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The United States voted. Democrat Joe Biden (77) won the presidential election against US President Donald Trump (74). The president-elect will be sworn in on January 20 in Washington.
What do you have to know about the new president of the United States and his eventful life?
1. Joe Biden is a stutterer
As a child, Biden stuttered a lot, and the flow of speech still gives him trouble sometimes: “III” (“Ii-ich”) sounds like this when starting a sentence. His trick: keep talking calmly, whatever happens. That sometimes leaves you in a misstep. However, in general, Biden is considered a fluent and emotional speaker. The biggest criticism of his speeches: they are often very long.
2. Biden was just an average student
Unlike Barack Obama, for example, Biden did not attend an elite university. In general, the son of a car dealer was only considered an average student, plus his speech disorder. After graduating from the University of Delaware, Newark, with a degree in history and political science, he went on to study law and finished 76th out of 85 students. In his autobiography “Promises to Keep” (2007) he admits to having been a lazy student: “The work did not seem so difficult, it just seemed boring to me and I was a dangerous combination of arrogance and carelessness.”
3. Your first love died in a car accident.
Biden lost his high school sweetheart and his first wife Neilia († 30) and their baby Naomi in a car accident in 1972. Both sons Beau and Hunter (then 3 and 2 years old) survived seriously injured. Biden almost threw everything away for it. But Senator Ted Kennedy, brother of former President John F. Kennedy, and others convinced him not to abandon his political career. Biden was sworn in as a senator at his children’s bedside.
4. At 29, Biden was a senator.
In the 1972 United States Senate elections, Joe Biden, 29, was one of the youngest to win. Before assuming the position of vice president, he won five re-elections and represented the state of Delaware without interruption until 2009. In Congress, Biden is considered one of the most experienced foreign politicians and bridge builders between the parties.
5. The plagiarism scandal destroyed his first presidential candidacy
After just six weeks, Joe Biden exited the race for the 1988 presidential nomination. The reason: He had copied parts of a campaign speech by British Labor MP Neil Kinnock without citing the source. Although he correctly quoted Kinnock elsewhere, Biden had already made himself conspicuous as a plagiarist: In his first year as a law student, he had based a seminar article on a magazine article without a full source. Biden was allowed to repeat the course and passed.
6. Your confidant has moved into Trump’s camp.
Pollster Pat Caddell (✝68), who died last year, was Biden’s first doctor. Caddell had worked for numerous top politicians and Democratic presidential candidates, including Jimmy Carter. He later saw the Democrats as “elitists” who “hated” ordinary Americans. He changed political camps, advised Donald Trump and appeared regularly as an expert on Fox News. Trump is said to have taken over the abuse of Caddell’s “enemy of the American people” for the media.
7. In 2008 he lost to Obama
Three decades after his first bid for president, Biden tried again. But in January 2008, he withdrew from the race after receiving just under one percent of the vote in the Iowa area code. Obama appointed the seasoned foreign politician vice president.
8. The victim of harassment rejected Biden’s apology.
“‘Sorry’ is not enough,” criticized attorney Anita Hill in a 2019 interview with the “New York Times.” Biden had apologized to her two years earlier for her “passivity” at a Senate hearing. Hill had charged subsequent constitutional judge Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment in 1991, but was charged with perjury and then fought for her career. Joe Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, which questioned Hill.
9. A blind date led to the second marriage.
Biden’s brother arranged the blind date with newly divorced teacher Jill Biden (69) in 1975. The two went to the movies in Philadelphia and got along “very well,” as Jill revealed in an interview. “When we got home … he shook my hand as he said goodbye. I went upstairs, called my mother at one in the morning and said, ‘Mom, I finally met a gentleman.
10. Joe Biden had to ask for Jill’s hand five times
Jill Biden kept Joe waiting despite the obvious coincidence. The senator had to ask for his hand five times before he finally said “Yes”: “He already had two children. (…) It was about everything: Joe’s career, the state of Delaware, that was a bit intimidating. ”The two were married in June 1977.
11. The couple raised three children.
Jill did not officially adopt Joe’s children Beau († 46) and Hunter (50), but she was aware of her responsibility for Joe’s proposal: “I knew this marriage had to work. They had already lost their mother and she didn’t want them to lose another. So I had to be 100 percent sure. “Joe and Jill also had their daughter Ashley (39) together. The couple now have five grandchildren.
12. The couple mourns their son Beau († 46)
In May 2015, Beau, Joe Biden’s eldest son, a lawyer and politician, died of a brain tumor after years of illness. As Biden later revealed, Barack Obama offered him financial help during Beau’s illness: “He said, ‘I’ll give you the money. Whatever you need, I’ll give you the money. ” Joe Biden had considered selling his home to support the family of his dying son. Beau’s death is believed to be the reason Biden did not run as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016.
13. Your wife is a joker
Biden’s wife is known for her funny actions: “Things are so serious that I like to put a little humor.” Once, on Halloween, she put a plastic rat on the desk where her husband was giving a campaign speech. At night, the politician found the same rat on his pillow.
14. Jill Biden also wants to teach as a first lady
The doctoral professor with two master’s degrees in history and English never left her own career behind. Even as a second lady, she taught at Northern Virginia Community College. When asked by her students if she was Joe Biden’s wife, she succinctly replied, “She is one of my relatives.” And the teacher made it clear: even as first lady, she wanted to continue teaching.
15. Joe Biden is Catholic
Joe Biden is only the second Catholic to lead America after John F. Kennedy. Biden has Irish roots and his family is a member of the Roman Catholic Church. In the United States, the religion and beliefs of a presidential candidate are very important: Donald Trump, for example, benefited from the votes of the religious right in 2016. No president of the United States has openly claimed to be an atheist.
16. He fought with death
After suffering from a headache and neck pain for a long time, but dismissing and ignoring the symptoms as stress symptoms due to the plagiarism scandal, Biden suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms in February 1988: After a speech, he was collapsed in a hotel room and was unconscious for five hours. Two operations followed, during which Jill Biden strictly protected him from work. Joe Biden later said that experience made him “the kind of man I want to be.”
