President Joe Biden said a weekend trip to his Delaware beach house wasn’t a “vacation.”
The president, who was staying Sunday at his house in Rehoboth Beach, told reporters on Sunday after leaving a church that his main residence in Wilmington, Del., is undergoing renovation to “make it secure.”
“I’m here for the day because I can’t go home-home,” added the president, who often travels to Delaware on weekends instead of staying at the White House. He explained to reporters he is “not on vacation.”
Members of Biden’s administration have defended the president against accusations of being on vacation when he visits his Rehoboth Beach home. Last month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to deflect criticism of the president staying at his other Delaware home during devastating wildfires in Maui.
Biden left Delaware early Monday morning to travel to Philadelphia to speak at an AFL-CIO rally. He’ll return to the White House in the evening.
His trip to Delaware came after he visited Florida earlier in the weekend in the wake of Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida’s Big Bend area as a Category 3 storm Wednesday.
House Republicans slammed Biden’s comment.
“There are approximately 30,000 homeless veterans in the United States. But Joe Biden, who has two homes, plus the White House, says he has no where to go. Unbelievable,” read a late Sunday post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by House Judiciary Committee Republicans.
Updated at 10:40 a.m.