Biden arrives in U.S. Virgin Islands to celebrate New Year's Eve

President Joe Biden traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands on Tuesday to relax for the New Year’s Holiday with warm weather and his family. 

The president and first lady Jill Biden departed from Washington, D.C., and headed to St. Croix, one of the three islands in the U.S. Caribbean territory. Biden’s daughter Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein, along with his grandchildren, Natalie and Hunter, joined the family vacation. 

The Biden’s have been using St. Croix as a tropical retreat since he was vice president from 2009 to 2017. This week’s visit to the Caribbean will be his first time returning to the U.S. Virgin Islands as president. He spent the last two holiday seasons in his home state of Delaware due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The trip will also mark the first time a sitting president visits the Virgin Islands since Harry Truman delivered a speech in St. Croix in 1948. 

“We’re tremendously honored,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett, who represents the Virgin Islands in Congress.

“In the past, when he and his family have come, of course, sightings of President Biden were almost a thing of legend,” she said.

“We always look forward to his coming and we really understand that this is a place of relaxation for him and Jill and whatever other family he may bring with him and so we leave him alone and let him just relax,” said Donna Christensen, who was Plaskett’s predecessor in Congress.

According to Biden’s aides, he and his wife enjoy spending the New Year’s holiday in warmer climates. 

“He usually says, ‘In my next life, I’m living in St. Croix,’” Christensen said in a telephone interview.