MIDDLEVILLE, Mich. — As part of a trip spanning West Michigan, First Lady Jill Biden paid a visit to YMCA Camp Manitou-Lin in Middleville on Wednesday after touching down in Grand Rapids on Tuesday.
The first lady spoke alongside leaders including Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Chair and outgoing U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) as Biden highlighted a summer EBT program known as SUN Bucks.
The program, launched by the Biden administration, is one Biden explained is meant to help provide qualifying families with credit to buy groceries.
"Summer should be a time of joy and freedom and of growing and learning outside the classroom," Biden said. " But for too many children, their summers are stolen by hunger."
The First Lady also spoke to children at the camp connected with wounded, ill or injured military.
"I love meeting with military families, and especially military kids," Biden said. "And I hope that you know that your president - my husband, Joe Biden - really cares about military families because we are a military family."
But the trip also came amid uncertainty as to whether she and her husband will remain the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
A national conversation has been persisting around the continuance of her husband's re-election campaign.
Some have called for the president to drop out of the race after his performance in last week's presidential debate in which he seemed to have trouble at times finding his message.
The first lady departed without taking questions from the press pool as she was on her way to Traverse City that afternoon.
Stabenow, however, spoke with reporters, saying she supports the current president.
"I think that we shouldn't evaluate anything based on one debate," Stabenow said. "This is not about 90 minutes; it's about four years."
"[Biden] is a president who's taken action, and I don't think we've had a better president in our lifetime for Michigan," she said.
Instead, the senator, who's open seat is being coveted by candidates on both sides of the aisle ahead of November, pivoted to a familiar theme among supporters of the Democratic incumbent.
The concern, she feels, should lie elsewhere.
"I'm appalled that we have a former president who's a convicted felon of 34 convictions, and there aren't editorial boards across this country the minute he was convicted calling for him to step down," Stabenow said, referring to former President Donald Trump. "I find that very disappointing."
The nature of the First Lady's event in Traverse City, during which she joined Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's husband Chasten in opening a campaign office, signaled she was standing behind her husband's re-election efforts.
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