Ashley Biden: her story of loss, activism, family and love
President Joe Biden's personal life has been weighed down by the absence of his first wife and children Beau and Naomi. His wife and daughter died in a car accident and Beau died of a brain tumor. The siblings remaining are his son Hunter and his daughter Ashley. This is Ashley's story about loss, activism, family, and love.
In a one-on-one interview with Jenna Bush before President Biden's inauguration, Ashley Biden said that her late brother Beau was constantly with them. "I know Beau-y will be there with us [at the inauguration]. He's so proud. He's so, so proud. He's so proud of Dad."
At a particularly bad moment, right before Biden began to climb in the primaries, Ashley and her father went into a church one day. Suddenly a hymn started to play that was especially important for the politician: it reminded him of his son.
"Dad and I looked at each other, started bawling, hugged, and were like, 'This is Beau,' Ashley Biden said. "And then I was like, 'Beau, did you have to raise us really that far up?'" Right after that moment, Joe Biden became the frontrunner in the primaries.
The death of her brother Beau in 2015 was a hard blow to the family in general and to Ashley in particular. She had very strong ties with him. "He was such a fine man," Biden told Jenna Bush in NBC Today. "He was such a man of integrity, but he also had a kind of fun, goofy side — a great sense of humor. I just miss just being with him, just in the same room saying nothing."
Beau Biden was 46 when he passed, Ashley reminded Jenna Bush. "Dad will be the 46th president."
Ashley was born in 1981 in Wilmington, Delaware. She is the daughter of Joe Biden and his second wife, Jill. She has always had a very special relationship with her father. In the picture, Ashley Biden is six years old.
Both because of his Irish origins and Catholic upbringing, and because of the drama that Joe Biden had to endure, the family has been central to his life. It's a well-known fact that when Biden was a senator, he would return from Washington by train every day to sleep at home, even if it meant long hours.
In the picture, we see Joe Biden together with his whole family farewell to supporters after announcing his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President. Ashley Biden is in Dad's arms, this was back in 1987.
Ashley Biden studied Anthropology at Tulane University and worked as a waitress in a pizzeria to pay the bills. Her career interests were always with social work: first in a children's mental health centre, then in the Delaware Department of Social Services, and in the meantime she worked for an organization that pleads for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States.
Ashley has had some problems with law enforcement. They date back to university days. As a student, she was once arrested for possession of prohibited substances and reprimanded for a party with classmates that got out of hand. She never got in trouble since then.
For her brother Hunter, it has been a bit different. While making a career as a lawyer, he struggled with relations and addictions. At the beginning of his father's long campaign for president, Hunter Biden was still in rehab.
In 2012, Ashley Biden married Howard Krein, a physician, and businessman. Beau Biden had introduced her to Krein. The ceremony was interfaith: Catholic on the bride's side, and Jewish rites on the groom's side.
Picture: David Lienemann / Official White House Photo
Ashley Biden (in the picture with her mother) has her entrepreneurial side: she created the clothing brand Livelihood with a sustainable and ecological philosophy. Ashley Biden has shown to be a progressive of the 21st century with all the corresponding political choices.
Ashley Biden has participated in feminist summits and calls herself an advocate for animal rights. As a teenager she urged her mother to put pressure on beauty brands to abandon animal testing. A left-wing liberal like much of the younger Democrats, she may be a little more progressive than her moderate father.
Ashley Biden has long been involved in her father's political activity. Her unconditional support for him goes together with a discrete position in public, though. Ashley Biden's social media profiles have mostly been private.
On NBC's Today, in one of her rare interviews, she said: "The cruelty and the meanness, that’s why I don't have a social media account that's public. Part of it is also having boundaries for myself." Despite all this, CNN reported in November 2022 that Ashley Biden had started to appear more often in public alongside her parents. We will see what the future has in store for her.
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