Rising Possibility of Jill Biden Attending Tokyo Olympics as US Representative Instead of President Biden

▲U.S. President Joe Biden (left) and First Lady Jill Biden [Image source=AP Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] According to a report by Yomiuri Shimbun on the 22nd, Jill Biden is emerging as a candidate to attend the Tokyo Olympic opening ceremony as the U.S. government representative instead of President Joe Biden, with the event just a month away.

The report states that the U.S. government is in the final stages of reviewing the dispatch of high-level officials to the Tokyo Olympic opening ceremony, and it is understood that the decision is leaning toward President Biden not attending.

Earlier, President Biden expressed support for hosting the Tokyo Olympics during his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House in May and at the G7 summit held in Cornwall, UK, from June 11 to 13, but he has not revealed his thoughts on whether he would attend.

Yomiuri Shimbun noted that since President George W. Bush at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, no U.S. president has attended an Olympic opening ceremony.

At the 2012 London Games, First Lady Michelle Obama attended, and at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano represented the U.S.

During the Obama administration, Secretary of State John Kerry attended the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, and Vice President Mike Pence attended the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Vice President Al Gore also attended the 1998 Nagano Winter Games held in Japan.

For this reason, the Japanese government had been hoping for Vice President Kamala Harris to visit Japan if President Biden’s attendance at the Tokyo Games was canceled.

Yomiuri reported that “there are talks in U.S.-Japan diplomatic circles that if Harris, the first Asian American vice president whose father is Jamaican and mother is of Indian descent, visits Japan on the occasion of the Tokyo Olympics, it would mark her debut on the Asian diplomatic stage.”

However, Vice President Harris, who oversees the Biden administration’s key issue of illegal immigration, recently toured Mexico and other Central American countries on her first foreign trip this month, and with increasing Republican attacks over immigration issues, it is pointed out that an Asian trip would be difficult, which is seen as an obstacle.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.