Andrew Stiles of the Washington Examiner assesses a White House spin campaign.
It’s increasingly evident that Joe Biden, 81, is not mentally fit to serve as president, which means his handlers in the White House have been struggling to make the case that, actually, everything is just fine.
“President Biden is crisscrossing the country at a rate that often exceeds his predecessors’ travel schedules, talking to the American people about their lives and the issues that matter most to them,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Politico in response to Democratic criticism of the president’s light public schedule and aversion to press conferences. It’s all part of an “aggressive, modern, all-of-the-above communities and digital strategy,” Bates said.
CNN truth expert Daniel Dale did not return an email inquiry about whether or not he was planning to fact-check this claim, so the Washington Free Beacon decided to look into it.
Biden has made 363 trips outside of Washington, D.C., between 2021 and 2023, according to an analysis of presidential travel. Roughly one-quarter (91) of Biden’s trips were to Delaware, where he owns a 6,850-square-foot mansion in Wilmington and a beach house in Rehoboth, the site of his infamous bicycle crash. He has spent 279 days at one of those properties, plus an additional 42 days on vacation in other parts of the country, for a total of 321 days, which amounts to nearly one-third of his presidency.
According to our analysis, Biden’s travel and vacation schedule during his first three years in office was similar to that of former president Donald Trump, who was ridiculed for frequently visiting his properties in Florida, New Jersey, and Virginia. Trump made 391 trips outside the capital in his first three years in office; roughly one-quarter of those (110 trips) were to properties he owned. He spent a total of 277 days, or roughly one-quarter of his presidency, at Trump-owned properties and didn’t vacation elsewhere.
