Breaking Down How Much Time Biden Spent on Vacation While President – It's Not 40%

In the years after former U.S. President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021, a claim repeatedly circulated online that he spent 40% of his presidency on vacation. 

Examples of the rumor have appeared on Reddit (archived), X (archived) and Facebook (archived), while Snopes readers have asked us about the claim since October 2021. Media reports from 2022 (archived) to 2024 (archived) have also repeated the rumor. In 2022, the New York Post (NYP) newspaper (archived) claimed the rumor originated from a Republican National Committee (RNC) analysis: 

The 19-month tally of Biden trips was assembled by the RNC and is consistent with independent journalistic counts. It includes days that Biden spent at his Delaware residences as well as days at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, and trips to Nantucket, Massachusetts, and Kiawah Island, South Carolina.

As of this writing, the reporter who wrote the NYP article has not returned a request for comment on the "independent journalistic counts" he referenced.

The RNC published a news release in early 2023 (archived) claiming that Biden had, at that point in time, spent 40% of his whole presidency on vacation. The committee published a similar news release in early 2024 (archived) claiming that the then-president had spent 38.9% of 2023 on vacation. The RNC also posted the claim that he had spent 40% of his entire presidency on vacation to X (archived) in 2024, along with a video of Biden on the beach.

Biden spent today — his 16th straight day on vacation — lounging on the beach.

He has spent a total of 532 days (40.3% of his presidency) on vacation.

Who's running the country? pic.twitter.com/YIStPQR3Vl

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 31, 2024

However, Snopes comprehensively analyzed the former president's public calendar, research from his administration and pool reports — detailed daily dispatches from the White House press corps tracking Biden's movements — and found that the RNC's claim was inaccurate. It is difficult to define what a "vacation" is for a president, given that a president is never away from duties. Therefore, Snopes determined how many days he was in a vacation setting. 

Based on this definition, Biden spent 117 or 118 full days of his 1,461-day presidency (Jan. 20, 2021 to Jan. 20, 2025) on vacation, or about 8% of his presidency. He also spent 66 days, about 4.5% of his presidency, partially in a vacation setting. 

(The pool reports say Biden left his vacation home early on April 13, 2024, whereas his official public calendar, as published by Roll Call, an insider publication that covers all things Capitol Hill, said he spent April 13 in his vacation home and left on April 14, 2024. This explains why we have written that he spent "117 or 118" full days on vacation; however, it does not affect the number of partial days he was on vacation, and it does not significantly impact the percentage of days he spent on vacation.)

Altogether, that amounts to 183 or 184 days, or between 12.5 and 12.6% of his presidency. On 107 of those days, there is public evidence that Biden spent time working in his official capacity as president. However, this does not mean he was not working on the other days as well, seeing as much of the president's working schedule is not public. Therefore, there were 76 or 77 days where the former president spent time in a vacation setting with no public evidence he was working, or about 5% of his presidency. 

Debunking the Republican National Committee's Claim

When asked how he determined that Biden spent 40% of his presidency on vacation, Jake Schneider, author of the two RNC news releases, said in a direct message on X: 

I'm happy to share my underlying data with you. Basically, we use the standard of all or part of any day spent at a Biden-style vacation destination (e.g., Wilmington/Rehoboth/Camp David/etc) as a vacation day — which is the exact same standard The Washington Post assigned to President Trump during his first term.

Schneider did not respond to additional questions about what sources he used to figure out Biden's location. The RNC news releases also provided images showing each day the former president was purportedly on vacation for 2021, 2022 and 2023. Snopes found no such similar image by the committee for 2024.

Calendars created by the RNC claiming to show when Biden was on vacation. (Republican National Committee)

However, our investigation found that the RNC's analysis made sweeping assumptions and included outright errors. 

As acknowledged by Schneider, the RNC included partial days in a vacation setting. However, the committee's analysis failed to take into account how much or how little time in the day was spent traveling to or in a vacation setting. 

For example, on Sept. 3, 2021, the RNC calendar says Biden was on vacation. However, according to his public calendar and pool reports, he spent a vast portion of that day in Louisiana touring Hurricane Ida relief efforts, meeting local leaders and delivering remarks in his official capacity as president. He did not leave Louisiana until 7:08 p.m. local time, or 8:08 p.m. EST, before arriving at his personal residence in Delaware at 11:11 p.m. EST.

The NYP, one of the media outlets that repeated the claim about Biden spending 40% of his presidency on vacation, even reported on the former president spending Sept. 3, 2021, in Louisiana.

Combined screenshots of Biden's calendar on Sept. 3, 2021 (Roll Call)

In another example, the RNC claimed Biden was on vacation on Sept. 11, 2022, when in fact he arrived at the Pentagon at 8:46 a.m. and attended a 9/11 remembrance event where he gave remarks before returning to the White House around 10:30 a.m. The Associated Press was among the news outlets that reported on the former president's activities that day.

The RNC also said Biden was on vacation on days when he arrived at the White House early in the morning or departed for a vacation setting late in the day. In one instance, the RNC said he was on vacation on April 22, 2022. However, according to the pool report and a Reuters report, he was working and did not arrive at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, until 12:24 a.m. the next day. In another instance, the RNC said Biden was on vacation on Sept. 13, 2022, when, in fact, he hosted an event to celebrate the Inflation Reduction Act before leaving the White House to travel to Delaware, where he voted in the state's Democratic primary before returning to the White House all on the same day. 

On May 30, 2023, Biden spent some time in Delaware visiting the gravestone of his first son, Beau Biden (who served a tour in Iraq as a member of the Delaware National Guard), and attending private Memorial Day services to commemorate deceased loved ones, such as his son. The RNC included it as a vacation day.

The RNC also did not appear to have double-checked its work. For example, on April 13, 2022, the RNC said the then-president was on vacation, but according to his public calendar and the pool report, he was at the White House all day, during which he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On the flip side, while the RNC largely counted travel to Camp David as "vacation," several of these days are missing from its calendar, such as when the president left for Camp David on Aug. 17, 2023. Errors like these occurred multiple times. 

Defining What Counts as a Vacation 

Finally, the RNC analysis of vacations included days spent at Camp David or at Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware. According to the White House, Camp David, a Maryland country residence, has offered "every President since Franklin Roosevelt ... solitude, tranquility, and a place to host foreign leaders." 

Thus, while sometimes used for recreation, presidents including Biden often work at Camp David, where he had reportedly met with his national security team, signed executive orders and hosted prime ministers. 

Biden spent many weekends as president at his residence in Wilmington, Delaware, a practice he maintained since his time as a senator, according to both the White House and news media reports. A White House official said via email that the former president does not treat his Wilmington residence as a vacation home. 

Based on Biden's public calendar and pool reports, he frequently worked from Wilmington during his presidency. On May 30, 2021, for example, he delivered remarks at Veterans Memorial Park in New Castle County, Delaware, just a short drive away from his home in Greenville; on Aug. 6, 2021, he left the White House and arrived in Wilmington before receiving his weekly economic briefing. He hosted multiple foreign prime ministers at his Delaware home on one particular day.

Finally, Biden has a vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, that he frequents, suggesting that if Biden were to return to Delaware for vacation he would go there instead. 

While Camp David and Wilmington are not always vacation settings, Snopes could not determine how often Biden may have treated them as such. Snopes counted 109 full days, or 7.5% of his presidency, that the former president spent in Delaware or Camp David where there was no evidence of work on his public calendar or in pool reports. 

Here are all the vacation settings Snopes included in its analysis: Biden's vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, his annual Thanksgiving tradition where he and his family travel to Nantucket, Massachusetts, vacations in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and a friend's home in Santa Ynez, California. 

Biden Administration's Response 

Andrew Bates, the Biden White House's deputy press secretary, said in a statement sent via email before the former president left office that "Biden works hard every single day — including the few days he has been on vacation during his term — which is reflected in the most accomplished record of any modern administration." 

He added that presidents "have been able to perform all their duties from anywhere in the world for decades."

According to an Aug. 19, 2024, pool report, Biden's press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when discussing his then-upcoming vacation to Santa Ynez, California, also said "presidents are never on vacation — he's president wherever he is." The Guardian newspaper also published this quote.

There is evidence that Biden worked while on vacation. For example, on June 3, 2022, he delivered remarks on a May jobs report from Rehoboth Beach Convention Center. There was also a weekend in September 2022 when he told the press pool he was at his Rehoboth home because the Secret Service was working on his Wilmington home and he was thus "not on vacation." The RNC included this as a vacation day in its analysis.

Research presented by a White House official said there were 60 total weekdays from 2021 to 2024 where the former president "had no public events and was not at the White House," or about 4.1% of his presidency. The Biden administration did not include weekends and federal holidays in its analysis and added that this list does not represent total days in vacation areas. 

It is also worth noting that within those 60 weekdays there were days the White House noted Biden did not have public events on his public calendar but did have events in pool reports, such as briefings on foreign wars and bill signings. Snopes also cross-referenced this list with Biden's public calendar and discovered that the White House included days in which the former president had his "Daily Briefing," an event that nearly always appears on weekdays on his public calendar but is not open to the public. 

While the White House did not answer multiple questions about whether, legally or officially, the president gets weekends and federal holidays off, it is true that presidents cannot fully disengage from their job. "Most presidents are always on the clock; even when they are not working, they are on call, and can be pulled into discussions at a moment's notice," said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

So How Many Days Was Biden on Vacation, Then? 

It is impossible for Snopes to determine how many days Biden was on vacation and did not do any work or primarily spent time away from work. According to Dallek, presidents do "a ton of work" not visible to the public or on their official public schedule, including "behind-the-scenes conversations, briefings, reading memos, preparing for speeches, prepping for interviews and more." 

"A president taking a vacation is a bit of misnomer, although some presidents take the job more seriously and work harder than others," Dallek added. 

Therefore, we can only determine how many days Biden was in a vacation setting, as well as the days he was in a vacation setting and there is no public evidence, either from his public calendar or from pool reports, that he was working. 

Many of these "working vacation" days only included one or two publicly reported events and were usually noted in the pool report as information given by unnamed White House officials. Snopes did not include informal conversations Biden had with the press as work, given that it is nearly impossible for the president to avoid the press in public areas. 

As noted at the beginning, our analysis found 117 or 118 full days of his presidency on vacation and 76 or 77 days partially in a vacation setting, with 107 of the total 183 or 184 days showing evidence that Biden worked. For 33 of these days, the public calendar does not show evidence Biden worked, but the pool reports say a White House official told a reporter that Biden was engaging in at least one work activity, such as a call with a foreign leader or a national security meeting. 

Snopes did not count the days Biden traveled for work as a vacation. We also chose not to count days where he was campaigning for other lawmakers and officials as vacation days. We counted campaigning for other politicians as work because it is a crucial part of building and maintaining working relationships, and attempting to ensure that your party remains in power so it can pass its desired legislation more effectively. 

We did count how many days Biden campaigned for himself, although we did not include it in our count of vacation days or work days. That is because while campaigning is not a vacation, some may see it as time away from presidential duties. There were 15 days Biden campaigned for himself and there were no events on his public calendar; 14 of those days did not have work events recorded by the press pool. For 62 days, Biden spent some time campaigning; 57 of those days were also spent working and five of those days were also spent in a vacation setting.

Snopes also counted 53 days that Biden was at the White House and there were no public events on his calendar, 42 of which also did not include a reported event from the press pool. Neither the White House nor the RNC considered these as vacation days.