Today the 46th President of the United States Joseph R. Biden welcomes Architectural Digest to Washington, D.C. for a tour of the Oval Office and White House.
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00:00 The Architectural Digest, welcome to the Oval Office.
00:04 Come on in.
00:05 (upbeat jazz music)
00:08 This is the White House.
00:19 This is it.
00:20 On Inauguration Day, the outgoing president
00:23 has to be out by, I think, noon or 10 o'clock
00:25 in the morning.
00:26 Incoming can't come in 'til four o'clock,
00:28 so you can decide what furniture
00:30 and what decorations you want in the Oval Office.
00:32 I had asked my brother to help me set up my office in here
00:36 on the rug and the furniture,
00:38 'cause he's a better architect than I am.
00:40 What they do is, in suburban Maryland,
00:43 there is a facility that is a replica
00:47 in terms of dimensions of the Oval Office.
00:49 And so you go out there and pick the furniture
00:51 and the rugs you want, see what it looks like.
00:53 And so my brother knows my taste extremely well.
00:57 I love this rug.
00:59 I love the color blue.
01:00 That's the one thing I knew I wanted.
01:02 The rest, my brother picked out for me.
01:05 And he had called a good friend, John Meacham,
01:07 the presidential historian, for some help.
01:09 I've spent more time with the Chinese leader
01:16 than any other head of state.
01:17 And he asked me, he said, "Can I define America?"
01:19 I said, "Yes, I can, in one word, and I mean it.
01:22 "Possibilities, possibilities."
01:25 We Americans think anything is possible.
01:27 We would do it together.
01:29 And that's why John Meacham helped my brother
01:32 pick out those five portraits up there.
01:34 It's all about possibilities.
01:36 There's not a single thing we can't do.
01:38 This was the Resolute Desk that John Kennedy had.
01:45 And remember that famous picture where John John, his son,
01:49 where he came out from under the desk?
01:51 Well, he comes out this door here.
01:53 That's where he climbed out.
01:55 Well, I have a little grandson,
01:57 and what I decided to do when we came in here,
02:00 here, let me show you.
02:01 And that's my grandson,
02:04 Bowie coming out from underneath the desk.
02:07 It's really an incredible office.
02:09 I chose the things that sort of represent
02:12 why I got into public life to begin with, for real.
02:16 I wanted to be able to sit in my desk,
02:18 and when I looked down to see the two heroes I had,
02:21 one was Dr. Martin Luther King,
02:23 and the other is Bobby Kennedy.
02:25 Then I have a woman who refused to move
02:27 to the back of the bus, Rosa Parks.
02:30 I have her bused in here as well.
02:32 And there's one other person that was from that era.
02:36 This is Cesar Chavez of the farm workers.
02:39 He was organizing farm workers
02:41 in the southern part of my state at the time,
02:43 and I supported him.
02:44 I never met him, but I supported what he was doing.
02:46 It cost me in southern Delaware,
02:49 but I admired the hell out of him.
02:55 This is the love of my life and the life of my love.
02:57 This is my daughter, Ashley, on her wedding day,
02:59 and we're dancing the dance of father and daughter.
03:03 This one is really amazing.
03:06 This is on the night Barack and I were declared
03:10 Vice President and President of the United States.
03:12 My mom, who admired Barack a lot,
03:14 wasn't even supposed to be walking out on the stage,
03:16 and I said, "And now the next President
03:18 "and Vice President of the United States,
03:20 "Barack Obama and Joe Biden."
03:22 And my mother grabs Barack's hand there
03:24 and look a look in his face.
03:25 She goes, "Come on, honey, it's gonna be okay."
03:27 She walked him out on stage.
03:29 She never stopped being everybody's mom.
03:31 I have this rugby ball over here.
03:34 This is the all Irish rugby team.
03:36 I have two cousins who were stars on that team,
03:40 and they gave me this ball.
03:42 And then every time I've been sworn in any public office,
03:46 I've used this Bible.
03:47 It's just an incredible keepsake
03:50 that's been around in the family for a long time.
03:53 By the way, reason for Ben Franklin,
03:56 I gotta put that up because my kids went to Penn
03:59 and I was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
04:01 This moon rock, it's pretty cool.
04:04 It's literally a rock from the moon.
04:06 This is my '67 Corvette.
04:09 My dad didn't have a lot of money,
04:12 but he managed a dealership,
04:13 so when I got married, he gave this to me as a gift.
04:17 I still have it.
04:18 When I got elected President,
04:19 Scranton decided to take Interstate 81,
04:24 and the exit to Scranton used to be called
04:27 the Central Scranton Expressway.
04:30 They renamed it President Biden Expressway.
04:32 (laughs)
04:34 (upbeat music)
04:36 You know, there's a lot of other things in here
04:40 that are of consequence to me,
04:42 and I think of all the incredible things
04:44 that have happened in this office
04:46 over the last couple hundred years.
04:48 And it really is just an incredible honor to be here.
04:51 (upbeat music)
04:54 Let me show you back here.
04:58 People don't get to go back here very often.
05:01 I think these are great sketches of Frederick Douglass.
05:04 I have them put up on the wall here.
05:06 There's a private office back here.
05:08 This is where I come when I wanna get away a little bit
05:11 to work on a speech.
05:13 There's a great portrait of President Kennedy there.
05:16 Kennedy's didn't like it
05:17 because it made him look too contemplative.
05:19 I think it's a great portrait of him.
05:21 And on the wall here,
05:22 a lot of kids will send me these cartoons,
05:25 and I put them up on the wall,
05:26 and then I take pictures of them
05:28 and send them to the families,
05:31 which the kids get a kick out of.
05:32 I think they're really neat.
05:34 And this is the house I was raised in,
05:37 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on North Washington Avenue,
05:40 which, by the way, the last three blocks
05:43 at the end of North Washington Avenue,
05:44 they call Biden Way now, they renamed it.
05:47 [laughs]
05:48 [upbeat music]
05:50 This is a private dining room.
06:00 Not many people get to come back here.
06:02 Barack and I used to have lunch
06:04 of us eight years once a week in this room right here.
06:07 But I have a lot of personal family photographs back here.
06:11 This is a picture of my son, Bo, who's passed away.
06:15 That's my mom and my dad, and when I had darker hair.
06:19 [laughs]
06:20 And here, there are what they call command coins.
06:23 Command coins are given in the battlefield,
06:25 and the president has a command coin.
06:27 And my command coin has, on the back of it,
06:32 the Bo's unit, or went into Iraq for a year.
06:35 And so I'm gonna give you a copy, give you one.
06:38 If, in fact, next time I see you don't have it,
06:41 you have to buy the drinks, but you're in luck.
06:43 I'm the only Irishman who's ever met
06:44 this, never had a drink in his life.
06:46 [upbeat music]
06:48 Did you wanna see the cabinet room?
06:54 I wanna show it to you, come here.
06:55 [upbeat music]
06:58 This is the cabinet room.
07:02 Come on in.
07:03 There's only one chair in here
07:07 that's about two inches higher than every other chair.
07:10 That's the president's chair.
07:11 [laughs]
07:12 These chairs are really, really heavy.
07:15 On the back of each chair is the name
07:19 of the department they represent.
07:21 This is the secretary of energy here in this chair.
07:24 But there's a lot of really incredible things
07:27 that have happened in this room.
07:28 It's almost cathedral-like to me,
07:30 because when we're in here,
07:33 we're talking about things of enormous consequence.
07:35 [upbeat music]
07:38 [upbeat music]
07:41 And by the way, there's a tradition in my office.
07:46 These chocolate chip cookies are all homemade.
07:49 Thank you.
07:50 [upbeat music]
07:53 Thanks for coming by Architectural Digest.
08:03 By the way, I'm a subscriber.
08:04 I'm a frustrated architect.
08:05 Thank you very much.
08:07 Appreciate it.
08:08 [upbeat music]
08:11 (dramatic music)
08:13 you