Act Daily News
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President Joe Biden and first woman Jill Biden met with sufferers at Children’s National Hospital in Washington on Friday, carrying on a longstanding custom in the course of the vacation season.
The first couple, sporting fabric masks, met with pediatric sufferers, their households and hospital workers, greeting management and emergency division employees. Dr. Biden learn Ezra Jack Keats’ “The Snowy Day” earlier than the Bidens visited with kids and their households within the cardiac intensive care unit.
“Thanks for coming and listening to me read and have the president hold the book,” she mentioned after studying, as Biden deadpanned, “It’s my job.”
And the president chimed in with a message for folks within the room earlier than departing, saying, “To all you parents, be strong. We spent a lot of time in children’s hospitals with patients too, It’s going to be OK.”
The Bidens’ journey inside Washington comes as a lot of the nation – together with the nation’s capital – faces excessive chilly climate, equivalent to frigid temperatures, excessive winds and heavy snow.
According to the White House, President Biden’s go to final yr marked the primary time a sitting president made a vacation go to to Children’s National.
The go to forward of Christmas Eve comes a day after the president delivered his Christmas deal with, the place he sought to strike a unifying message.
Biden emphasised in his speech that “we’re surely making progress” and “things are getting better.”
“Covid no longer controls our lives. Our kids are back in school. People are back to work. In fact, more people are working than ever before,” he mentioned. “Americans are building again, innovating, dreaming again.”
Still, he acknowledged that, for some, “Christmas can be a time of great pain and terrible loneliness,” drawing on his personal expertise with loss over the vacations – the deaths of his first spouse and daughter 50 years in the past this week.
“I know how hard this time of year can be … no one can ever know what someone else is going through, what’s really going on in their life, what they’re struggling with, what to try and overcome. That’s why sometimes the smallest act of kindness can mean so much,” Biden remarked.
“So, this Christmas, let’s spread a little kindness.”
CORRECTION: This story and headline have been up to date to right the title of the hospital to Children’s National Hospital.