It turns out that the First Family’s dog Champ is a good boy and reports that he had been sent back to Delaware to protect visitors from his fangs are Fake News. The Associated Press has the scoop:
There is Major breaking news: President Joe Biden’s wayward pup is no longer in the doghouse.
Biden, in an interview that aired Wednesday, said that his dog Major, who had been involved in a biting incident at the White House, was “a sweet dog.” He explained the biting by saying that the dog had “turned a corner, there’s two people he doesn’t know at all, you know, and they move and moves to protect.”
Biden added that “85% of the people there love him.” Major, a 3-year-old rescue dog, and Champ, who is 12, were moved to the Bidens’ Delaware home after the incident, but the president said they would return to the White House.
The president said “the dog’s being trained now” in Delaware but disputed the idea that the pup was sent away after the incident. He said the dogs went to Wilmington because the first couple was going to be out of town.
“He was going home,” Biden said. “I didn’t banish him to home. Jill was going to be away for four days. I was going to be away for two, so we took him home.”
So, the fact that he bit someone is purely a coincidence. At any rate, I’m glad President Biden has his dogs back. It’s an incredibly stressful job and any outlet that allows him some normalcy is welcome.
Otherwise, I mostly find these stories amusing, in that they demonstrate the degree to which politics has been nationalized. While the founding theory of our country was that political power should reside locally because people will naturally pay more attention to things close to home, the modern media environment means Americans are more likely to know the name of the President’s dogs than of their city councilman or Congressman.
