LAS VEGAS (AP) – Her husband campaigned to help unite the country, but Jill Biden says “healing” a nation wounded by a deadly pandemic, natural and other disasters and deep political polarization is among her chief roles as first lady, too.
Wrapping up a year in which she saw herself as a key member of President Joe Biden’s team, the first lady told The Associated Press that she found herself taking on a role that “I didn’t kind of expect, which was like a healing role, because we’ve faced so much as a nation.”
Jill Biden spoke sitting in the sunshine near a swimming pool at a Las Vegas hotel a day after she and the president comforted families in Louisville, Colorado, where a huge swath of homes burned to the ground in a late December wildfire. She hugged people as they stood in front of the charred ruins of their lives and later offered public condolences for dogs and other pets killed in the blaze.
Such trips offer increasingly rare opportunities for the White House to step out of the partisan gridlock that defines Washington. For the most part, Jill Biden isn’t caught up in the capital’s frenzy, giving her the chance instead to serve as something of an ambassador between her husband’s administration and communities across the country, regardless of their political leanings.
Her visits to Colorado and to see victims of a deadly Christmas parade crash in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and a trip last Friday to tornado-ravaged areas of Kentucky are a “prime example” of the responsibility she feels, she said. It’s what she would want as a regular person who survived a natural disaster or other tragedy.