Joe Biden says he ‘contemplated suicide’ after wife and daughter’s death
The president made the startling revelation in an interview with Howard Stern.
Joe Biden has admitted he once briefly considered killing himself after losing his wife and daughter in a car crash.
In an interview with radio journalist Howard Stern, the US President opened up about his grief after his first wife Nelia and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in a car crash in Delaware on December 18, 1972.
Mr Biden told Stern: ‘You don’t have to be crazy to commit suicide, if you’ve been to the top of the mountain and you think you’ll never be there again.
‘For a brief moment I thought maybe I’ll just go to Delaware memorial bridge and just jump, but I had two kids.’
The President also said that after his wife’s death, he used to take out a bottle of scotch and planned to get drunk, but could never bring himself to do it.
‘I don’t drink, that’s not a virtue. I just never drank. And, I used to sit there and think to myself, I’m just gonna take out a bottle of scotch.
‘We always had liquor in the house, and I was gonna just drink it and get drunk, and I can never bring myself to do it.’
Mr Biden, who is teetotal, has repeatedly talked about his reasons for abstaining from alcohol, once claiming ‘there are enough drunks’ in his family history.
The revelations were made during a surprise appearance on Stern’s SiriusXM show, which was not listed on the president’s public schedule and was not announced by the White House until it went live on the air.
It came just a day after the president was criticised for avoiding interviews with traditional media outlets as the 2024 election starts to heat up.
Elsewhere during the interview, Biden said he would be more than happy to debate his Republican rival Donald Trump, saying: ‘I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him.’
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