When President Joe Biden touches down on Nantucket next Tuesday for Thanksgiving, he’ll be renewing a decades-old tradition of spending the holiday on the island with his family. But this trip will undoubtedly be a little different from his previous visits.
The buzz surrounding the Bidens’ Thanksgiving vacation has been building over the past week, with a C-17 Globemaster dropping off equipment and personnel at Nantucket Memorial Airport on Monday, and a State Police helicopter hovering over areas of the island yesterday. Some island hotels and inns that are usually gearing down for the offseason are preparing for full houses, as they’ve been completely booked by Secret Service and government officials.
While Biden’s visits as Vice President during the Obama administration brought the spectacle of Air Force Two landing at Nantucket Memorial Airport, this time around, the entourage and security apparatus that will be descending on the island will be on another level.
Across the island this week, key stakeholders were preparing for the President’s visit, not the least of which were Bill and Kim Puder at Faregrounds restaurant. The Puders have prepared Thanksgiving dinner for the Bidens dozens of times over the years – a framed and autographed photo of Biden hangs in the restaurant’s entryway with a message of thanks.. Bill Puder said Thursday that while he had not yet been asked specifically to cook for the Biden family yet this year, the Secret Service had been in to chat and talk about meals for their teams. The Bidens’ dinner order, he said, usually comes in about five days before Thanksgiving.
“It’s an honor, really,” Puder said of cooking for the Bidens. “It will be the same thing I’ve always done: Turkey, a bunch of sides, and desert. We always keep a nice big one for him.”
Nantucket Police Lieutenant Angus MacVicar declined to share any of the preparations his department is undertaking in advance of Biden’s arrival, but did confirm that meetings with the Secret Service had occurred.
“The Nantucket Police Department has been in contact with the Secret Service and met with the Secret Service – a lengthy meeting to discuss the possibility of a visit by the President of the United States here on Nantucket, and all that would come with that,” MacVicar said. “Other than that, I can’t share anything else. It’s all for official use only.”
At Nantucket Memorial Airport, where one of those meetings occurred with the island’s public safety agencies and government officials earlier this week, a series of temporary security changes were announced yesterday, including new screening requirements for all passengers and crew arriving or departing from the airport.
The Secret Service has also contacted Nantucket Cottage Hospital, which is typically put on notice when high-ranking politicians, dignitaries or other “VIPs” come to the island in the past.
“We’re actively working with our White House and government partners to identify clinical resources and capacities to ensure we’re able to support any clinical needs that could arise during a Presidential visit, for either President Biden, his family or the accompanying White House staff,” said hospital public information manager James Lanza. “Our priority is to ensure that we’re able to meet any additional demands arising from the Presidential visit without impacting regular patient care for our Nantucket community.”
Nantucket summer resident and political journalist David Gregory, who has covered numerous U.S. presidents over the years, told the Current that this visit to the island by the Bidens will be unlike any of their previous trips.
“Think about Obama going to Martha’s Vineyard in the summer,” Gregory said. “They’ll limit the airspace for a period of time. The most striking thing is that that the presidential motorcade is much bigger than the vice presidential motorcade. There’s security aspects of that, emergency health aspects to that. There is more staff that accompanies him – essentially a travelling Whitehouse, and a pool of reporters that will be there. That makes everything bigger.”
Even as Vice President, Biden made himself at home on the island and was largely accessible to the community, posing for literally hundreds of pictures during his strolls through the downtown area, attending the Christmas tree lighting ceremony, and even taking part in the Atheneum’s Turkey Plunge at Children’s Beach. Despite the security entourage that will accompany him as President, Gregory said Biden may choose to do some of the same activities he’s enjoyed in the past – but perhaps not as much as in the past.
“I’m sure the President will try to be extremely mindful that a lot of people come to the island for the holiday and he wants to be unobtrusive, but he may want to get out and about a little bit as he likes to do,” Gregory said. “The Secret Service profile is such that they would have to check things out in advance. So if he wants to walk down Main Street, it’s a bigger perimeter for the Secret Service. I just think that I would expect the President to keep to himself and his family as much as possible but also get out where he can, and where he won’t be interrupting the flow of the island.”
The Biden family’s annual pilgrimage to Nantucket began 46 years ago after his then-Chief of Staff Wes Barthelmes recommended the island to Biden.
“He suggested the island of Nantucket, which was an hour by ferry south of Cape Cod,” Biden wrote in his 2017 memoir. “Neither Jill nor I had ever been there, but we decided to go ahead and make an adventure of it. We filled my Jeep Wagoneer with fifty-seven-cents-a-gallon gas and piled the boys and the dog into the backseat for what was likely to be a six-hour ride to the ferry in Hyannis, Massachusetts.”
It is not yet known where Biden will stay during this year’s visit. During his time as Vice President, the Biden family stayed at several different properties around the island for its Thanksgiving visits, including Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein’s estate on Abrams Point, and former UK Ambassador Louis Susman’s home off Washing Pond Road.
Biden’s last visit to Nantucket was in 2019 when he was a Presidential candidate, so there was not a huge security detail, no Air Force Two landing, and little fanfare at the time. The Bidens appeared that year at a fundraiser hosted by Elizabeth Bagley, the former ambassador to Portugal under President Bill Clinton and a major Democratic party supporter. Biden did not visit the island in 2020 following his victory in the Presidential election last November.
