Jill Biden emerges as centre of gravity for US presidential family

WASHINGTON – One day, she is firmly grasping the hand of her US President husband at the White House. Then she is in court in Delaware, supporting their son Hunter Biden.

As election season ramps up in the United States, First Lady Jill Biden is emerging as the rock of the US presidential family, which has known its share of trauma.

On June 11, she was at the side of the US 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.

The 73-year-old first lady has been a near-constant presence in the courtroom, even travelling back and forth across the Atlantic multiple times to fulfil her family and official obligations.

After court on June 5, she headed to France to be at Mr Joe Biden’s side for ceremonies on June 6 marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. The next day, she was back in court.

And then June 8, she was once again in Paris for a state dinner at the Elysee palace in her husband’s honour. She smiled broadly for cameras in her Schiaparelli gown, without a visible trace of fatigue or stress.

‘Glue’

Mrs 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 US 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.

“She’s the glue that held (my family) together, and I knew that I wanted to marry her shortly after I met her,” the US President once said in an interview.

Mrs 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 per cent sure’

The politician with the broad grin and early-onset baldness ardently courted the blonde, blue-eyed Mrs Biden, 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 mum, and I couldn’t have them lose another mother. So I had to be 100 per cent sure”, she later said.

The couple have one daughter together, Ashley.

When Mr Beau Biden died in 2015 after a battle with brain cancer, Mr Joe Biden – then US vice-president during then US president Barack Obama’s administration – plunged into a deep sadness.

He later said he thought about taking his own life when Mr Hunter Biden sank into drug addiction.

Mrs Biden, outwardly at least, 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 former first lady Michelle Obama, she found relief in exercise, sometimes taking public SoulCycle or barre classes.

While she may not be an ever-present aide to her husband, she serves as something of a political compass, the media say – most agree Mr Joe Biden would not have run for re-election 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, criss-crossing the US for fund-raisers 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 in May on ABC talk show The View when asked about the November election. AFP