First Lady Pool Reports of March 19, 2024

FLOTUS pool report #1 - Pool Report on Norwich, Vt. fundraising event

About 100 people gathered in the Norwich, Vt. home of Bill and Jane Stetson to receive U.S. First Lady Jill Biden for a Biden Victory Fund fundraising event.

Biden flew from Washington, D.C. to the Lebanon Municipal Airport in nearby Lebanon, N.H.

Dr. Jane Sanders, wife of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, was present.

"This is the most important election in our lifetime," Sanders said to the crowd gathered in the Stetson's living room. "They've always said that but it's true."

Of President Biden, Sanders said "He has the right values."

"People think, 'Oh he's older.' But they don't realize he's much more progressive than his predecessors," Sanders said.

"He means what he says," she said of President Biden, though he "might say it more quietly than my husband."

Patrick Leahy, former senator from Vermont, spoke after Dr. Sanders. Leahy reminisced on being young members of the Senate with Biden.

Leahy said the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was "a disaster."
"Those are people that wanted to destroy our country, destroy our constitution, destroy who we are," he added.

Biden began speaking after Leahy.

Biden noted that while it was the first official day of spring, it was snowing outside. "Someone said, 'That's Vermont,'" she said.

Biden spoke to the early days of getting to know her husband, and referred to his late wife, Neilia, who died along with their daughter in a car crash in 1972.

"Joe made it clear that there was room in his heart for both of us," Biden said.

She emphasized that her husband has passed the "boldest climate legislation in American history," appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, guided one of the "the strongest economic recoveries in modern industry," and secured lower prescription drug prices as well as capped insulin prices.

She spent the remainder of the speech warning attendees about a second Donald Trump presidency, saying that he is "dangerous to women and to our families."

"I want you to remember what it felt like that morning after in 2016," Biden said of Trump's election. Many in the room groaned.

"Democracy is on the line," Biden said of the impending election.

At the close of the speaking portion of the event, Jane Stetson said to the crowd, "I'm dying to tell Jill to take off those high heels."

Tickets to the event started at $250.

While Biden was in Norwich, protestors gathered on the edge of the town green to protest American military support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas War.