President Biden has been leaning hard into his role as the nation’s empathizer-in-chief as he contends with multiple tragedies during his first month in office.
Biden will travel to Texas on Friday with first lady Jill Biden as the state grapples with the effects of deadly and rare winter storms.
The trip follows a moment of silence Monday and a candle-lit tribute from the White House to the 500,000 Americans who died of COVID-19. Standing in the White House Cross Hall, Biden addressed the country not only as president but as a man who is deeply familiar with loss.
“I know all too well. I know what it’s like to not be there when it happens,” Biden said, standing alongside the first lady as well as Vice President Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff.
“I know what it’s like when you are there, holding their hands, as they look in your eye and they slip away. That black hole in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it,” he said.
Biden, who ran his presidential campaign on uniting a country grappling with a deadly pandemic, has been touched by grief multiple times throughout his political career, losing his wife and infant daughter in a car crash, and decades later, his son to brain cancer.
