Joe Biden’s children won’t occupy coveted real estate in the West Wing if he becomes the next president.
Biden, 76, told CBS’ 60 Minutes his children wouldn’t have offices in the White House after being asked whether President Trump’s children, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump, have avoided conflicts of interest since their father’s election win in 2016. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are senior advisers to the president, while her brothers have active roles in their father’s campaign.
“Look, I wasn’t raised to go after the children. Their actions speak for themselves. I can just tell you this, that — if I’m president, get elected president, my children are not going to have offices in the White House. My children are not going to sit in on Cabinet meetings,” the former vice president and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have come under scrutiny for their lack of government experience before joining the Trump administration and for pushing their personal business interests on the campaign trail before the former real estate mogul took office. Kushner, in particular, has also been widely mocked for his broad portfolio of responsibilities, which includes negotiating peace in the Middle East.
Critics contend the couple should never have been let anywhere near the West Wing for employment, since anti-nepotism laws are on the books.
“What credentials does he bring to that? I mean, look, think of all the really solid people that were left — that were — started off in that administration. They’ve all left. They’ve all left. All the talent is gone,” Biden told CBS.
Biden’s second son Hunter Biden’s own business dealings have become a central focus for the impeachment inquiry into Trump. The younger Biden, a 49-year-old Yale Law School graduate-turned-lobbyist who was kicked out of the Navy Reserve in 2014 for testing positive for cocaine, held a $50,000-a-month position on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company at the same time his father played a lead role in the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
Amid torrents of criticism, the 36-year Delaware senator earlier this month vowed to ban his family and any person associated with him from posts with foreign companies.
“No one in my family or associated with me will be involved in any foreign operation whatsoever. Period. End of story,” Biden said in Iowa.
Joe Biden and his first wife, the late Neilia Biden, had another son, Beau Biden. Beau Biden, a Delaware state attorney general and Iraq War veteran, died in 2015 at the age of 46 from an aggressive form of brain cancer. Neilia and the couple’s one-year-old daughter Naomi died in 1972 in a car crash on their way home from Christmas shopping. Joe Biden and second wife Jill Biden also have a daughter, Ashley Biden, 38. Ashley Biden, a trained social worker, left her job at the Delaware Center for Justice shortly before her father announced his third bid for the White House in April.
