Inside The White House With President Joe Biden

Architectural Digest

Today the 46th President of the United States Joseph R. Biden welcomes Architectural Digest to Washington, D.C. for a tour of the Oval Office and White House.

Transcript

00:00 The Architectural Digest, welcome to the Oval Office.

00:04 Come on in.

00:05 (upbeat jazz music)

00:08 This is the White House.

00:19 This is it.

00:20 On Inauguration Day, the outgoing president

00:23 has to be out by, I think, noon or 10 o'clock

00:25 in the morning.

00:26 Incoming can't come in 'til four o'clock,

00:28 so you can decide what furniture

00:30 and what decorations you want in the Oval Office.

00:32 I had asked my brother to help me set up my office in here

00:36 on the rug and the furniture,

00:38 'cause he's a better architect than I am.

00:40 What they do is, in suburban Maryland,

00:43 there is a facility that is a replica

00:47 in terms of dimensions of the Oval Office.

00:49 And so you go out there and pick the furniture

00:51 and the rugs you want, see what it looks like.

00:53 And so my brother knows my taste extremely well.

00:57 I love this rug.

00:59 I love the color blue.

01:00 That's the one thing I knew I wanted.

01:02 The rest, my brother picked out for me.

01:05 And he had called a good friend, John Meacham,

01:07 the presidential historian, for some help.

01:09 I've spent more time with the Chinese leader

01:16 than any other head of state.

01:17 And he asked me, he said, "Can I define America?"

01:19 I said, "Yes, I can, in one word, and I mean it.

01:22 "Possibilities, possibilities."

01:25 We Americans think anything is possible.

01:27 We would do it together.

01:29 And that's why John Meacham helped my brother

01:32 pick out those five portraits up there.

01:34 It's all about possibilities.

01:36 There's not a single thing we can't do.

01:38 This was the Resolute Desk that John Kennedy had.

01:45 And remember that famous picture where John John, his son,

01:49 where he came out from under the desk?

01:51 Well, he comes out this door here.

01:53 That's where he climbed out.

01:55 Well, I have a little grandson,

01:57 and what I decided to do when we came in here,

02:00 here, let me show you.

02:01 And that's my grandson,

02:04 Bowie coming out from underneath the desk.

02:07 It's really an incredible office.

02:09 I chose the things that sort of represent

02:12 why I got into public life to begin with, for real.

02:16 I wanted to be able to sit in my desk,

02:18 and when I looked down to see the two heroes I had,

02:21 one was Dr. Martin Luther King,

02:23 and the other is Bobby Kennedy.

02:25 Then I have a woman who refused to move

02:27 to the back of the bus, Rosa Parks.

02:30 I have her bused in here as well.

02:32 And there's one other person that was from that era.

02:36 This is Cesar Chavez of the farm workers.

02:39 He was organizing farm workers

02:41 in the southern part of my state at the time,

02:43 and I supported him.

02:44 I never met him, but I supported what he was doing.

02:46 It cost me in southern Delaware,

02:49 but I admired the hell out of him.

02:55 This is the love of my life and the life of my love.

02:57 This is my daughter, Ashley, on her wedding day,

02:59 and we're dancing the dance of father and daughter.

03:03 This one is really amazing.

03:06 This is on the night Barack and I were declared

03:10 Vice President and President of the United States.

03:12 My mom, who admired Barack a lot,

03:14 wasn't even supposed to be walking out on the stage,

03:16 and I said, "And now the next President

03:18 "and Vice President of the United States,

03:20 "Barack Obama and Joe Biden."

03:22 And my mother grabs Barack's hand there

03:24 and look a look in his face.

03:25 She goes, "Come on, honey, it's gonna be okay."

03:27 She walked him out on stage.

03:29 She never stopped being everybody's mom.

03:31 I have this rugby ball over here.

03:34 This is the all Irish rugby team.

03:36 I have two cousins who were stars on that team,

03:40 and they gave me this ball.

03:42 And then every time I've been sworn in any public office,

03:46 I've used this Bible.

03:47 It's just an incredible keepsake

03:50 that's been around in the family for a long time.

03:53 By the way, reason for Ben Franklin,

03:56 I gotta put that up because my kids went to Penn

03:59 and I was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

04:01 This moon rock, it's pretty cool.

04:04 It's literally a rock from the moon.

04:06 This is my '67 Corvette.

04:09 My dad didn't have a lot of money,

04:12 but he managed a dealership,

04:13 so when I got married, he gave this to me as a gift.

04:17 I still have it.

04:18 When I got elected President,

04:19 Scranton decided to take Interstate 81,

04:24 and the exit to Scranton used to be called

04:27 the Central Scranton Expressway.

04:30 They renamed it President Biden Expressway.

04:32 (laughs)

04:34 (upbeat music)

04:36 You know, there's a lot of other things in here

04:40 that are of consequence to me,

04:42 and I think of all the incredible things

04:44 that have happened in this office

04:46 over the last couple hundred years.

04:48 And it really is just an incredible honor to be here.

04:51 (upbeat music)

04:54 Let me show you back here.

04:58 People don't get to go back here very often.

05:01 I think these are great sketches of Frederick Douglass.

05:04 I have them put up on the wall here.

05:06 There's a private office back here.

05:08 This is where I come when I wanna get away a little bit

05:11 to work on a speech.

05:13 There's a great portrait of President Kennedy there.

05:16 Kennedy's didn't like it

05:17 because it made him look too contemplative.

05:19 I think it's a great portrait of him.

05:21 And on the wall here,

05:22 a lot of kids will send me these cartoons,

05:25 and I put them up on the wall,

05:26 and then I take pictures of them

05:28 and send them to the families,

05:31 which the kids get a kick out of.

05:32 I think they're really neat.

05:34 And this is the house I was raised in,

05:37 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on North Washington Avenue,

05:40 which, by the way, the last three blocks

05:43 at the end of North Washington Avenue,

05:44 they call Biden Way now, they renamed it.

05:47 [laughs]

05:48 [upbeat music]

05:50 This is a private dining room.

06:00 Not many people get to come back here.

06:02 Barack and I used to have lunch

06:04 of us eight years once a week in this room right here.

06:07 But I have a lot of personal family photographs back here.

06:11 This is a picture of my son, Bo, who's passed away.

06:15 That's my mom and my dad, and when I had darker hair.

06:19 [laughs]

06:20 And here, there are what they call command coins.

06:23 Command coins are given in the battlefield,

06:25 and the president has a command coin.

06:27 And my command coin has, on the back of it,

06:32 the Bo's unit, or went into Iraq for a year.

06:35 And so I'm gonna give you a copy, give you one.

06:38 If, in fact, next time I see you don't have it,

06:41 you have to buy the drinks, but you're in luck.

06:43 I'm the only Irishman who's ever met

06:44 this, never had a drink in his life.

06:46 [upbeat music]

06:48 Did you wanna see the cabinet room?

06:54 I wanna show it to you, come here.

06:55 [upbeat music]

06:58 This is the cabinet room.

07:02 Come on in.

07:03 There's only one chair in here

07:07 that's about two inches higher than every other chair.

07:10 That's the president's chair.

07:11 [laughs]

07:12 These chairs are really, really heavy.

07:15 On the back of each chair is the name

07:19 of the department they represent.

07:21 This is the secretary of energy here in this chair.

07:24 But there's a lot of really incredible things

07:27 that have happened in this room.

07:28 It's almost cathedral-like to me,

07:30 because when we're in here,

07:33 we're talking about things of enormous consequence.

07:35 [upbeat music]

07:38 [upbeat music]

07:41 And by the way, there's a tradition in my office.

07:46 These chocolate chip cookies are all homemade.

07:49 Thank you.

07:50 [upbeat music]

07:53 Thanks for coming by Architectural Digest.

08:03 By the way, I'm a subscriber.

08:04 I'm a frustrated architect.

08:05 Thank you very much.

08:07 Appreciate it.

08:08 [upbeat music]

08:11 (dramatic music)

08:13 you

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