Jill Biden remembers Queen Elizabeth’s ‘curiosity’ about American politics

Jill Biden is remembering Queen Elizabeth II, saying the late monarch had a deep curiosity about American politics.

“What I liked about her was that she was really independent,” the first lady said of Elizabeth during a Tuesday interview on NBC’s “Today.”

Britain’s longest-reigning monarch died last week at 96.

Elizabeth hosted President Biden and his wife during the couple’s visit last year to Windsor Castle.

“We went up to her living room and they said, ‘Don’t talk about family.’ And the first thing she starts with is family,” Jill Biden recalled with a laugh to “Today’s” Sheinelle Jones.

Tea with the queen came just two months after Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, had died at age 99.

“I think she knows Joe, and I think she just wanted to talk about her husband,” said Biden, whose husband first met Elizabeth in 1982 when he was a Delaware senator.

“She poured tea, and Joe and I said, ‘Oh, let us help you,’” the first lady recalled of their meeting last year.

“And she said, ‘No, you sit there and I’ll get the tea.’”

“She had such curiosity,” Biden continued of the royal family matriarch. “She wanted to know all about American politics, what was happening.”

“So she put us at ease,” Biden said.

Immediately following the 2021 tea time, the president revealed to reporters that Elizabeth had also asked him about Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Protocol for Britain’s royal family requires its members to “remain strictly neutral with respect to political matters.”

The Bidens are scheduled to leave Washington over the weekend for the queen’s funeral in London, which will take place on Monday.

In her wide-ranging interview with “Today,” Biden also spoke out about recent efforts across the U.S. to ban books — including censoring many titles focused on race, gender and sex — from schools and libraries.

“All books should be in the library,” Biden, a longtime community college professor, told Jones. “All books.

“This is America. We don’t ban books.”

Asked where to draw the line on the level of input parents should have on their children’s education in school, Biden replied, “I think with the pandemic, parents saw how hard teachers work and how difficult this job really is.”

Biden suggested that parents should “work together in their school districts and decide what they want in their curriculum.”

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