This is not a good sign. However, I’ optimistic that this can possibly turn around, but it will take for the Democratic Party to find its messaging and stop letting in these extreme knuckleheads take over our narrative.
@KevOnStage I could agree with this statement. You genuinely want to support black owned businesses but the price you have to pay is a bit extreme. Price gouging or cook your your own food are the options. I could never get food by the pound concept either.
America is a constant work in progress. Every generation must take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further—protecting what’s right, fixing what’s wrong, and making our union a little more perfect. 250 years later, that’s more important than ever.
I am truly honored and grateful for the thrill of a lifetime. I flew with @patrouilledefrance for a flyover around the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French, to celebrate our independence and ideals of liberty and democracy
Today we celebrate 250 years of American independence. As we pay tribute to those who made it possible, we also recommit ourselves to making real the promise of our democracy and stand against those who would undermine it.
Wishing everyone a joyous Independence Day!
Two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of Americans signed their names to a piece of parchment and made a promise no nation had ever made before: that we're all created equal, endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We're the only nation in history built not on ethnicity, or blood, or geography but on an idea. That's always been what makes us exceptional. We chose that path 250 years ago but that’s where the work began, not where it ended. Every generation has had to choose it again. At Valley Forge, at Gettysburg, on the beaches of Normandy, in the streets of Selma. Americans recommitted themselves to the principles on which our nation was founded.
Now it's our turn.
There's nothing guaranteed about our democracy. We have to fight for it, defend it, and earn it. Over and over, year after year. That's not a burden. That's what it means to be an American.
250 years in, we still haven't fully lived up to those words in the Declaration. But we've never walked away from them, and this July 4, I hope all of us can commit to one thing: that we never will. I don't believe we're as divided as we're told we are. I've bet my whole life on the American people, and I'm not stopping now.
Happy 250th birthday, America. Our story isn't finished. Let's keep writing it together.
It was such a joy getting to spend time with Joe and Jill, George and Laura, and Bill and Hillary last week. Barack and I will always be grateful for your constant friendship and support of our family over the years.
(And George, thanks for the mints!)
The Lessons I Learned from My Dad
I am not the man my father is.
I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther.
He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them.
Show up.
The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer.
Show up.
Most days that’s the whole job.
My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him.
I learned that grief doesn’t make you special.
My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs.
A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother.
He always noticed.
I learned that power is not the point.
The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves.
My father never did.
Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man.
The title changed.
He didn’t.
I learned that family comes first.
The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism.
It was every night.
He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost.
And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it.
Most of all, I learned that love is not soft.
Love is discipline.
Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching.
Love is answering the phone.
Love is staying.
Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow.
That love saved my life.
I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways.
He loved me anyway.
That’s the last lesson.
I am not trying to become my father.
I am trying to carry what he gave me.
And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.
To George and Laura, Bill and Hillary — we're grateful for your friendship, counsel, and devotion to this country. And to Joe and Jill, thank you for being on this journey with us.
📸 Great photo of @JoeBiden and @DrBiden with the Obamas, Bushes, and Clintons in Chicago today.
This is America. Not what is currently in the White House.