Democratic insiders are slamming a leadership ‘vacum’ at the White House and questioning President Biden’s diminishing public profile during the critical transition.
Biden, who during the final weeks of the campaign repeatedly engaged with reporters – even when committing flubs like calling Trump supporters ‘garbage’ shortly before Election Day – has curtailed his public presence during the weeks before the handoff.
He dodged interactions the press on two foreign trips since Donald Trump’s election, and has mostly avoided substantial talks with the media – not holding a traditional post-election press conference.
When he has appeared in public, he mas mustly eschewed off-the-cuff interactions, hewing closely to prepeared remarks.
That has some Democrats fuming and potentially exposed, with a political opposition movement flailing as Trump continues to suggest ‘retribution’ against political opponents is on the table.
Biden made an exception Sunday when he spoke from the White House about the collapse of the Syrian government, botching the word ‘regime’ and providing quick responses to two questions about kidnapped American freelance reporter Austin Tice. It was during that brief exchange where Biden appeared to have forgotten what he was talking about just seconds after fielding the question about Tice. A few other events could put him forward during the time before the holidays.
‘He’s been so cavalier and selfish about how he approaches the final weeks of the job,’ a former White House official told Politico. ‘There is no leadership coming from the White House,’ lamented one Democrat close to senior lawmakers. ‘There is a total vacuum.’
Biden skipped a gathering of 50 heads of state and world leaders who attended the reopening of Notre Dame in Paris – allowing the president-elect to seize the diplomatic mantle with meetings with Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Zelensky and President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili.
Outgoing President Joe Biden is being criticized for taking a low public profile since the defeat of Kamala Harris in November. He has not held a post-election press conference, and has held few informal exhcnages with the press, like a brief one Sunday
First lady Jill Biden represented the U.S. at the event on the tail end of her own foreign trip, with her own visit upstaged by Trump.
Biden barely interacted with reporters on his trip to Peru and Brazil for meetings with Asia Pacific leaders and G20 leaders who gathered in Rio. The trip featured odd moments including when Biden missed a group photo while meeting with the leaders of Italy and Canada.
‘Trump is now running the country – Trump is now running foreign policy. There’s no question about that,’ former Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow said on Fox News Monday.
Biden allies are concerned about more than a potential loss of face. Some fret Democrats are failing to organize resistance to the incoming administration even as Trump lines up loyalists like Kash Patel to run the FBI and vows to pardon January 6 defendants. Even his constant calls to ‘drill baby drill’ are mostly going unanswered, at a time when the Biden administration is trying to push through new regulations in the final days, including a new final rule on cancer-causing chemicals.
The vacum comes at a time when many Democrats are publicly blaming Biden for his role in the political collapse, where Trump won all seven battleground states. By insisting on running for so long, Biden denied Vice President Kamala Harris or other challenges the opportunity to build support.
Harris – who has herself kept a low profile after recharging on a family vacation in Hawaii – is also coming in for criticism.
Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville called Biden a ‘tragic figure.’
‘All of this. It’s all so f***ing self-inflicted. It’s tragic, it’s sad,’ Carville said during an interview on the Politics War Room podcast for Politicon.
The ‘vacum’ has allowed President-elect Donald Trump to seize even more of the spotlight, as he did with his tight-grip pose with Maron in Paris
Biden took questions about kidnapped American freelancer Austin Tice
He said Biden made a huge mistake by running for reelection and that the vice president knew he ‘f***d up’ by running again.
‘[I]f he would have in September of 2023 or August said that he wasn’t going to run, go***mn, we would have won this election,’ Carville said.
‘President Biden is making every day of this term count as he accelerates the implementation of an unprecedented agenda that will benefit hardworking Americans for generations: bringing American manufacturing home from overseas, taking the most significant action to fight climate change in human history, beating Big Pharma so Medicare can negotiate lower drug costs, bipartisan legislation to protect communities from gun violence, repairing and modernizing our nation’s infrastructure, and hundreds of groundbreaking judicial confirmations,’ sais White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
‘He is leading by example for the sake of American democracy, honoring his campaign promise to respect the will of the voters and provide an orderly transition,’ he added, defending Biden’s record of holding ‘gaggles’ with reporters and noting Biden has criticized Trump’s proposed tariffs.
Harris is also coming in for criticism of her own for how her campaign was able to spend $1.5 billion on her failed bid.
There were signs of tension at the Kennedy Center Sunday, when the president and Jill Biden ignored Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff during the time when they were introduced at the Kennedy Center Honors.
Biden’s most prominent public act since Harris’s defeat has been his pardon of his son Hunter. Some Democrats are also slamming that move – both on the substance and the mechanics.
Biden’s constant claims that he would not pardon his son while defending the independence of the Justice Department made the sudden U-turn all the more stunning. It also left his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre having to explain her own repeated denials that Biden was considering a pardon – and facing questions about whether the president lied to her.
Even among those who cut him some slack for pardon his only surviving son have asked why Biden issued the pardon shortly before leaving the country and failing to answer questions about it – and failing to even combine with pardon with thousands of Americans who are seeking pardons or clemency for their own offenses.
Trump has seized the opportunity to hog the spotlight – sitting for a lengthy interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,’ issuing pronouncements on war and diplomacy from Mar-a-Lago, and standing by embattled cabinet picks like Pete Hegseth for the Pentagon.
Biden is scheduled a defens of his economic agenda at the Brookings Institution in Washington Tuesday, giving him a chance to defend employment gains even as Trump credits a public uproar over inflation for driving his successful reelection effort.
A Biden advisor said the president’s posture was influenced by his own repeated statements that he would accept the legitimacy of the election. That is something Trump failed to do in 2020 and even when asked about that election during Sunday’s interview on ‘Meet the Press.’
Biden believes is is more important than ever to set that example, according to the advisor. The White House has been coordinating with the DNC, which has been hammering Trump over his agenda and personnel selections. Biden has been weighing in with his views on the future of the party in private discussions with leaders.
