by As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, immigrants arrive illegally in the United States in record numbers, and a busy 2024 campaign season looms, President Biden is staying low-key.
Here on tropical St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, where Mr. Biden; the first lady, Jill Biden; and his granddaughter Natalie spend New Year’s week in a secluded beachfront villa overlooking the turquoise Caribbean, the president largely stays out of the spotlight.
On Saturday, Biden made his first public appearance and ventured to attend Mass at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Christiansted, the largest city on St. Croix. He and Dr. Biden later recorded an interview with Ryan Seacrest, which will air on New Year’s Eve as part of ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.” In the evening, the president and the first lady dined at Too Chez, one of the best restaurants on the island, and then revealed their New Year’s resolution.
“Come back next year,” Biden said.
Republicans have roundly criticized Biden’s getaway to the island, which began just a day after he returned to the White House after spending Christmas with his family at Camp David.
Several legislators accused the president of not addressing the surge of immigrants along the southern border of the United States taking some time off. And on Thursday, when the White House announced in the morning that there would be no public events for Biden that day because temperatures hovered around 80 degrees on St. Croix, an arm of the Republican National Committee pounced.
“Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants cross the open southern border every day.” wrote the RNC Research group on the social media siteand added that Biden, “on his second vacation in a week, called him a day before noon.”
Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said presidential vacations are virtually always denounced by the opposition party.
But even a commander in chief needs to relax sometimes, Zelizer noted, and today, no president is truly offline.
“It’s not like the president takes a vacation like a lot of us do and just sits on the beach or something,” he said. “They go with his entire presidential apparatus and are surrounded by his advisors.”
A White House official described Biden’s trip as a working vacation. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, accompanied the president to St. Croix and has briefed him several times since his arrival, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s agenda.
On Friday, Biden condemned Russia for launching what he called the largest airstrike against Ukraine since the start of the war, and issued a statement warning that President Vladimir V. Putin “must be stopped.” Asked Saturday if he planned to speak with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after Russia’s latest attacks, Biden responded: “I talk to him regularly.”
He also asked Congress on Friday to approve national security funding for Ukraine and Israel, which has been tied to negotiations over border and immigration policies, and White House officials said the president was also closely monitoring those talks.
Many St. Croix residents said that while Biden largely stayed out of the public eye this year, they appreciated that his visits have helped highlight the history of the island, which was once home to founding father Alexander Hamilton. . They described it as a quirky, affectionate island where stray cats are well-fed in five-star resorts. In the musical “Hamilton” by Lin Manuel-Miranda, St. Croix appears only as the “forgotten place in the Caribbean” from which the young Hamilton rose from poverty.
Biden’s visit is his second to St. Croix as president, but the Bidens have traveled there more than a dozen times over the years.
“He loves St. Croix and we really love having him here,” said Leonore Gillette, a retired teacher who has lived on the island for 45 years.
“We certainly appreciate the infusion of activity,” said Nadia Bougouneau, another longtime resident who works at the Buccaneer, a complex that was packed with Secret Service agents and members of the media traveling with Biden. The president played the resort’s 18-hole golf course last year with his grandson Hunter.
Several people, including the governor of the Virgin Islands, fondly recalled Biden’s visits before he was president, and the Secret Service was not blocking miles of roads for security reasons. Back then, locals and tourists said they would find him biking, jogging or buying coffee at Ziggy’s, an island market and gas station on the east end.
“We feel like he’s a Virgin Islander,” Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. said.
“Before he was president, I would be downtown at night and I would see him in a restaurant, I would sit with people and say, ‘That’s Joe Biden.’ And people said, ‘No way,’” he recalled.
These days, the governor said, Biden’s visit gave him the opportunity to highlight some of the issues facing the U.S. Virgin Islands, which rely heavily on tourism and are still working to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria.
Mr. Bryan called the most serious challenge for the islands the requirement to match 10 percent of the $15 billion in federal hurricane reconstruction aid. He said the Virgin Islands’ money and ability to repair its water systems and other major projects could be jeopardized because the government cannot afford the roughly $1.5 billion match. The Virgin Islands, home to about 87,000 people, have an annual budget of $1.2 billion.
Still, Bryan said, he doesn’t consider Biden’s New Year’s visit to be the best time to make his case to the president.
“To be honest, I preferred it when he wasn’t president because he spent more time with me,” he joked, adding that this year “I’m really trying to stay away from him so he can rest, because he’s going to need it to run in this election.”
Biden enters 2024 with a persistently low job approval rating of 39 percent, according to December data. Gallup polls, the worst of any modern president seeking re-election. Zelizer said that makes the political challenges Biden faces in the Middle East and Ukraine, and with Congress, even more difficult.
“All of this will be waiting for him when he returns to Washington, and he knows it,” Zelizer said. And he added: “It’s going to be a difficult year.”
