Earlier this month, as anti-Israel protests raged on college campuses and the country continued to face down a series of historic crises, Joe Biden marked a new personal milestone – his 460th day of vacation since taking office.
In total, the president has spent nearly 40 percent of his tenure off-duty and away from the White House, including 142 days last year alone. As millions of Americans struggle to afford rent and put food on the table, Biden has earned a reputation for himself as the “Slacker in Chief” – something which is likely to earn the ire of voters come election season.
Most of Biden’s vacation time has been spent at his beach house in Delaware, where he took no less than 30 trips last year. Despite Biden’s staff claiming that he “can work from anywhere” and “works every single day of the week,” the president has frequently been photographed reclining by the ocean after departing the White House for a long weekend away.
Biden has notably been away from Washington D.C. during several of the tensest moments of his presidency, including the collapse of the Afghan government, the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the discovery of Chinese spy balloons over the United States, and the outbreak of deadly wildfires in Hawaii. In the latter case, Biden took criticism from both the left and right for twice declining to comment on the disaster and then vacationing at billionaire Tom Steyer’s mansion in California before finally making it to the Aloha State.
While Biden appears to enjoy his time vacationing, a substantial number of Americans are not able to afford that same luxury thanks to his policies.
One recent survey found that 43 percent of Americans believe their “dream vacation is still financially challenging.” Another 19 percent of Americans say that a vacation is “not affordable now.” In another survey, 47 percent of Americans said that they plan to skip going on a vacation this summer, citing affordability as the main reason.
In addition to the amount of time he has spent on vacation, Biden is also now in hot water over apparent ethics violations stemming from his trips. According to recent reporting from The New York Post, “Biden took four vacations at the homes of wealthy supporters in 2023, none of which were listed as gifts on the forms signed by the president.”
Those trips included two at the beachfront home of software company founder Bill Neville, a six-day stay at billionaire hedge fund founder David Rubenstein’s compound in Nantucket, and nine days at Steyer’s Lake Tahoe retreat. In all four cases, the homeowners are not believed to have been present – meaning Biden was effectively receiving the lodging as a gift. Omitting those trips from his official gift disclosure filings is an apparent violation of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. If Biden didn’t pay fair market value for the stays (something which seems unlikely given that they’re houses of donors and political allies) it would be an even more significant violation.
Ironically, the law Biden appears to have violated is the same one Democrats and the liberal media have dishonestly attempted to use to implicate Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in wrongdoing. As the Post also notes, the allegations against Biden were levied just “days after ProPublica was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for chronicling Supreme Court justices’ non-disclosures under the same transparency rule.”
Moreover, despite spending more than one-third of his time in office on vacation, Biden has lobbed criticism at Congress for taking traditional scheduled recesses. In February, he called it “bizarre” and “outrageous” when the House of Representatives took a scheduled two-week break. As Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) put it, “Biden’s entire presidency has been a vacation from reality,” specifically noting the president’s two-week trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands last December as the border crisis reached new heights.
The corporate media’s hypocrisy in covering Biden’s vacation time is equally glaring. During Trump’s presidency, mainstream outlets produced an endless stream of stories on the number of days the 45th president supposedly spent on vacation.
But that tally included weekend days where Trump played golf at his Sterling, Virginia property outside Washington, D.C. in the morning and returned to the White House in the afternoon, often for calls with world leaders or other business. Meanwhile, Biden frequently jets off to Delaware on Thursday or Friday with nothing on his public schedule without any of the same scrutiny from the media.
Everyone, even the president, deserves a vacation sometimes. But in Biden’s case, it seems he thinks vacation is the job. With so many pressing issues facing the country, Americans need and deserve a leader who is 100 percent committed to being the most powerful elected official in the world.
Alan Jamison is the pen name of a political writer with extensive experience writing for several notable politicians and news outlets.
