Biden leaves home for 1st public appearance in months to lay Memorial Day wreath
(CNN) — Joe Biden left his home for the first time in months on Monday, sporting a face mask to lay a wreath at the Delaware Memorial Bridge Veteran’s Memorial Park.
The former vice president, who has not left his home in months for a public event due to the coronavirus pandemic, laid a wreath alongside roughly a dozen veterans and his wife, Jill, per a pool report.
“Never forget the sacrifices that these men and women made,” Biden told reporters before leaving the memorial. “Never, ever, forget.”
The day is a personal one for Biden: Beau, his oldest son and an Army veteran, died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. The former vice president has said “part of my soul was gone” after his son’s passing.
Biden hasn’t publicly left his house since mid-March, when the presidential campaign came to a screeching halt as the coronavirus altered much of American life. Biden has entirely campaigned from his home in Delaware since then, holding regular digital campaign events with different Democratic surrogates from his basement or living room.
Biden has left his home since campaigning stopped, but only for personal reasons, like walks or bike rides around his Delaware neighborhood.
Some Democrats have pushed Biden to find a way to better campaign during the pandemic, worrying publicly about what two months away from the campaign trail could mean for his November hopes.
The coronavirus, however, has not stopped President Donald Trump from traveling. With the help of rapid coronavirus testing equipment in the White House, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have traveled the country — often to key swing states — for official White House events.
Trump, while wearing a mask in private during a visit to a Ford factory last week, has fought wearing them in public, telling reporters recently that he did not want to “give the press the pleasure of seeing it” publicly. Biden kept his mask on during the event on Monday and briefly spoke to reporters with the mask on.
Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery and Fort McHenry in Baltimore on Monday to observe Memorial Day.