Donald Trump And Joe Biden Actually Have This One Thing In Common

While you might think that Donald Trump and Joe Biden have nothing whatsoever in common, that's not entirely true. Both of them are their respective parties' presidential candidates in 2020, of course. Both of them are also Caucasian men in their 70s — despite all of Trump's sniping about Biden's age, he himself is just a few years younger. Both of them have adult children and both have grandchildren as well. Both candidates have also been married more than once, with Biden being a widower and Trump a serial divorcer with a passion for pre-nups. Both candidates have also spent a significant amount of time in the West Wing, with Trump occupying the Oval Office for 3 3/4 years and Biden spending 8 years in the VP's office down the hall.

When it comes to their dining preferences, Trump's a fan of fast food while Biden prefers pasta (and ice cream). The two men do have one very important trait in common, however — neither one will touch a drop of alcohol.

Donald Trump, despite all his bravado and bluster, nevertheless came clean in a rather uncharacteristic way in a 2015 interview with the Daily Mail. He told them that the reason he's sworn never to drink is because it was a promise to his late brother. Fred Trump passed away in his early 40s due to complications from alcoholism, and Trump confessed that "it just broke my heart the way he died." He went on to explain: "This is why I don't drink, ever. I just don't do it... Fred told me not to, and I saw what happened to him when he didn't follow his own advice."

Biden does not cite any one specific influence driving his decision to avoid alcohol. Instead, he's simply stated, "There are enough alcoholics in my family," (via Marie Claire), among them his younger brother Frankie and his son Hunter (who's also struggled with addiction to drugs).

While some might see such admissions on both men's part as a sign of weakness, nobody's family is perfect, and both men, having seen tragedy at first hand, have had the strength to avoid falling into the same trap. No matter which candidate is "your guy" and which one you'd just as soon see sucked into a black hole, the fact remains that both men's sobriety, even in the face of all this election anxiety, is something we're actually kind of in awe of.