Jill Biden emerges as center of gravity for first family
(L-R) US First Lady Jill Biden, Hunter Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden, leave the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Delaware, on June 11, 2024, after he was found guilty. Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON — One day, she is firmly grasping the hand of her president husband at the White House. Then she is in court in Delaware, supporting their son Hunter.
As election season ramps up in the United States, First Lady Jill Biden is emerging as the rock of the presidential family, which has known its share of trauma.
On Tuesday, she was at the side of the president’s youngest son as a jury in Wilmington found him guilty of federal gun charges — a historic first criminal prosecution of the child of a sitting US leader.
READ: US President Biden’s son convicted on all charges in gun case
The 73-year-old first lady has been a near-constant presence in the courtroom, even traveling back and forth across the Atlantic multiple times to fulfill her family and official obligations.
After court last Wednesday, she headed to France to be at Joe Biden’s side for ceremonies Thursday marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. The next day, she was back in court.
And then Saturday, she was once again in Paris for a state dinner at the Elysee palace in her husband’s honor. She smiled broadly for cameras in her Schiaparelli gown, without a visible trace of fatigue or stress.
‘Glue’
Biden, an English professor, is smiling and warm at public events, well aware that she should not distract from her husband, but serve as a positive force for his image.
While the 81-year-old president can sometimes seem stiff and make more than the occasional gaffe, the first lady often takes his arm or hand, seemingly guiding him through the daily challenges of White House life.
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“She’s the glue that held (my family) together, and I knew that I wanted to marry her shortly after I met her,” the president once said in an interview.
Jill Biden entered his life in 1975. She was separated from her first husband at the time, and the senator from Delaware was a young widower, having lost his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash. He was a single father to Beau and Hunter.
‘100 percent sure’
The politician with the broad grin and early-onset baldness ardently courted the blonde, blue-eyed Jill, whom he first saw in an ad for a local park in Wilmington.
He had to ask her to marry him five times before she said yes.
Beau and Hunter “had lost their mom, and I couldn’t have them lose another mother. So I had to be 100 percent sure,” she later said.
The couple had one daughter together, Ashley.
When Beau Biden died in 2015 after a battle with brain cancer, Joe Biden — then Barack Obama’s vice president — plunged into a deep sadness.
He later said he thought about taking his own life when Hunter sank into drug addiction.
Jill Biden, at least outwardly, remained stoic.
At the White House
Once her husband moved into the White House in 2021, she took on the classic first lady role, supervising the decor and menus at the presidential mansion and taking on crowd-pleasing issues like supporting military families and promoting reading.
But she also kept teaching at Northern Virginia Community College in the Washington suburbs — a move that was unheard of. Like Michelle Obama, she found relief in exercise, sometimes taking public SoulCycle or barre classes.
READ: In her quiet way, Jill Biden reinvents role of US first lady
While she may not be an ever-present aide to her husband, she serves as something of a political compass, media say — most agree Biden would not have run for reelection against his predecessor Donald Trump without her approval.
Not only did she give the green light, but she has actively participated in the campaign so far, crisscrossing the country for fundraisers and occasionally even making public statements, a break with her usual low-key tone.
“I believe Americans are going to choose good over evil,” she said late last month on ABC talk show “The View” when asked about the November election.
