A President’s Grief

A President’s Grief
Podcast
All There Is with Anderson Cooper/CNN.com
December 6, 2023
[For his podcast All There Is, about living with grief, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed President Biden, who, Cooper writes, has “been more open than any sitting US president about the deaths he’s experienced and the grief he still lives with [having lost his wife and infant daughter when he was 30 and his older son Beau to brain cancer following Beau’s deployment to Iraq].” When Cooper showed up at the White House for the interview, he asked if he could trade the traditional interview setup—two chairs far apart—for a more intimate setting across a table; Biden agreed. The result, Cooper says, was the most “personal interview about grief and loss” that a US president has ever taken part in.]

Anderson Cooper: Did you know how to grieve at that time?

President Joe Biden: ‘Well, I won the gene pool. I was raised by a mom and a dad who were—my mom was a person of faith, my dad was a guy who’d been through some tough times and just got up. The saying in the family was “just get up, just get up.” And when you get knocked down, just get up. And I had the great advantage because when it happened to me, I had a whole family. My deceased wife and I had purchased a home. It had a barn. My brother moved in and turned the barn into a little apartment. My sister and her husband left their place and moved in with me to help me raise the kids. And we have an expression in our family, “if you have to ask, it’s too late.” I mean, for real.”

To listen to the 38-minute podcast, click here.