walk-and-talk dialogues in which characters moved through the halls at high speed. Waiters passed out bourbon-and-ginger ale cocktails called the Jackal, a reference to press secretary CJ Cregg’s dance and lip-sync routine in one episode.Sheen – who has said his character was a conglomeration of Democrats John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton – rolled back the years. In classic Bartlet mode, he exhorted the crowd to find something worth fighting for, “something deeply personal and uncompromising, something that can unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh”.View image in fullscreenThen Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator, declared: “Our cast will live on as one of the best in the history of television,” and recognised those in attendance. Among them were Richard Schiff, who played communications director Toby Ziegler; Janel Moloney, who played assistant Donna Moss; and Dulé Hill, who played the president’s body man, Charlie Young.Sorkin also noted the absence of a few high-profile actors – Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford and Rob Lowe, better known to fans as Cregg, Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn – who he said were on set elsewhere. “The rest of us are apparently unemployed,” he joked.After the crowd laughed, a voice chimed in from Sorkin’s right. “Not yet!” Jill Biden said. It was a nod to the fact that her husband still has four months left in office – and a quick retort worthy of Bartlet’s exchanges with wife Abbey Bartlet, played by Stockard Channing.The West Wing remains a favourite of many who now work in Washington. Among those spotted in the Rose Garden were the House foreign affairs chair, Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, and Joe Walsh, once a Tea Party-aligned Illinois representative who is now a fierce critic of former president Donald Trump.Sorkin reflected: “We had no political agenda. We were trying to do a good show every week. But the greatest delivery system ever invented for an idea is a story and, once in a while, we’ll hear from someone who was inspired to go into public service because of our show. And that’s something that 25 years ago this week, none of us could have foreseen or even dared to hope for.”Born in the last year of the 20th century, the show illustrates that there is nothing so remote as the recent past. Its run coincided with the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was off the air by the time Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were elected and long gone when the Covid-19 pandemic and January 6 insurrection unfolded.Sorkin continued: “The show was idealistic, aspirational and romantic. Over the years, I’ve noticed that during times of peak political tension, pundits will warn us not to expect ‘a West Wing moment’.View image in fullscreen“They mean not to expect a selfless act of statesmanship. Not to expect anyone to put country first. Don’t expect anyone to swing for the fences or reach for the stars. But the fact is, West Wing moments do happen and Dr Biden, we saw proof of that on the morning of July 21.”That was the day Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election after a disastrous debate performance and growing concerns over the 81-year-old’s mental and physical condition. For months, however, Biden had been in denial. If anyone wants to look for an on-screen parallel, it might be Bartlet hiding a multiple sclerosis diagnosis while running for president.The final season of The West Wing saw Bartlet passing on the torch to fellow Democrat Matthew Santos, played by Jimmy Smits. He becomes America’s first Latino president after defeating Senator Arnold Vinick of California, portrayed by Alan Alda as the kind of old school Republican who is now an endangered species in the Trump era.Nothing, perhaps, dates The West Wing more than that. More

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      The Guardian view on Joe Biden: Democrats must seize the wheel, not drift to disaster | Editorial

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      The Democrats have no good options. The question now is which is the least dangerous of the bad ones. Democratic voters did not want Joe Biden to run again. Almost 70% judged him too old to serve another term as president when polled last year. Privately, many senior Democrats and donors shared their qualms. But with Mr Biden determined to stand, the consensus was to rally round. Now, after last Thursday’s catastrophic debate, the party is panicking. Only four months from the election, there is frenzied discussion of potential replacements.That would almost certainly require Mr Biden’s agreement. His wife, Jill, seen as key to his decision, seems to be urging him on. He is said to believe that only he is capable of beating Mr Trump again. Few agree. The lack of a formal mechanism to remove him does not preclude the effects of political gravity. Slumping polls, drying up funds and private, or even public, demands for his departure from senior Democratic figures could yet change his mind. A growing chorus of previously supportive media figures is urging him to quit.Mr Biden has achieved far more than even many sympathisers expected, despite merited internal criticism over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, and immigration. It is true that he has not received sufficient credit. It is also true that his debate performance was far worse than even pessimists had anticipated. It went beyond fumbling words, looking frail and sounding feeble. On abortion rights, his answer was incomprehensible. No confident rally appearances will erase this disaster.Though Mr Trump’s own rally addresses have been increasingly rambling, incoherent and vengeful, he was – by his standards – disciplined in delivery on Thursday. But what he delivered was a stream of lies. His first term, culminating in his attempt to overturn the will of the people in the 2020 election and his supporters’ storming of the Capitol, was profoundly damaging to the US. Far from any hint of repentance, his own words show that a second term would be far more destructive, and this time he has a cohesive and determined team to effect his plans. His rhetoric has become increasingly fascistic. The world is demonstrably less safe than before his tenure: look to North Korea, Iran, or any one of its emboldened autocrats from Vladimir Putin onwards. He would pull out of the Paris climate accord again. None of this lowers the bar for the Democratic candidate. It raises it, because it is essential that Mr Trump is defeated.Replacing Mr Biden at this late stage would be risky. There is no obvious candidate for a coronation, even if contenders could be persuaded to put personal ambition and political differences aside. Kamala Harris, the vice-president, has similarly dismal poll ratings. Though August’s convention would offer a stage for contenders, the party would be going to the nation with a relatively unknown and largely untested candidate.Yet Mr Biden is known and disliked. He was tested again on Thursday, and failed. He saved his country by standing in 2020. But the debate has forced many to conclude that the best way for him to save it in 2024 is to stand aside. Those closest to him must advise not in his interests, but the country’s. The Democrats are caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Whatever their choice, they must grasp the wheel before it is too late. If the vessel founders, it is not merely the party that is in danger, but American democracy itself. More

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      Joe Biden bombed during the debate. But who will ask him to step down?

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      In March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson abandoned his re-election bid, citing the “awesome duties of this office”, partisan divisions in the country and “America’s sons in the fields far away” in Vietnam. “I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,” Johnson said.It was a remarkable moment, recalls veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf: “No one gives up being the most powerful person in the world,” he says. “It just doesn’t happen.”But LBJ was an exception, Sheinkopf says, in part because of his wife. Lady Bird Johnson “was not wild about the idea of becoming a political spouse”, biographer Julia Sweig wrote.On Friday, as the White House mounted a push-back against calls for Joe Biden to abandon his re-election bid to allow another Democrat to step in, there is a dawning reality that despite Biden’s catastrophic debate performance the night before, the decision to step aside or remain and potentially go on to a catastrophic defeat is his to make, and his alone.And without any formal mechanism for Democrats to force Biden to step aside, the job of convincing him to do so would likely fall to Biden’s closest adviser: the first lady.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
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      Jill Biden has reacted forcefully in the past against calls for her to persuade her husband to step down, including to taunts that she is “guilty of elder abuse” and is said to enjoy the trappings of White House prestige. In Atlanta on Thursday, she led her husband off the stage and was heard to tell him: “Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question, you knew all the facts!”Others in Biden’s inner circle who may have the ear of the president include Biden’s younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who has played a key role throughout the president’s political career; campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez; campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon; campaign senior adviser Anita Dunn; and adviser Ron Klain.Alongside them are senior Democrats, some of whom fear that Biden’s weak re-election chances will drag down Democrat hopes to retain control of the Senate and retake Congress.Party heavyweights Bill Clinton and wife Hillary, who voiced her support for Biden on Friday, are key Biden backers who have his ear, as are former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, South Carolina congressman James Clyburn – who helped turn around Biden’s campaign in 2019 – and Delaware senator Chris Coons.But ultimately, it may be big Democrat donors whose pressure makes the biggest difference. The aging political leadership in US politics is ultimately a reflection of the elders’ proven ability to fundraise – but that ability on Biden’s part may now be threatened. One Democratic fundraiser who planned to attend a debate performance in the Hamptons on Saturday evening said Biden’s performance was “a disaster”, CNBC reported, and called it “worse than I thought was possible”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Everyone I’m speaking with thinks Biden should drop out,” the network quoted the person as saying. Another said simply: “Game over.”According to Sheinkopf, Democrats are in uncharted waters. “It’s a terrible position to be in, but on the other side you have Donald Trump, who many people do not like, more they detest him, but he has a loyal following. He may not have acquitted himself as a liar last night but he appeared strong and not in any way weak.“The only way Biden can leave is to leave himself, and he can’t leave unless there’s a replacement Democrats can agree on.”But any agreement is far off, except perhaps one: “Democrats will do everything they can not to have Kamala Harris because her polling numbers are atrocious and she is not trusted to be commander-in-chief at a time conflict is breaking out throughout the world.”The unenviable job of breaking the news to the US president falls now to one person, Sheinkopf said: “The most logical person to suggest to Biden he not do this for his health and for the good of the country is Jill Biden.” More

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      Jill Biden in disbelief special counsel used son’s death to ‘score political points’

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      First lady Jill Biden has expressed disbelief that the author of the US justice department’s report clearing her husband of criminal charges over his handling of classified documents prior to his presidency would invoke the death of the couple’s son “to score political points”.“Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death [in 2015] never leave him,” she wrote late Saturday in an email to donors supporting Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, days after special counsel Robert Hur’s report asserted that the president could not remember when his and Jill Biden’s son died.“If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years – you measure it in grief. … So many of you know that feeling after you lose a loved one, where you feel like you can’t get off the floor. What helped me, and what helped Joe, was to find purpose. That’s what keeps Joe going, serving you and the country we love.”The first lady, with her email, joined a chorus of critics who have condemned Hur for dedicating large portions of his report – which failed to produce an indictment – to Biden’s age and purportedly fading memory. That was “flatly inconsistent with longstanding [justice department] traditions”, former US attorney general Eric Holder said of Hur’s report.Jill Biden’s email on Saturday avoided explicitly naming Hur, once chosen for the role of Maryland’s US attorney by Donald Trump, whom Joe Biden defeated in the 2020 election and is seeking a second presidency. But she wrote that she felt it was necessary “not just as Joe’s wife, but as Beau’s mother” to address “this special counsel” whom Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, had appointed to investigate the president.“I hope you can imagine how it felt to read that attack,” Jill Biden wrote, seemingly directing herself to Hur. “We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points.”She went on to write that the day former Delaware attorney general Beau Biden died from brain cancer – 30 May 2015 – was “forever etched” on the hearts of her and the president.“It shattered me,” Jill Biden said of her 46-year-old son’s death. “It shattered our family.”The first lady also wrote: “I don’t know what this special counsel was trying to achieve.”Jill Biden’s email made it a point to acknowledge her husband’s age. The Democrat is 81, which is just four years older than Trump, the Republicans’ presumptive 2024 White House nominee.“Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day,” said Jill Biden, 72. “Joe has wisdom, empathy and vision.“He’s learned a lot in those 81 years. His age, with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset and he proves it every day.”Garland appointed Hur in January 2023 to investigate Biden’s retention of classified documents from his time as Barack Obama’s vice-president. The documents in question included some found at his home and former thinktank.The 388-page report took away the specter of Biden facing criminal charges over his document retention. But it gave Hur’s fellow Republicans a key attack line by saying Biden came off as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died”.Jill Biden’s defense of her husband received a boost Sunday from the president’s re-election campaign co-chairperson, Mitch Landrieu.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m telling you, this guy is tough, he’s smart, he’s on his game,” Landrieu – a former White House infrastructure coordinator and ex-New Orleans mayor – said of Biden on NBC’s Meet the Press.Landrieu, also a former lieutenant governor of Louisiana, added: “This kind of nonsense that he’s not ready for this job is just a bucket of BS that’s so deep your boots will get stuck in it.”Trump, too, has drawn questions about his mental acuity by flubbing the names of prominent political figures and sounding unsure about whether the second world war occurred.However, a notable NBC News poll recently found Trump, for the moment, held the edge with voters on the issue of having the necessary mental and physical health to be president – despite his facing more than 90 pending criminal charges, including for trying to subvert his 2020 electoral loss. And a separate ABC poll on Sunday showed 86% of Americans think Biden is too old for another term in the Oval Office.The focus of the US’s recent political discourse on Biden and Trump’s mental fitness itself has prompted a debate on what constitutes a natural verbal stumble and what qualifies as a sign of cognitive decline.Experts generally say that misremembering names and dates is not unusual, especially in environments that are stressful or rife with distractions, which public speaking appearances can be for politicos.In Biden’s case, his interviews with Hur were held right after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, which was a crisis for the president’s administration and for the rest of the world. More

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      Jill Biden tests positive for Covid-19 but president’s test is negative

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      Jill Biden tested positive for Covid on Monday night, the White House said, the second time the first lady has tested positive for the virus.“She is currently experiencing only mild symptoms. She will remain at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware,” the first lady’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, said in a statement.Joe Biden, scheduled to leave on Thursday for a G20 meeting in India, tested negative for Covid on Monday evening. But the president “will test at a regular cadence this week and monitor for symptoms”, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement. The first lady’s positive result came after the Bidens spent Labor Day weekend together.Jill Biden previously tested positive for Covid in August last year. Joe Biden tested positive the previous month.There has been a late-summer uptick in Covid cases across the United States. Experts are closely watching two new variants, EG.5, now the dominant strain, and BA.2.86, which has attracted attention from scientists because of its high number of mutations. Experts have said that the United States is not facing a threat like it did in 2020 and 2021. “We’re in a different place,” Mandy Cohen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC News last month. “I think we’re the most prepared that we’ve ever been.”New Covid vaccines and booster shots are expected to be available this fall. More

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      White House releases show Biden’s book royalties fell sharply last year

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      Joe Biden’s personal finances changed little between 2022 and the previous year, though his book royalties fell sharply, according to White House financial disclosure reports released on Monday.Biden earned between $2,500 and $5,000 in book royalties in 2022, down from $30,000 a year earlier. He also earned less than $3,000 in “speaking and writing engagements”, from close to $30,000 last year, the disclosures show.The disclosures, which included Jill Biden’s income, showed her book royalties also dropped. She earned between $5,000- $15,000 in 2022 compared to $15,000- $50,000 from book sales a year earlier.The report also showed the couple’s assets were worth between $1.09m and $2.57m.They owe between $250,000 and $500,000 on a mortgage on their Delaware home, plus between $45,000 and $150,000 on other loans.In April, the Bidens released their federal tax return, showing the couple earned nearly $580,000 last year and paid an effective federal income tax rate of 23.8%. The Bidens reported an income of almost $611,000 in 2021, about $4,000 more than they made in 2020, according to tax documents released by the White House.The federal tax return for Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, also released in April, showed $457,000 in income.The vice-president earned just over $41,000 in royalties for her 2019 memoir and $40,209 from her 2019 children’s book, according to the disclosure forms released by the White House on Monday.Biden receives a $400,000 salary as the US president while Jill Biden earned $82,335 as an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Harris receives a salary of $235,100 as vice-president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe remainder of their income is drawn from investment interest, pensions, annuities, distributions from retirement accounts and social security as well as a corporation that collects their book royalties, according to the joint tax return.The couple’s annual income has dropped in recent years, falling by more than a third when Biden ran for president in 2020 from almost $1m in 2019 to $607,336 in 2020. Harris and her husband saw their earnings dramatically decline from $3.1m in 2019 to $1.7m in 2020. More