US President Joe Biden has joked to aides that the key to a long and lasting marriage is “good sex,” according to a new book about US first lady Jill Biden that casts a spotlight on their 47-year romance.
American Woman — The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden was authored by New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers and comes out this week.
The part about sex takes up only a few paragraphs in the 276-page book, but has already generated headlines.
Photo: Reuters
Rogers writes that Joe Biden opted against running for president in 2004, a decision punctuated to aides when Jill Biden entered the room wearing a halter top with the word “NO” scrawled on her stomach.
Joe Biden, now 81, told a group of supporters that year that he had little interest in running for president.
“I’d rather be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep,” he said.
The comment drew a shrug from a spokesperson at the time, who said then-US senator Joe Biden was “frankly totally in love with his wife,” Rogers wrote.
“Joe may have tamped down on his public bedroom declarations [in] winning the presidency, but he has joked to aides that ‘good sex’ is the key to a lasting and happy marriage, much to his wife’s chagrin,” Rogers wrote.
The book describes the anguish Joe Biden experienced when his first wife, Neilia, died in a 1972 car crash along with their daughter, Naomi.
He and Jill Biden married in 1977, but it took five proposals to get her to agree.
“I’ve been as patient as I know how to be, but this has got my Irish up. Either you decide to marry me or that’s it — I’m out. I’m not asking again,” Joe Biden said on the fifth try, Rogers wrote.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home