At the beginning of September 2024, information circulated on the Internet that the current US President had rested for 532 days since his election. We decided to check if this is actually true.

Some Russian media reported that the American president took days off and went on vacation too often (Lenta.ru, "Gazeta.ru", "Evening Moscow", "Military Review", SVTV News etc.) and many popular Telegram channels, for example “Ax Live"(857,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Insider UA"(445,000), "Dmitry Nicotin"(362,000), "ZeRada"(268,000), "Solovyov"(248,000). Users of other social networks also discuss resonant statistics (“VKontakte", X, Facebook) And blogging platforms.

The authors of most Russian-language publications refer to American media or specifically to the New York Post tabloid. On September 7, 2024, the publication actually came out article under the loud headline “Biden's astonishing number of vacations revealed - in four years, the president took vacations due to 48 years of work.” Journalists clarified that the average American takes only 11 days of vacation per year, and calculated that an ordinary citizen could accumulate the same number of vacation days as the head of state in almost half a century of career.

The authors of the article, in turn, refer to fast on the Republican National Committee's (RNC) social media account X, which provides the relevant numbers: "In total, he spent 532 days (40.3% of his presidency) on vacation." How and on the basis of what data the calculations were made is not specified in the post. There is no such message at all on the RNC website - news feed in September 2024 concentrated mainly on criticism of Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate. Last publication Biden's vacation RNC was done in late August 2023. According to the portal’s calculations, Biden had spent almost a year of his three-year presidency on vacation at that time. But the methodology of these statistics was not described there either. The publication contains links, but all of them are no longer active and it was not possible to find their archived “Verified” copies. Then the New York Post also published article critical of the president and indicated that he confirmed the RNC data with the help of official White House reports on Biden's movements. Article with the same figures (40% of time on vacation) was published in 2022 and was based on the same source. Moreover, in the articles of 2022 and 2023 it was clarified that this figure was obtained based on the number of days spent by Biden outside the White House, and not at all from official data on vacations and days off.

Source: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Based on open information, it is impossible to make an unambiguous conclusion about how many of these days Biden actually rested without engaging in his direct duties. For example, after the New York Post article was published in 2023, CBS fact checkers based on the same White House reports found outthat during his trip to Lake Tahoe, the president received almost daily updates on wildfires and floods in parts of the country, signed a disaster declaration, held a news conference and spoke by phone with several officials, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the fall of 2023, responding to another complaint against Biden about the fact that during a tense moment he was not at work, but in his mansion in Rehoboth Beach (Delaware), White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates spoke: “As has been the case for most of a century, presidents can carry out the full range of their duties from anywhere in the world, whether in a war zone in Israel or 100 miles from the White House in Delaware.”

In August 2024, some media reportedthat Biden spent the last two weeks of the month on vacation at his homes in California and Delaware. Journalists note that he was often seen on the beach, and confirm this with relevant photos and videos. Judging by schedule the president's public events, he held almost daily morning briefings and spoke with reporters from the White House pool during those two weeks. In addition, the president’s responsibilities do not end with public events. On website his administration published dozens of statements Biden in different ways reasons, transcripts conversations with foreigners leaders And reports about his other activities.

Biden is far from the first US president to be accused of taking too many vacations. Exactly the same claims were addressed to Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and other American leaders (both Democrats and Republicans). However, neither then nor now has any convincing evidence been presented that the President was neglecting his duties while in his private residence. Journalists from the White House pool and researchers argue that presidents, in fact, do not have real weekends and vacations when they can completely escape from work. This means that the fact that Biden spent 40% of his presidency outside the White House only speaks to how much time he worked from other parts of the United States and the world.

Thus, publications that Biden rested 40% of his presidency are based on the statement of his political opponents from the Republican Party. The methodology for their calculations is not disclosed, so it is not possible to check the statistics. Most likely, these numbers correspond to the amount of time the president spent outside the White House. However, only a very narrow circle of people close to Biden can reliably say whether he really rested while in his private residences or other trips and did not perform official duties, and “Verified” was unable to find such statements. Similar claims were made to all recent US presidents during their tenure, so there is reason to believe that this is more a method of political struggle than reliable data.

Cover photo: The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons