He’s the American Idle.
The 24/7 grind of the White House has been anything but for President Biden, who has devoted more days to downtime than any of his recent predecessors, according to an analysis of press-pool reports.
This Labor Day weekend, Biden once again plans to be 10 toes up at his Rehoboth Beach summer home — after a short trip to Florida to view Hurricane Idalia’s wreckage.
As of last Sunday, Biden has spent all or part of 382 of his presidency’s 957 days – or 40% — on personal overnight trips away from the White House, putting him on pace to become America’s most idle commander-in-chief, according to data calculated by the Republican National Committee and confirmed by The Post using White House reports of Biden’s movements.
“We have millions of illegal immigrants pouring across our borders. Violent crime is surging. Inflation is crushing hard-working Americans. Our enemies around the world are emboldened,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told The Post. “Meanwhile, Joe Biden is filmed on the beach with his handlers preventing him from speaking to the media to answer basic questions Americans deserve answers to.
“It’s shameful.”
The running relaxation ratio for Biden easily outstrips that of the previous American Idle, George H.W. Bush, who spent 36% of his presidency off duty and away from Washington, according to tallies.
Biden’s 40% out-of-office ratio far surpasses that of former President Donald Trump, who spent 26% of his presidency on personal trips out of Washington — 381 of his 1,461 days in office.
In contrast, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama vacationed for just 11% of their two-term presidencies — and workhorse Jimmy Carter took only 79 days’ worth of breaks, accounting for 5% of his single term in office.
The president’s “vacation” days include 100 of the 135 weekends since his inauguration spent secluded in one of his two Delaware homes, at Camp David in Maryland, or in the mansions of billionaire pals.
As the 80-year-old president’s public stumbles become more frequent, with 77% of Americans saying he’s too old to be re-elected and a new book reporting that he admits to feeling “tired,” some critics point to Biden’s age as the reason for his excessive R&R.
“With President Biden, it’s not only that he’s absent in mind, he’s increasingly absent in body,” said Heritage Foundation Fellow Joel Griffith.
“I just pray for his health and family as he continues to decline,” said lefty firebrand Cornel West, running for president as a Green Party candidate.
“At a time when so many families are having to cut back their vacation time thanks to inflation, Biden’s gone on vacation almost 12 days per month, more than triple the rate that Obama was taking,” Griffith said.
Meanwhile, Biden’s away-day activities remain almost completely shielded from public view.
The rotating White House press pool frequently goes entire days without even a glimpse of the president when he’s out of the capital — and his administration has refused to cough up visitor records covering his extensive time out of the White House.
In May, the Secret Service flatly rejected The Post’s Freedom of Information Act request for emails identifying Biden’s off-day visitors — data also sought by the House Oversight Committee.
“With the amount of time this president is spending away from the White House, visitor records should be made public from all of Joe Biden’s residences,” said committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.). “Americans deserve the transparency they were promised from the Biden administration. All they are getting is obstruction.”
Griffith said, “Just as a matter of respect to the American people, he should show us who’s going to be there — especially considering the track record. We know that Biden was for a time unlawfully storing documents in his garage in Delaware, and his son . . . appears to have some very shady business dealings. I think that we’re entitled to know who else is there with him.”
Biden’s retreats have coincided with some of his presidency’s most notorious debacles. “The fact that these vacations are falling during national emergencies only adds to the feeling by some that he should not be running for re-election,” said Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.
Biden was off the clock for the following crises:
- When Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, 2021, amid Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan pullout, Biden was hunkered down at Camp David for a six-day stay. “Joe Biden apparently cares more about his long vacation than he does about the thousands of Americans stuck behind Taliban lines,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted.
- Biden’s embarrassing tumble off his bicycle during a 2022 stay at Rehoboth Beach capped a woeful week for the American economy, when the Dow closed below the 30,000 mark for the first time since January 2021 and the cost of regular unleaded gas surged to more than $5 per gallon.
- On the second day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — while President Volodymyr Zelensky rebuffed a US offer to evacuate him, saying “I need ammunition, not a ride” — Biden was holed up in his Wilmington, Del. home.
- This year, Biden was away for a four-day weekend when a Chinese spy balloon first entered US airspace on Jan. 28. A week later, as the craft flew over sensitive American military sites, he overnighted at his Wilmington, Del. home, then was out of pocket at a family funeral when the balloon was shot down on Feb. 4.
- The toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio occurred that same weekend, on Feb. 3 — a disaster zone that Biden has still not visited.
- Just last month, the president traipsed off to Rehoboth Beach as the death toll of the still-burning Maui wildfire hit 93 — ignoring the press corps’ shouted questions about the disaster and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate son Hunter Biden’s alleged tax and gun crimes.
“Of course, no one can predict when exactly a natural disaster will hit,” Griffith said. “But when you are gone nearly half of the time, the odds of you being off the job when calamity strikes are elevated.”
Some critics cited Biden’s persistent absence as evidence that he’s not actually in charge.
“It’s not ‘President Biden’, it’s Puppet Biden,” said GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
“The managerial class uses Joe Biden as a front to advance its own agenda,” Ramaswamy said. “To them, Biden’s cognitive impairment isn’t a bug, and his vacation-day record isn’t a problem: It’s a feature.”
Asked to comment, White House spokesman Andrew Bates referred The Post to a statement he issued in August 2022 — when Biden first came under fire for his repeated White House absences.
“The presidency is a nonstop job that chief executives can do from anywhere in the world,” Bates said a year ago. “Being somewhere other than the White House is not the same thing as being on vacation. And President Biden is constantly focused on the numbers that are most important to the American people: lowering costs for families [and] reducing the deficit to fight inflation.”
