After a swift greeting with the UK leader Biden moved away to salute the King's personal representative for County Antrim, Lord-Lieutenant David McCorkell. He then appeared to be wrapped in a friendly embrace with Jane Hartley, the glamourous US ambassador to the UK he appointed last year.
But the Prime Minister suffered an awkward moment as he greeted Joe Biden off Air Force One last night.
In what some have suggested was a diplomatic snub the US president was quick to shake off the attentions of the PM after landing in Belfast.
After a swift greeting with the UK leader on the tarmac in blustery, chilly conditions he moved away to salute the King's personal representative for County Antrim, Lord-Lieutenant David McCorkell.
Comment: A 'swift' greeting indeed. It pretty much looks like, and it's reasonable to suppose, that Biden doesn't recognise the UK PM. But then that's understandable, considering how many PMs there have been in the last year or so, in addition to Biden's evident insatiable perversions and his tenuous grip with reality.
He then appeared to be wrapped in a longer, much more friendly embrace with Jane Hartley, the glamourous US ambassador to the UK appointed by the president last year.
Biden's embrace with Jane Hartley
Comment: He's fond of referring to them, and mixing them up:
"I may be Irish, but I'm not stupid," Biden inexplicably said as he greeted 102-year-old World War II veteran Ray Firmani during a town hall on veterans' benefits in New Castle, Del.- December 2022
The president was only expected to 'greet' the leaders of the main Northern Ireland political parties before his speech, after which he immediately headed over the border to the Republic, where he will spend the next three days.
US ambassador is a key democrat fundraiser
Jane Hartley is a prominent Democratic fundraiser who was US ambassador to France and Monaco during the Obama administration.
Her selection for the prestigious diplomatic post at the Court of St James's came in January last year.
A veteran Democratic supporter, Ms Hartley worked in the White House from 1978 to 1980 in Jimmy Carter's administration.
She moved into the private sector as a TV executive, followed by 20 years at an economic consulting firm, the Observatory Group.
Choosing the mother of two, 72, who is married to a multi-millionaire financier, surprised Washington insiders because she is neither a close friend of Mr Biden nor one of his campaign's top tier of fundraisers - the usual criteria for earning such a plum job.
However, White House insiders say the President wanted to reward her loyalty after she stuck by him in the early faltering stages of his election campaign.
The ambassadorship is usually one of the first to be announced by an incoming leader but Mr Biden reportedly had difficulty finding the right candidate.
Former secretary of state Colin Powell and ex-New York mayor Mike Bloomberg were approached but both turned down the job, according to reports at the time.
Ms Hartley moved with her husband Ralph Schlosstein into Winfield House, a mansion in Regent's Park with 12 and a half acres of grounds - the second largest private garden in the capital after Buckingham Palace.
Anne Armstrong was the first woman US ambassador to the UK, serving from 1976 to 1977.
Mr Biden held one-to-one talks with Mr Sunak this morning in a Belfast hotel. He faced a volley of questions from reporters, including whether he had a message for Northern Irish parties and why he was not discussing a trade deal while on his visit to the UK. But he failed to answer them.
He told reporters he is 'here to listen' during a trip to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Despite fledgling signs of a thaw in relations after the Windsor Framework eased the row with the EU over post-Brexit rules in the province, US officials have suggested the leaders will not even talk about reviving a trade package.
Amanda Sloat, senior director for Europe at the US National Security Council, told a briefing for journalists the focus will be Northern Ireland and the war in Ukraine.
'I don't anticipate that the two leaders are going to be talking about a free trade agreement on this trip ... I think their conversation is going to focus primarily on the situation in Northern Ireland given that that's where they're meeting, as well as the chance to touch base on Ukraine and some other issues,' she said.
Ms Sloat flatly denied that Mr Biden was 'anti-British', or on what amounted to a holiday to Ireland.
'I think the track record of the president shows that he's not anti British,' she said.
'The UK remains one of our strongest and closest allies,' she said.
'And it's difficult, frankly, to think of an issue in the world that we are not closely cooperating with the British on and it's why the president wanted to have the opportunity to engage with Prime Minister Sunak this morning to start his his day here in in Belfast.'
She said Mr Biden and Mr Sunak had the opportunity to touch briefly on economic issues when they met in San Diego, a conversation which she said will be 'furthered and deepened' when they meet in Washington in June.
'We're continually looking for ways to engage with the UK on a whole range of economic issues,' she added.
Downing Street is believed to be focusing on smaller agreements with the US, such as one that has been mooted on minerals.
But the US administration said there will not be a formal group meeting with the leaders.
'The main message of the president to all parties, to all people of Northern Ireland, is to reaffirm support for the Good Friday Agreement, and obviously pillar one and the devolved institutions here in Northern Ireland are a fundamental part of the Good Friday Agreement, and so I think the presidents message - as he said on St Patrick's Day and I expect he will reaffirm today - is the United States' strong support for that, the belief that the people of Northern Ireland deserve to have a democratically elected power sharing representative governance,' Ms Sloat said.
Mr Biden is also not going to Stormont, with the power-sharing Assembly established in the peace deal currently suspended amid a boycott by the DUP.
The unionist party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said this morning that Mr Biden had to take a share of responsibility for the 'political instability' in Northern Ireland.
'He is seen as extremely partisan,' Mr Wilson told Talk TV, adding that Mr Biden had shown himself 'anti-British' in the debates over Brexit.
'I suppose this is more about Joe Biden his reelection attempts and appealing to the Irish vote in America,' Mr Wilson said.
The US President - accompanied by his Northern Ireland envoy Joe Kennedy - will carry out several other engagements across the week to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which largely brought an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1998. He will meet the Prime Minister again on Wednesday for a bilateral meeting.
Mr Sunak will not attend Mr Biden's keynote speech.
Speaking to reporters before his departure, Mr Biden said that his top priority was to 'make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor Agreement stay in place, keep the peace'.
His son Hunter Biden and sister Valerie Biden Owen are accompanying him for the trip.
Comment: It's telling that, despite the hard evidence of what his son has been up to, he's still accompanying him on official trips representing the US.
There have been fears that a gaffe by the president during his visit could further alienate unionists.
As vice president, Mr Biden caused massive offense to Northern Ireland's unionist community when, during a St Patrick's Day event, he joked: 'If you're wearing orange, you're not welcome here.'
Northern Ireland's primarily Protestant unionist community associate themselves with the color in celebration of William of Orange's victory over Catholic forces at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Biden's long history of 'anti-British' views
There have been fears that Joe Biden could enrage unionists with references to his Irish heritage during his visit to Belfast.
As vice president, Mr Biden caused massive offense to Northern Ireland's unionist community when, during a St Patrick's Day event, he joked: 'If you're wearing orange, you're not welcome here.'
Northern Ireland's primarily Protestant unionist community associate themselves with the color in celebration of William of Orange's victory over Catholic forces at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
As a senator in 1985, he spoke out against making it easier to extradite IRA militants from the US to Britain, a sentiment popular with Irish-Americans but not in Britain.
He has talked often about his mother's hatred for England, which was so intense that she once refused to use a bed that Queen Elizabeth II had slept in.
In his memoir, 'Promises to Keep,' he recalls with a degree of embarrassment at his English surname Biden.
And he describes how his Irish-American aunt Gertie Finnegan once told him: 'Your father is not a bad man. He's just English.'
In 2020, as president-elect, he took a cheeky dig at the UK's national broadcaster when a BBC reporter shouted a question at him. 'The BBC?' he said, moving on with a smile. 'I'm Irish.'
Mr Biden will cross the border to attend engagements in Co Louth this afternoon.
The President has traced his ancestral roots to the area and he will tour Carlingford Castle in the county before spending the night in Dublin. He is then expected to visit Irish President Michael D Higgins on Thursday.
It has been announced that Dublin's Phoenix Park will be closed for 24 hours from 5pm on Wednesday to facilitate the visit. Mr Higgins' official residence is within the park's grounds.
The White House said Mr Biden will take part in a tree-planting ceremony and ringing of the Peace Bell at the President's official residence, Aras an Uachtarain. Following that ceremony, he will meet again with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, whom Mr Biden recently hosted for St Patrick's Day.
Mr Biden will address the Irish parliament and attend a banquet dinner at Dublin Castle tomorrow evening.
The President's trip will conclude with a visit to Co Mayo, where he has also connected with distant cousins, on Friday.
He will tour the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock and visit the North Mayo Heritage and Genealogical Centre's family history research unit. He will then make a public speech at St Muredach's Cathedral in Ballina.
Monday marked 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland and left 3,600 people dead.
The President tweeted he would use the Belfast leg of his trip to underscore his nation's 'commitment to preserving peace and encouraging prosperity' in the region.
The UK is observing the milestone anniversary with a reunion of key players in the peace process alongside Biden's visit.
Deep divisions remain over the conflict's legacy, and authorities raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland to 'severe' in March as they warned of IRA dissidents opposed to the peace process.
Youths threw petrol bombs and set a police vehicle on fire during a dissident march in Londonderry on Monday.
Police said they had intelligence that a major attack had been planned so when masked teenagers threw petrol bombs at a vehicle, they simply withdrew rather than being sucked into what they thought might be an ambush.
The following day they said they had recovered four pipe bombs from a cemetery near the city.
'The discovery of these devices was a further sinister and worrying development,' said Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton.
The journey of Joe Biden's Irish ancestors - from Counties Mayo and Louth to Scranton: How president's great-great grandfathers left an Ireland ravaged by famine for a new life in the U.S. 180 years ago
Ernie Caffrey has a gift waiting for President Joe Biden when he visits his ancestral hometown of Ballina, Co. Mayo: A brick from the home where the Blewitts lived before they left famine-ravaged Ireland for the U.S.
Caffrey's fine art gallery stands on the spot in Garden Street where Edward Blewitt lived with his wife and eight children — in what is now known as Biden's ancestral home.
All that remains is part of a wall and an old hearth in the backyard of the gallery.
'I was up a ladder and down the other side to chip out these bricks,' he told DailyMail.com. 'It took me hours.'
But it is a physical connection between an American president and the land of his forefathers, said Caffrey.
The story of how Biden and his Irish ancestors made it to a better life in America is the story of generations of Irish who left the island during the years of the great hunger, sailing often from Liverpool to New York.
Two branches of Biden's mother's family — the Finnegans from the eastern county of Louth and the Blewitts from the western county of Mayo — made a similar journey at a similar time.
In all, 10 of his 16 great-great grandparents were from the Emerald Isle, making him 'among the most Irish' of all U.S. presidents, according to the Irish Family History Centre.
Ballina was one of the places worst hit by the potato famine that cut down an entire generation of Irish people. An estimated million people died.
Comment: There may have been a potatoe disease killing the crops, but England intentionally worsened the famine.
When the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle visited the town in 1849, he wrote that the population was 'gone to workhouse, to England, to the grave.'
Edward Blewitt, a prosperous engineer and businessman, plumped for the U.S. His son, Patrick, Biden's great-great grandfather, traveled first as a 20-year-old cabinboy to scope out prospects.
When he returned two years later they were ready to set out in style.
While most families went one by one, scrimping and saving to afford the fare, Blewitt could afford to take the whole family on the SS Excelsior in 1851, his fortunes bolstered by the sale of 27,000 bricks to the local cathedral.
After the crossing, the family settled first in Carbondale, Pennsylvania.
But within a decade they were living in Scranton, where Edward Blewitt helped lay out the streets.
It was a familiar destination for people from Mayo at that time. And in 1990 Ballina was twinned with the town, a move that predated Biden's links being discovered.
If the west of Ireland was the area worst affected by the famine, then the Cooley peninsula was one of the worst hit parts of the east. It is here that the tumbledown remains of the Finnegan home still stand. The name features on gravestones in nearby Kilwirra cemetery.
Biden visited the graveyard during a 2016 visit. It stands close to the coastline that would have been the Finnegans' last view of Ireland as they left on the 'famine ships', and at its center is a ruined church where they would once have worshiped.
Owen Finnegan, Biden's great-great grandfather, left Ireland in 1849, sailing on the Brothers from the nearby port of Newry. His profession was listed as locksmith, although other records say he was a shoemaker.
The rest of the family, including nine-year-old James — the president's great grandfather — followed a year later on the Marchioness of Bute.
They settled first in Ovid, New York. James was partially sighted, according to research by Jean Smolenyak, which meant he avoided service in the Civil War and, rather than becoming a shoemaker like his father, he instead took up the fiddle.
By the time his youngest son Ambrose was born in 1884 the family was in Olyphant, near Scranton. And that is where the lines merged, with Ambrose marrying Geraldine Blewitt in 1909.
Their daughter Catherine was Biden's mother.
The extended families mean both Co. Mayo and Co. Louth are littered with relatives.
'There's so many Finnegans over here it's unbelievable,' said Donal Marks, 81, a distant cousin.
He described how the Finnegans are nicknamed locally to separate each line. He's from the 'Fick' line (he doesn't remember how it was named). There are the Steves and then the Owens.
'That's the one that matters,' he said around the kitchen table of the house he had built when he returned from a career in England. That is the line that resides in the White House.
He and his wife Bernie were among the guests when Biden stopped by the old family pub, Lily Finnegan's, during his 2016 visit.
'He was very much at home,' said Bernie. 'He was quite happy to go around and talk to everyone. I've never seen such a relaxed person.
'His brother was having a drink and his daughter was pulling pints. It was like they had always been here.'
Biden arrived with a sheaf of papers and was busily showing everyone how they were related.
'He had it all written down, the whole tree,' said Bernie, 'and he was showing everyone.'
Reader Comments
Who gives a phk about his 180 year old ancestry, half the English speaking world can trace it roots back to Ireland, including my own.
Who writes this shite, reads like an article from Vanity Fair.