Biden makes a whirlwind trip on Air Force One to vote in a minor primary in Delaware | International

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has introduced a last-minute change in his agenda for this Tuesday. After an event to once again celebrate the approval of the Inflation Reduction Act, the White House announced that the President and the First Lady, Jill Biden, were preparing to make a lightning trip this afternoon to Wilmington (Delaware), without specifying the causes. When she was going to get on the plane, the journalists asked her why she was going to Delaware: “To vote”, she answered.

The Republicans have criticized the president’s frequent trips to Delaware and it is foreseeable that they will not miss this opportunity. Biden had the possibility to vote by mail and also to vote in advance last Saturday, when she was in Wilmington for the weekend, but she did not do it either.

However, Biden has finally traveled with the presidential motorcade to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to take Air Force One. From there he has flown to the National Guard air base in Delaware, has traveled to the electoral college Tatnall, in Wilmington with his escort and after voting and briefly answering some questions from journalists on the march, has started the trip back to the White House.

The Delaware primary, on the other hand, was very low profile. In that state it is not time to renew a senator and in the only position for the House of Representatives there was only one Democratic candidate, Lisa Blunt Rochester, so there was no vote either. What was chosen was the Democratic candidate for the position of state auditor. The current one has been involved in accusations of nepotism and corruption and the party has supported another candidate, who according to the provisional vote has won by a very large majority. The rest of the Democratic primaries were for candidates for minor local offices.

The first questions to the White House spokeswoman this Wednesday have been about that trip: “I know there has been a lot of interest in this. Every American, as you know, has a sacred and constitutional right to vote. The president exercised that right, along with other Delawareans, last night,” replied Karine Jean-Pierre. “As you know, the president has a very busy schedule. He is the president of the United States. The best thing for him was to vote on Tuesday. He thought it was important to exercise his constitutional right to vote, as I just mentioned, and set an example by showing the importance of voting. He also had the opportunity to greet the poll workers and thank them for their work. And we know how election workers have been attacked in recent years, ”she added in responses to reporters during the flight to Detroit, where Biden is attending the car show on Tuesday.

With his trip to vote in a primary, Biden stands out from what has been done by previous presidents. Barack Obama voted by mail in the 2010 and 2014 Chicago primaries and there is no evidence that Donald Trump voted in the 2018 New York primaries. It is more common for them to travel to vote on general election day.

A Republican National Committee Twitter account criticized last week the president’s frequent trips to the state where he has his residence outside the White House. “Joe Biden is going to Delaware for another vacation weekend. Biden has spent 40% of his presidency – 238 days – on vacation,” he tweeted. President Trump frequently traveled to spend the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

Republicans have not immediately reacted to Biden’s whirlwind trip to vote. Some conservative media have begun to shave it off. In social networks, the controversy was served between those who criticized the president for the expense involved in the trip and the contradiction with his fight against climate change and those who described these criticisms as ridiculous and defended that Biden used the presidential plane to exercise his constitutional right. to vote, as opposed to Trump’s frequent trips to play golf.

Biden was elected president largely thanks to mail-in voting. The Democrats promoted it especially in the 2020 elections, in the midst of the pandemic. “The president has been voting in Delaware for decades. (…) I think that the fact that the president is going to vote sends a very strong message to the American people”, Jean-Pierre also said.

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