President Joe Biden told Anderson Cooper late Tuesday night that he is still getting used to living in the White House Residence, as he had “never been up in” the president’s personal quarters during his eight years as vice president.
Near the end of CNN’s town hall, Biden’s first since being sworn into office, the president joked that he still wakes up every morning, turns to First Lady Jill Biden and asks, “where the hell are we?” (RELATED: ‘We Don’t Know For Certain’ — Biden Doesn’t Want To ‘Overpromise’ But Hopes The Pandemic ‘Is Going To Be Done’ In A Year)
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“What I didn’t realize, I had been in the Oval Office a hundred times as vice president — more than that — every morning for the initial meetings, but I had never been up in the residence,” he continued. “I don’t know about you all — but I was raised in a way that you didn’t look for anybody to wait on you.”
Cooper double checked for clarification regarding Biden’s previous statement. Both former Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump frequently conducted official business in the residence.
Biden then answered that he “had only been upstairs in the Yellow Room,” which is frequently used by the president as a reception area when hosting foreign heads of state and other high-profile visitors to the White House, but added that the people who work in the complex have been “wonderful.”
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Biden spent the majority of the town hall discussing coronavirus, and while he said he didn’t “know for sure,” said he hopes that the pandemic will be nearly over one year from now.
“They tell me be careful not to predict things that you don’t know for certain what’s going to happen because then you’ll be held accountable,” he told Cooper. “A year from now, I think that there will be significantly fewer people having to be socially distanced, have to wear a mask, but we don’t know.”
“We don’t know for certain, but it is highly unlikely that by the beginning of next year school, traditional school year in September we are not significantly better off than we are today.”