So is the prospect of a second wave of coronavirus soon, if we're not already in it (currently 80 cases reported in my small village resulting from a funeral wake ten days ago), so it's all part of the general noise.
The internal market bill currently passing through parliament has been cause for concern for a number of weeks on many fronts, both domestic (it threatens to undo aspects of devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and internationally (unless it's radically redrawn, the bill envisions the UK government knowingly breaching international law, defaulting to a hard Northern Ireland/Ireland border if there's no deal with the EU, and basically being able to rewrite laws on the fly with little or no parliamentary scrutiny).
Your friend may have an agenda (don't we all?). Biden's statement followed those from Pelosi, Schumer et al., which followed multiple TV interviews with Congressman Brendan Boyle over the last six months or so, all singing from the same songbook, so it should hardly have come as a surprise.
What your friend may not realize (because many in the UK don't have much understanding of the US governmental apparatus) is that decisions like this are not the sole gift of the president. Even if (horrible thought) Biden fails to win the election, there's a strong bipartisan pro-Irish lobby in the Senate and House that would bear out what Biden and others have been saying:
Boris Johnson has presented a trade deal with the US as a way of offsetting the economic costs of leaving the EU, and Donald Trump promised the two countries could strike “a very substantial trade agreement” that would increase trade “four or five times”.
Trump, however, would not be able to push an agreement through a hostile Congress, where there would be strong bipartisan opposition to any UK trade deal in the event of a threat to the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and to the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
...
“The American dimension to the Good Friday agreement is indispensable,” said Richard Neal, who is co-chair of the 54-strong Friends of Ireland caucus in Congress, and also chairs the powerful House ways and means committee, with the power to hold up a trade deal indefinitely.
“We oversee all trade agreements as part of our tax jurisdiction,” Neal, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, said in a phone interview. He pointed out that such a complex trade deal could take four or five years, even without the Northern Ireland issue.
...
Pete King, the Republican co-chair of the Friends of Ireland group, said the threat to abandon the backstop and endanger the open border was a “needless provocation”, adding that his party would have no compunction about defying Trump over the issue.
“I would think anyone who has a strong belief in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement the open border would certainly be willing to go against the president,” King said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/31/brexit-mess-with-good-friday-and-well-block-uk-trade-deal-us-politicians-warnAsk your friend how she feels about this story:
Donald’s Trump special envoy to Northern Ireland has warned of the risk of creating a hard “border by accident” on the island of Ireland, as Boris Johnson’s newly drafted plan to rewrite the withdrawal agreement was rejected again by the EU.
Mick Mulvaney, who was appointed by the US president in March, admitted to concerns about recent developments, including government legislation that could unilaterally override aspects of the agreement on Northern Ireland struck with Brussels last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/18/brexit-trump-envoy-warns-of-risk-of-ireland-border-by-accident
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