Joe Biden. President of the United States on the third attempt. Interesting Facts From His Life / GORDON

What happened

The 46th President of the United States will be the Democratic candidate, former Vice President and Senator Joe Biden. Although the official counting of votes in several states is still ongoing, Biden has already won more than the minimum necessary to win in the form of 270 electoral votes.

The main Democratic rival in the electoral race, current President Donald Trump, lagged far behind with 214 electoral votes. And while Trump threatens to sue and achieve an “honest vote count,” Biden accepts congratulations from leaders of other countries, for example: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Canadian Justin Trudeau and President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Help “GORDON”… The 2020 US presidential election broke several records. First, voter turnout reached a record high in the past 120 years, with about 160 million Americans turning out. Second, Biden, who turns 78 on November 20, will become the oldest president in American history. Third, for the first time in 28 years, an American president has not been reelected for a second term (before Trump, the last such president was George W. Bush, who was defeated in 1992 by Bill Clinton after his first presidential term).

GORDON has compiled the most interesting data from the personal life and political career of Joe Biden, who, after his inauguration on January 20, 2021, will lead the United States for four years.

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Interesting facts from the winner’s biography

Fact number 1… Biden tried three times to become president of the United States. He first ran for the highest office in the state more than 30 years ago, in the 1988 election. For a time, young Senator Biden even led Democratic candidates in the amount of sponsored funds raised, but scandals broke out, ending his presidential ambitions.

Biden was convicted of lying and plagiarism. During the election campaign, he claimed that he was the best graduate from high school, college, and law school. The journalists denied his words, having obtained Biden’s results during his studies, there were poor grades. In addition, the Democratic candidate was convicted of plagiarism: during one of his speeches, he “borrowed” much from the speech of the leader of the British Labor Party, Neil Kinnock. After these two scandals, Biden withdrew his candidacy for the presidential election, claiming that he was crushed by the “hypertrophied shadow of past mistakes.”

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20 years later, Senator Biden enters the presidential race for the second time, but he again withdraws his candidacy when in January 2008 he obtained the fewest number of votes from the Democratic candidates. That year, the presidential election was won by Barack Obama, whom Biden called “a smart, handsome, clean African American boy.” This did not stop Obama from choosing Biden as his vice president. The politician held this position for eight years in a row, from 2009 to 2017.

The third attempt to become president was successful for Biden.

Fact number 2… Before becoming vice president, Biden was a senator from Delaware for nearly 36 years, from 1973 to 2009. In addition, he was elected at the age of 30, the minimum age in the United States to become a senator. Biden was the sixth youngest senator in North American history.

In 1974, the respected Time magazine named the young Senator Biden as one of the “200 faces of the future that will make history.” However, Biden’s political career could be cut short on takeoff. In 1972, Biden’s first wife, Nelia, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident; Two young sons, Joseph and Hunter, miraculously survived but were seriously injured. The newly elected young Senator Biden spends night and day in the hospital with his children and refuses to participate in politics any longer. The then head of the Democratic Party, Michael Mensfiel, still persuades him to take the Senate oath. The ceremony took place right in the hospital room where Biden’s children lay.

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Biden had to survive the death of another of his children. In 2015, his oldest son, Delaware Attorney General Joseph Biden, 46, died of brain cancer. The politician has two children left: a son, Hunter, and a daughter from Ashley’s second marriage. In addition, the politician has five grandchildren.

Fact number 3… Biden was born into a Catholic family of immigrants from Ireland, he is the oldest of four children, his father sold cars. As a child, Biden stuttered a lot, but in his own words, he overcame this speech impediment by reciting Irish poetry out loud.

Fact number 4… In 1988, Biden was diagnosed with a cerebral two-vessel aneurysm, was hospitalized in critical condition and underwent emergency surgery. He was able to return to work in the Senate only after seven months.

Fact number 5… The story of his relationship with Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev was released by Biden himself in 2007 during the Democratic Party primaries. The corresponding fact-check was conducted by The Washington Post. It turned out that during a dispute with his party rival Bill Richardson over who has more experience in international politics, Biden boasted of leading the American delegation, which discussed with the Soviet secretary general the terms of the Treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons. The newspaper reviewed the senator’s statement and found that he, to put it mildly, made up the story.

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Biden and Ukraine

There are many things that connect the winner of the presidential race with Ukraine, both positive and negative. Biden has been in charge of the leadership of Ukraine in the Obama administration since 2014 and flew to Kiev on a working visit more than once.

In December 2015, speaking from the Verkhovna Rada rostrum in Kiev, Biden strongly condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and called for the introduction of tough sanctions against the Kremlin.

“In the 21st century, we cannot allow countries to change their borders by force. These are basic rules. And if we deviate from them, we will regret it. Russia has violated these basic rules and continues to violate them. Today Russia has occupied the territory. sovereign of Ukraine. Let me be completely clear: America does not and will never recognize Russian attempts to annex Crimea. It’s that easy to understand: there is no excuse for this, “Biden said.

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In January 2018, Biden said that in exchange for $ 1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, he demanded that President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk remove Attorney General Viktor Shokin.

“I am desperately excited about the regression in the fight against corruption in Kiev. Here is a specific example. I was assigned a task in Ukraine. So I remember going there to convince our team that we should provide Ukraine with loan guarantees to long term. I went to Kiev 12-13 times and in the end I had to announce that we are offering another $ 1 billion in loan guarantees. I received promises from Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the attorney general, but they did not, “he said. Biden.

“And that son of a bitch was fired, in his place they put someone they trusted at the time,” recalled the former vice president of the United States.

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Shokin responded that Biden’s statement confirmed once again that his dismissal was illegal and was due to the fact that he opened criminal proceedings against the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Group, which is associated with the former minister of ecology in the government of Mykola Azarov, Mykola Zlochevsky. Hunter, Biden’s son, was on the board of directors of this company.

In March 2019, then-Ukraine Attorney General Yuriy Lutsenko hinted that Shokin’s resignation was related to criminal proceedings, which contained material that members of Burisma’s board of directors, including Hunter Biden, received $ 17 million, whose origin was questionable. In May, Lutsenko said his department had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter.

By the way, on the day of the official announcement of Biden’s participation in the election campaign, Hunter resigned from the Burisma Board of Directors.

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In October 2019, during a televised debate with Trump, Biden said he did not see a conflict of interest between his work in public service and the inclusion of his son Hunter on the board of directors of the Burisma gas company. “My son did nothing reprehensible. I did not do anything reprehensible. There was no conflict of interest. My son made his own decision. [работать в Украине]I’m proud of the choice he made, “emphasized Biden.

In October 2020, during the election campaign, Biden, if he wins the presidential election, promised to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, as well as assistance in the fight against corruption.

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