Biden makes joke about ‘thin’ walls at his parents’ house

President Biden dusted off a cringeworthy joke about how “thin” the walls were at his childhood home while delivering a campaign-style speech in Westchester about the debt ceiling crisis.

Biden, 80, was speaking Wednesday at SUNY Westchester Community College in Valhalla, New York, blasting Republicans in Congress for demanding spending cuts as a condition to increasing the debt limit in a bid to stave off a potential US default.

While discussing his middle-class roots, the president shared a well-worn vignette about growing up in a large family sharing a modest home in the suburbs of Claymont, Delaware.

“We lived in a three-bedroom, split-level home in a housing development that got … it was a nice area; that was when they were developing suburbia — with four kids and a grandpop living with us,” he recounted.

“I look back and I wonder how thin those walls were for my mom and dad. But at any rate…,” he trailed off, drawing laughter from a crowd of supporters.

It was not the first time that Biden invoked the thin walls at his childhood home.

During a campaign stop in Iowa in 2019, then-presidential candidate Biden was making a point about the importance of economic upward mobility for middle-class Americans when he told a story about how his parents were able to save up enough money to become homeowners.

“It was after three years my dad was able to buy a house, a three-bedroom house, with four kids and a grandpop living with us,” he told a roomful of voters.

“It was OK. Although, I do wonder how my parents got by — those walls were awful thin,” the former vice president said to laughter.

Biden made a nearly identical quip in 2012 while speaking at the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference in Las Vegas.

‘”It was wonderful for children. By the way, having your grandpop living with you, having your great-aunt, your uncle, for real,” he said. “Those walls were awful thin. I wonder how the hell my parents did it. But that’s a different story.”

At other times, Biden would bring up his family’s thin-walled home in Delaware to talk about economic uncertainty.

“I can remember we lived in a three-bedroom, split-level home, and my bedroom was up against the wall where my parents’ bedroom was in the — and my dad’s headboard was there,” he said during an event in March. “And I — I remember one — I was, like, 14 years old. And I remember my dad — I could see he — you could hear he was just restless. And I asked my mom the next morning when he went to work, ‘What’s the matter?’ She said, ‘Well, his company just told him they’re not going to pay for health insurance anymore.’”