Joe Biden paid tribute to the Queen ahead of her state funeral and compared her to his late mother, despite her alleged hatred of the English.
The the president appeared on a balcony overlooking the late monarch’s coffin at Westminster Hall before signing a book of condolences on Sunday.
Mr Biden said of Queen Elizabeth: “She was just like her image: dignified, honorable and serving everyone. Our hearts are with the royal family.”
Joe Biden and his mother, Jean, in Chicago on election night, 2008
(Getty Images)
Mr Biden was then asked why he had previously said the Queen reminded him of his mother, Catherine Finnegan, who was known as Jean and was of Irish descent.
The president told reporters that it was “just because of the way she touched when she bent down. She had this look, “are you okay, can I do anything for you, anything you need?” But also “make sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”
The comparison between the two women is awkward, as it was previously reported that Ms. Finnegan disliked the English so much that she once refused to sleep in the Queen’s bed.
President Biden signs a book of condolences at Lancaster House in London
(AP)
Georgia Pritchett, television comedy writer and co-producer whoop wrote in her autobiography My mess is a little bit of life that she met Mr. Biden at the White House when he was Barack Obamavice president of St.
She wrote that she spoke with the then vice president about a trip to Ukraine, which his advisers quickly canceled.
“He changed the subject to how much his mother hated the English. His parents were Irish, and she wrote several poems about her hatred of the English. He went to find them and came back with hundreds of verses describing how God should smite the English and put blood on our heads,” she wrote, according to Guardian.
And she went on to tell how Mr Biden had described how his mother had developed a problem while staying at a hotel in the UK where the Queen used to stay.
“She was so shaken that she slept on the floor all night rather than risk sleeping on the bed on which the Queen slept,” Ms Pritchett wrote.
Mr. Biden’s mother died in 2010 and lived with him after his father’s death in 2002.
