Donald Trump is a man so bizarre that reports about his behavior inside the White House instantly took on a mythic quality. The Diet Coke Button. The taped-down tie. “Executive time.” Well-done steak with ketchup. Fast-food feasts. These images — at once unsurprising and completely unfathomable — will be etched in my mind forever. Someday I’ll scare my great-grandchildren when they inquire about my dessert preferences and I blurt out, “PRESIDENT GETS 2 SCOOPS OF ICE CREAM, EVERYONE ELSE 1!”
Now we’ve come crashing back to a world of tan suits and exactly seven almonds. When I read news reports about Joe Biden’s White House I feel pleased that America is making healthier choices — but there’s also an unnerving, dull quality, like I’ve just ditched my 12-soda-a-day habit and I’m trying to convince myself that tap water will be fine, thanks.
Of course, moderation is best in all things. And fortunately, if you squint really hard and comb through every article written on life in the White House since January 2021, it emerges that Joe Biden does have a few entertainingly odd habits.
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The vice-presidency has been famously (and grossly) compared to a bucket of warm spit, but there are a few perks, like enjoying a weekly lunch with the president. Biden carried on this tradition with Vice-President Kamala Harris, initially dining with her every week — but the Los Angeles Times reported in May 2022 that their lunches had become much rarer occurrences. Could that have something to do with the nightmarish twist Biden added to the ritual? According to the Washington Post:
Once a week, Biden eats lunch with Harris, following a pattern he established when he was vice-president to Barack Obama. The White House photo office pulls together a slideshow of images from their recent travel and events that the two watch on a monitor as they eat, allowing them to reflect on their week.
Okay, but at least while Harris was feigning interest in her boss’s vacation pics she got to enjoy an elegant meal, right?
Biden’s preferred lunch is a soup and a salad — usually a chopped salad with grilled chicken — and he is partial to orange Gatorade and Coke Zero.
It’s unclear if the orange Gatorade was served in a plastic bottle or poured into a glass etched with the presidential seal, and I’m actually not sure which is worse.
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President Biden is “pretty much a basic eater,” the First Lady revealed in a January 2021 interview with Parade magazine (click through for her family’s Parmesan chicken recipe). Jill Biden said her husband’s must-have food staples are “ketchup, peanut butter and jelly,” which tracks with the New York Times’ reporting on the president’s culinary preferences:
Mr. Biden is usually back in the residence by 7 p.m. for dinner with the First Lady. The president likes pasta with red sauce, while the First Lady prefers grilled chicken or fish.
Christopher Freeman, a caterer who worked for them as much as three times a week when the Bidens lived in the vice-president’s residence, said that Mr. Biden “eschews alcohol,” but that Dr. Biden was “an oenophile of the first degree.”
In the vice-president’s residence, the staff was instructed to keep the kitchen stocked with vanilla chocolate-chip Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Special K cereal, one bunch of red grapes, sliced cheese, six eggs, sliced bread, one tomato from the garden, and at least two apples on hand at all times, according to a preference sheet they kept at the home. Mr. Biden’s drink of choice: orange Gatorade.
Joe Biden’s love of ice cream is well-documented, but I’ll allow him to explain:
Biden has not, to my knowledge, proclaimed his undying love for any other sweets, but someone clearly thought long and hard about which White House snacks were right for the Joe Biden brand. They decided to ditch the Obama-era basket of apples for a Reagan bowl-of-jelly-beans vibe, per the Washington Post:
… Biden has stocked the outer Oval Office with saltwater taffy — from Dolle’s, a staple of the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Del. — and his favorite chocolate-chip cookies. In a nod to COVID, each cookie is individually enclosed in a wrapper with a gold White House seal, making them hot commodities among staff and visitors.
“He has the tastes of a 5-year-old,” an unnamed Biden adviser told the Post. Apparently that extends to accessories:
Biden sometimes takes his lunch on the go to various meetings, in what Coons described as “not quite a lunch pail, but it’s his little bag of stuff, so if he gets peckish in a meeting he can have something healthy” — often a protein bar, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a travel-size orange Gatorade.
Somehow there is no further reporting on what exactly this “little bag of stuff” looks like. Forget “always get the name of the dog” — always get a description of the president of the United States’ lunch box.
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Now that you know taffy, ice cream, and orange Gatorade are the foundation of the Biden food pyramid, you may be wondering how the president stays so trim. Well, you’re going to keep wondering. The Post reported that Biden works out every morning, but the White House really doesn’t want us to know if a Peloton is involved:
Biden begins his mornings with a workout that often includes lifting weights, and he meets regularly in person with a trainer. During the 2020 campaign, he biked regularly on both a traditional bike and a Peloton. His current Peloton preferences are something of a state secret, however; West Wing aides would not even reveal whether he had brought the interactive stationary bike with him to the White House.
Confused about how an interactive stationary bike could be a national-security threat? Allow the Times to explain:
But the Peloton tablets have built-in cameras and microphones that allow users to see and hear one another if they choose, and for Mr. Biden, therein lies the rub. The last thing the C.I.A. wants is the Russians and the Chinese peering or listening into the White House gymnasium. Last week, Popular Mechanics warned about the security risk under the headline “Why Joe Biden Can’t Bring His Peloton to the White House.”
The article prompted an explosion of chatter in Peloton world, but really, cybersecurity experts say, if Mr. Biden wants his bike, he can surely have it, though it might bear little resemblance to the off-the-assembly-line version after the Secret Service and the National Security Agency are finished with it.
Just imagine the national-security implications if the Russians got dirt on Biden, or the president jury-rigged his Peloton so he could post unhinged rants to Twitter.
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While Biden tries to stay fit, he’s still an 81-year-old heading into a difficult reelection campaign. After the president tripped over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony in June 2023 his staffers seem to be making a bigger effort to minimize potentially embarrassing falls. NBC News noticed that more and more, Biden has been foregoing the iconic image of the president trotting up a long staircase to board Air Force One, and instead using a shorter stairway to the plane’s belly.
The outlet reported:
Biden’s use of the shorter staircase, which, of course, reduces the risk of a televised fall that goes viral, has more than doubled since Biden’s tumble at the commencement ceremony, according to an analysis by NBC News. In the weeks prior to tripping onstage, Biden used the shorter set of stairs to get on and off the presidential aircraft 37% of the time. In the past seven weeks he’s used them 84% of the time, or 31 out of the 37 times he’s gotten on and off the plane.
The White House hasn’t confirmed that the shift is meant to reduce the chance of falls, and it isn’t totally unprecedented. NBC reports that JFK, who suffered from chronic back pain, was lifted into the plane on a cherry picker on at least one occasion.
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President Biden had an Obama tan suit moment on July 9, 2023 when he showed a little ankle while boarding Air Force One.
.@POTUS boards Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base as he departs for London, England. Biden was not socks with his sneakers. pic.twitter.com/3CRQJ5uqnR
This sparked a furious online debate, as the Wall Street Journal reported, with some arguing that Skechers are meant to be worn without socks, and others theorizing that he was wearing no-show socks (which some still consider a fashion faux pas). Obviously there’s nothing unusual about men going sockless in general, but it seems Americans have delicate sensibilities when it comes to presidential footwear.
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While Trump is still known as our most TV-obsessed president, it’s Biden who felt the need to install a TV set right behind the Resolute Desk. In April 2023, Politico revealed that the set has been hiding in plain sight:
The TV monitor sits behind Biden on another desk topped with picture frames, encased in a golden frame itself so as to be inconspicuous. But when there aren’t press cameras or dignitaries in there, the 10 or 12” screen is often turned on — and tuned to CNN. While Biden isn’t spending hours in his private dining room glued to a big screen as his predecessor was, several current and former White House officials told me that the president will keep an eye on his secret screen behind his desk and react to coverage during less formal meetings with staff.
You can see Biden’s sort-of secret TV in this shot of his desk from April 2023:
It seems Biden is using this TV solely to watch the news, not to catch up on his favorite shows — because he doesn’t really have any. In a July 2023 interview on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, Biden said, “Look, one of the problems I have is I don’t — and I should — I don’t watch much television.”
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Yes, “go to Joe 30330” lowered the bar considerably. But the New York Times reported that Biden’s grandchildren “serve as his lifeline to popular culture and consumer technology.” For example, they’ve exposed him to Mario Kart:
They also showed him TikTok (which Biden joined in February 2024), and how to use Venmo:
In addition to his wife, Jill Biden, their grandchildren — described as the center of the first couple’s world — are often at the White House, spending long weekends or parts of their week there. They have been known to show their grandfather apps like TikTok. One adviser said he had sent the grandchildren money using Venmo.
If you’re thinking of trying to Venmo Biden yourself, don’t bother. BuzzFeed already exposed the president’s secret account, which they deemed “a privacy nightmare for everyone.” It was quickly shut down.
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In the June/July 2022 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, First Lady Jill Biden revealed that she and the president have been “fexting” each other, which is a term they made up for “fighting over text” without consulting Urban Dictionary:
Which is not to say that [Jill] holds back when [Joe] frustrates her. The president does not get a pass. During the Obama years, they took to hashing out their occasional spats over text to avoid fighting in front of the Secret Service. (They christened it “fexting.”)
Not so long ago, she tapped out a message to him in a fit of pique. “Joe said, ‘You realize that’s going to go down in history. There will be a record of that.’” She grins. “I won’t tell you what I called him that time.”
The First Lady can curse him out, but Joe is right: her logic doesn’t check out. Rather than exchanging harsh words in front of few people who are sworn to protect their lives, the first couple are entering all their fights into the public record.
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In keeping with his folksy public demeanor, Biden “sometimes surprises staffers by stopping unannounced at their workstation, especially if he has heard some news about their family and wants to check in,” according to the Post. Sometimes this involves bugging his vice-president during the work day, per CNN:
He has found his old stomping grounds familiar, dropping into his onetime office in the West Wing one day last week to show his new vice-president the place on the window where his wife wrote him a Valentine’s Day greeting in 2009.
But it’s not all social calls and unsolicited Biden trivia. In May 2021, the New York Times reported that Biden has a “short fuse and an obsession with details,” when it comes to policy issues, and can take “days or weeks to make up his mind as he examines and second-guesses himself and others.” This process involves snapping at advisers:
Before making up his mind, the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic “journey” before arriving at a conclusion.
Those trips are often difficult for his advisers, who are peppered with sometimes obscure questions. Avoiding Mr. Biden’s ire during one of his decision-making seminars means not only going beyond the vague talking points that he will reject, but also steering clear of responses laced with acronyms or too much policy minutiae, which will prompt an outburst of frustration, often laced with profanity.
Let’s talk plain English here, he will often snap.
And even hanging up on people:
… several people familiar with the president’s decision-making style said Mr. Biden was quick to cut off conversations. Three people who work closely with him said he even occasionally hangs up the phone on someone who he thinks is wasting his time.
In July 2023, Axios reported that Biden is so prone to yelling that some aides avoid meeting with him alone:
The president’s admonitions include: “God dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!” and “Get the f**k out of here!” — according to current and former Biden aides who have witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts.
It sounds a little unnerving, but at least Biden hasn’t taken to firing aides via tweet for maximum humiliation.
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Joe Biden may have a bit of a temper, but the family member White House staffers really had to watch out for was Commander. The German shepherd was adopted in December 2021 and proceeded to bite his way through the White House, until he was finally rehomed with Biden family friends in October 2023.
As of February 2024 the number of officially recorded Commander biting incidents was up to 24 — and the number is certainly higher since that only includes attacks on Secret Service agents. It’s unclear why the Bidens allowed Commander’s misbehavior to continue for so long when his predecessor, another German shepherd named Major, was removed from the White House after biting a mere two people.
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One of the most trivial but still unfortunate consequences of the Capitol riot is that Biden — who estimates that he’s taken more than 8,200 round trips on Amtrak — had to cancel his plans to take a train to his inauguration. Fortunately, he now has more exciting transportation options, and sometimes he generously invites friends to join him on his commute back to Delaware. But as Senator Chris Coons told the Post, he can be an unreliable travel companion:
Once, Coons recalled, Biden phoned “and was like, ‘Hey, if you can be over in half an hour, I’m taking Marine One over to Wilmington. I can give you a ride home.’ ” (In the end, a snag in Washington scuttled the plans, and Coons had to find his own way back to Delaware.)
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Though Trump got way more flak for preferring the comfort of his own gold-plated homes, the Wall Street Journal reported in February 2024 that Biden has spent more time away from the White House than any recent president:
Biden has traveled to his home state [of Delaware] nearly half of the weekends of his presidency, spending all or part of 254 days there during his first three years in office. And more often than not, he extends his visits beyond the typical weekend enjoyed by most Americans, arriving on Friday and departing on Monday.
Biden’s travel to Delaware is on par with Donald Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. In his first three years in office, Trump spent all or part of 259 days at his Florida and New Jersey properties, according to former CBS News reporter Mark Knoller, who compiles data on presidential travel. That is five days more than Biden spent in Delaware in the same period.
Overall, Biden has spent more time outside of the White House on unofficial or semiofficial travel than any president since George W. Bush. When weekend travel, vacations and trips to Camp David are combined, Biden spent all or part of 408 days away from the White House in his first three years in office, compared with 291 days for Trump, 135 for Barack Obama and 478 for Bush in that same period, according to Knoller.
And while Biden always notes that he’s “extremely flattered” to live in the White House and has great respect for the staff, he’s made it pretty clear that he’d rather be in Delaware.
“I get up in the morning and look at Jill and say, ‘Where the hell are we?’” Biden joked at a CNN town hall, one month into his presidency. “I wanted to be president not to live in the White House but to be able to make the decisions about the future of the country … it’s a little like a gilded cage.”
It seems Biden’s opinion didn’t change as he settled in. When discussing life in the White House during another town hall in July 2021, he remarked, “It is very hard to get comfortable.”
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While you might think the addition of a cat would make the White House feel more like a home, it seems that hasn’t solved Biden’s problem. In January 2023 the president revealed that his new cat Willow is adding to his discomfort.
“Willow may walk in here any time now. She has no limits,” Biden said. “You think I’m kidding, I’m not. Especially in the middle of the night when she climbs up and lays on top of my head.”
A year later, it seemed Biden and Willow had settled into a detente. The Daily Mail reported that feline disruptions are now a key part of the president’s routine:
Joe Biden typically wakes up at 7:00am in the second-floor master bedroom suite of the White House and it is usually just him and his cat.
Willow, a four-year-old American short-haired tabby, serves as the presidential alarm clock crawling over the commander-in-chief to rouse him, a White House insider told DailyMail.com.
By this time in the morning, First Lady Jill Biden, an earlier riser is already up and doing a barre or spin class.
This sounds annoying, but it’s certainly safer than the president being woken up by Commander.
This post has been updated throughout.
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