President Obama Surprises Joe Biden With Medal of Freedom
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In a special sendoff, President Barack Obama surprised his vice president, Joe Biden, by awarding him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S. Photo: AP
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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Obama Surprises Joe Biden With Presidential Medal of Freedom
Obama Surprises Joe Biden With Presidential Medal of Freedom
Obama Awards Biden Medal of Freedom
In a surprise ceremony, President Obama presented Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with the country’s highest civilian honor.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and WHITEHOUSE.GOV. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON — President Obama surprised Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday by bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, calling Mr. Biden “my brother” in a tearful goodbye in the East Room of the White House.
Having called Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill, to the White House for a private farewell, the president instead brought him into a room filled with his friends, family and colleagues to present him with the honor, the nation’s highest.
For the first time, Mr. Obama awarded the medal with distinction, an added level of veneration that previous presidents had reserved for recipients like Pope John Paul II and Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state.
“To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without self-regard, and to live life fully,” Mr. Obama said during the televised ceremony, as Mr. Biden wiped tears from his eyes and dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief.
Moments later, as the president called up a military aide to read the proclamation, Mr. Biden appeared to break down, turning his back to the audience to compose himself. After Mr. Obama hung the medal around his neck, the vice president cried openly.
“Ricchetti, you’re fired,” Mr. Biden joked to his chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti. “I had no inkling.”
Addressing Mr. Obama, who stood to his side, Mr. Biden said that he had never met anyone who had “the integrity and the decency and the sense of other people’s needs like you do.”
The ceremony was an emotional conclusion to an improbable partnership that began in 2008 when Mr. Obama asked his former presidential rival to be his running mate. The two men became close during eight years in the White House.
