Joe Biden hits 1,000 days in office this week – but he has spent at least 300 of them either in Delaware or on holiday, Dailymail.com can reveal.
He also spent 89 days at Camp David, the rustic presidential retreat in Maryland, and 74 days on trips overseas,
Biden’s lack of time in Washington will fuel accusations from Republicans, and concerns among Democrats, that the 80-year-old president requires too much time off because of his age.
In addition, as Biden reaches the 1,000-day mark, he has conducted fewer solo press conferences than any modern predecessor apart from Ronald Reagan, and a fraction of the number of interviews held by Donald Trump or Barack Obama.
Joe Biden relaxes near his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on July 30, 2023
Joe Biden on the same beach in Delaware three days later
Biden was inaugurated on Jan 20, 2021, meaning he is set to serve his 1,000th day on Tuesday.
An analysis of his schedule, issued daily by the White House, shows he spent all or part of 300 days at one of his two homes in Delaware, or vacationing.
He owns a six-bedroom, 4,786 sq ft beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware which he bought for $2.74 million in 2017.
His other Delaware home is a 6,850 sq ft mansion in Wilmington which is worth over $2 million.
In addition to numerous trips to both Delaware homes Biden’s other recent holidays included a week-long trip to Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
He was flown to Lake Tahoe on Air Force One and then rented – for an undisclosed fee – a home from Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist who ran unsuccessfully for president as a Democrat in 2020.
On day one of his presidency Biden had an approval rating of 57 percent, according to Gallup.
However, much of the public good will began to dissipate in August 2021 around the time of the botched withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
His approval rating fell precipitously, reaching a nadir of 38 per cent in July 2022.
On his 1,000th day in office he stands at 41 percent.
Joe Biden’s $2.7 million beach house in Delaware
Joe Biden tucks into an ice cream in Michigan
Joe Biden on his bike in Delaware, where he has been on 300 days of his presidency
His team will draw comfort from the fact that, remarkably, that is exactly the same figure both Donald Trump and Barack Obama were on when they reached 1,000 days in office.
While Trump went on to lose, Obama recovered enough to win re-election.
However, Obama threw himself into a frenzied re-election campaign, and Democrat insiders have expressed growing alarm over Biden’s ability to do so at his age.
So far, he has shown a stark lack of willingness to engage with the media, and by extension, the public.
In his first 1,000 days he has conducted only 13 solo press conferences, according to figures compiled by the the American Presidency Project.
Although he has over a year to go in his first term Biden is highly unlikely to match the 44 solo press conferences Trump conducted as president, or the 30 Obama did in his first term.
He has so far held 17 joint press conferences with other world leaders, while Trump did 44 and Obama 43 in his first term.
By the end of June this year Biden had conducted 41 interviews as president, according to unofficial White House statistician Mark Knoller, a former CBS white house correspondent.
That compared to Trump’s 190 and Obama’s 329 interviews at the same point.
Biden did far more interviews as vice president than he does now. At that time he would sometimes appear live on three TV networks on the same day.
As president he has also mostly steered clear of print interviews, conducing his first one for People magazine rather than a newspaper.
In August an Associated Press/NORC poll found 77 percent of Americans believe Biden is too old for re-election. That included 69 per cent of Democrats.
David Ignatius, a supporter of Biden, recently wrote a column in the Washington Post arguing he should not seek re-election.
Meanwhile, Dean Phillips, a Democrat congressman from Minnesota, has begun making moves toward launching a possible primary challenge against Biden for the party’s nomination in 2024.
Mr Phillips, who is 54, has called on Biden to ‘pass the torch’ to a new generation.
Congressman Dean Phillips says Democrats need to put up a challenger to Biden
Last week Biden stumbled and had to grip on to a railing while ascending a short flight of stairs at an event in Philadelphia.
It followed a series of other high-profile instances of losing his footing, including while boarding, and de-boarding, Air Force One.
He also fell off his bike in Delaware last year and collapsed to the ground after tripping on a sandbag while on stage in June.
The White House has defended Biden’s decision to spend so much of his presidency in Delaware, rather than Washington.
Officials have said that he is ‘deeply proud of his roots’ in the state and is ‘constantly on the job regardless of location.’
They have also pointed out that his beach house in Delaware is only 100 miles from the White House, and also that it is ‘important for leaders to avoid becoming ensconced in Washington, DC.’
