Former President Obama has one fear in common with all of America. He’s afraid that Joe Biden is going to “f*** things up.” A perfectly understandable and widespread emotion for sure.
Of course, Obama is referring to Biden messing up the campaign and blowing the election for Democrats, while the rest of us are afraid of him NOT costing Dems the election and THEN proceeding to “F” things up.
But this isn’t some right wing conspiracy theory or Tweet rumor. This is straight from Politico, one of the most cooperative outlets for the DNC there is.
The public “bromance” propaganda we all saw and gagged at over the years covered a much less harmonious relationship, it seems. In addition to Biden and his supporters still nursing hurt feels over Obama’s warm embrace of Hillary as his successor rather than his own VP, there were long talked about D.C. rumors of Obama’s total lack of confidence in Joe over the years.
Here’s more from the Friday cover story for Politico Magazine:
Interviews with dozens of senior officials of the Obama-Biden administration painted a picture of eight years during which the president and vice president enjoyed a genuinely close personal relationship, built particularly around devotion to family, while at the same time many senior aides, sometimes tacitly encouraged by the president’s behavior, dismissed Biden as eccentric and a practitioner of an old, outmoded style of politics.
“You could certainly see technocratic eye-rolling at times,” said Jen Psaki, the former White House communications director. Young White House aides frequently mocked Biden’s gaffes and lack of discipline in comparison to the almost clerical Obama. They would chortle at how Biden, like an elderly uncle at Thanksgiving, would launch into extended monologues that everyone had heard before.
Former administration officials treated Biden dismissively in their memoirs.
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, who was known for his mind-meld with the president, wrote in his memoir that “in the Situation Room, Biden could be something of an unguided missile.”
Former FBI Director James Comey recalled in his book that “Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, ‘Can I ask something, Mr. President?’”
Comey continued: “Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.”
I loved every bit of that.
“Biden’s tendency to blurt out whatever was on his mind rankled Obama, who wasn’t afraid to needle him for it,” they write, farther down in the extremely lengthy piece.
“Biden aides acknowledge that Obama didn’t do nearly as much for Biden in 2020 as he did for Clinton in 2016,” they said, and reported “searing” quotes from officials. “One Democrat who spoke to Obama recalled the former president warning, ‘Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to **** things up.'”
(They didn’t bleep it, I did.)
There is A LOT more in the Politico story, but the main thing, and it is belabored and repeated and belabored again and again, is that neither Hillary nor Barack nor a whoooole lot of other top Dems have any sort of confidence in Joe Biden.
But they’re asking America to. So it’s not so much funny as it is … scary.