Ashley Biden, President Biden’s 43-year-old daughter who typically stays out of the spotlight, introduced her father Monday night at the first night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago as he delivered one of his final and most historic speeches in his time as president and a public servant.
A social worker in Philadelphia, Ashley Biden offered a different side to her father, as not just one of the “most consequential leaders ever in history,” but also as the “OG girl dad.”
“He told me I could be anything and I could do anything,” she said.
“And he wasn’t just a girl dad. I could see that he valued and trusted women,” Ashley Biden said. “How he listened to his mother. How he believed in his sister. And most of all, how he respected my mother’s career. Dad was always there doing everything he could to be a true partner to her. Dad, you always tell us but we don’t tell you enough that you are the love of our lives and the life of our love.”
Ashley Biden said that on her eighth birthday, her father, a U.S. senator at the time, took the Amtrak train from Washington, D.C., to Delaware just to hug her and watch her delight at seeing her birthday cake.
She also recalled her wedding reception in her parents’ backyard more than a decade ago, when Mr. Biden was vice president, and made sure that the backyard was perfect.
“And by the way, he was very emotional,” she said. “I thought that I would be a mess, but he was the one crying, and I was the one that had to comfort him.”
All these years later, Ashley Biden said, “Dad, you are still my best friend.”
When Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, Ashley Biden said she and her brother Hunter didn’t know if the pain would ever subside. Mr. Biden has often said it should be Beau in the Oval Office, not him.
“Dad had the capacity to step out of his own pain and absorb ours,” she said. “And I know Beau is with us tonight, as he is always with us.”
The president has lost two of his four children, since his first wife and daughter died in a crash in 1972. Hunter and Beau were also badly injured.
Ashley Biden pleaded with the supportive crowd to work harder than ever before.
“So tonight, I am asking you if you stood with us in 2020, call upon your courageous heart,” she said. “Stand with us today. Work harder than you have ever worked before in your life. This is the fight of our lifetime.”
After her speech, the president took a moment to dab at his eyes, the emotion of the moment overwhelming him, and called her “incredible.”
Ashley Biden was a frequent prescence at her brother Hunter’s trial earlier this year in Wilmington, Delaware, on federal gun charges. Hunter Biden, who was convicted in June, made an appearance at the end of Mr. Biden’s speech with his children.