Books detail president increasingly unfit to take on Trump, and party infighting that doomed Kamala Harris’s chances
Joe Biden plans to write a book about his presidency which ended in his historic withdrawal from the 2024 election, pushed out by senior Democrats convinced he was too old and infirm and replaced by his vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Sources close to Biden told news outlets the book could be published next year, by which time Biden will be 83 and doubtless – like other US presidents’ autobiographies – it will be a self-serving narrative lauding his time in office.
But readers have not needed to wait for an inside look at Biden’s time in power, especially his final year, which ended in his withdrawal from his re-election bid. This month saw the publication of two books containing explosive reporting on Biden’s downfall, and coming months will bring two more: so far the picture emerging is a damning one for Biden, his top aides and the Democratic party.
The books have detailed a president increasingly unfit for the task of taking on Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and his top aides in denial about it, or actively seeking to cover it up, even as the administration warned about the existential threat Trump posed to American democracy.
Journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes were first out of the gate with Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. Revelations included how Biden aides planned for his withdrawal in 2023, then when his disastrous June 2024 debate against Donald Trump supercharged calls for him to quit, “aggressively” argued that he should not, given Harris would be a “disaster”.
Then Chris Whipple, author of a book about Biden’s 2020 win, released Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History. Whipple’s book is slim, at just 204 double-spaced pages. But it hits hard. Ron Klain, a former White House chief of staff, describes debate preparations in which Biden seemed “out of it”, unable to “grasp … the back and forth”, and also says that after the debate disaster, Biden declined to do political work necessary to survive, preferring to enjoy the trappings of power.
Responding to Guardian reporting on Whipple’s book, Klain said he “never doubted the president’s mental acuity”, and had merely expressed concern that Biden made tactical errors, such as thinking “being a great foreign policy president was enough”.
In his interview with Whipple, Klain also describes his opposition to calls for Biden to drop out and anguish when he did so. Observers asked why Whipple did not challenge Klain on this, given his unsparing depiction of Biden’s aged state.
Biden dropped out on 21 July. That gave Harris a near-impossible task, just 107 days to put together a campaign to beat Trump. Nonetheless, Allen, Parnes and Whipple report extensive shortcomings in the vice-president’s own approach, including the flawed selection of the untested Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate, as well as infighting between Harris staffers and Biden aides who maintained campaign control.
The result was a crushing defeat, and Trump’s return to power.
Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, said Parnes, Allen and Whipple had shown Biden’s aides to be chiefly at fault: “Had Harris not had the Precision Strategies crew, think of what she could have done. I think that had she had a little more time and a little bit better advising, she could have won it.”
Reed Galen, a Republican strategist turned anti-Trump campaigner and host of The Home Front podcast, was more blunt: “Anyone who knew [about Biden’s decline] and did nothing, or knew and went to work for Kamala Harris’s campaign and didn’t let her run her own race, should never be given a position of responsibility again.”
For Biden, worse could yet be to come. In May, Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios will release the starkly titled Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
Announcing their book, the two reporters pointed to widespread reporting, including by Parnes, Allen and Whipple, that family members including Jill Biden and Hunter Biden, eventually pardoned by his father, persuaded Joe Biden to seek a second term.
“Biden, his family and his team let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years,” Tapper and Thompson said. “What was the extent of it? Was it a cover-up? Was it a conspiracy?”
According to Politico, Original Sin is the book “Biden allies fear most”, with aides “shocked to read the ‘cover-up’ framing [which] wasn’t used explicitly in some of the interviews facilitated by Biden handlers”.
A spokesperson said Tapper and Thompson “found people post-election much more willing to talk candidly” and “interviewed more than 200 people to figure out just what went behind the scenes of the Biden White House, conducting extensive reporting and factchecking, including with former president Biden’s team”.
A fourth campaign book, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey (Wall Street Journal), Tyler Pager (New York Times) and Isaac Arnsdorf (Washington Post), was said to be the only one that “involved the Biden and Harris teams in a factchecking process”. It comes out in July.
If journalism is the first draft of history, books by journalists may just be the second. Nobody yet owns the narrative and debate will run on. Nonetheless, Jong-Fast said Allen, Parnes and Whipple had already shown Democrats were simply in “big denial” about Biden’s decline until it was too late.
“I’m not convinced that it was a huge conspiracy,” Jong-Fast said. “What the right wants is a smoking gun, a moment where a cabal got together and was like, ‘Yes, we will do this [cover-up].’ And from what I’ve read from all these books, there’s not a smoking gun, it’s just Biden got older and older, and people were in denial about it, which is a larger problem with the gerontocracy writ large.”
The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a key player in all accounts of Biden’s downfall, sits in Congress at 85. Chuck Schumer, whose role in pushing Biden out is described in another recent book, Mad House by Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater of the Times, is 74 and shows no sign of quitting as Democratic leader in the Senate.
“This should be a call to action,” Jong-Fast said. “Democrats should read these books and go, ‘Oh my God, we need people to retire at normal ages and not stay on and on. You’re not an airline pilot at 85. I don’t have an 87-year-old doing eye surgery on me. That doesn’t mean you’re not worthy and wonderful and valuable. It just means that you probably shouldn’t be serving.
“If Democrats are going to run on this idea that American democracy is in trouble under Trump, then they can’t keep their friends in office for as long as they want. That’s it. Period. Paragraph.”
In his first 100 days, Trump still leans on an old foe: Joe Biden
Trump has spoken about Biden, his family or his administration at least 580 times either in public remarks or on his social media site, an NBC News analysis shows.
WASHINGTON — America may be well on its way to forgetting Joe Biden; its president isn’t.
Donald Trump spoke Biden’s name more than a dozen times Jan. 20, day one of his second presidency, and from that point forward, he has basically never stopped.
As he nears the 100th day of his term, Trump has invoked his predecessor with a persistence that suggests the two are in the final throes of a bitter campaign. They aren’t and won’t ever be again: Biden pulled his name off the 2024 ballot and left elective office for good. But for Trump there is a certain political upside in making Biden a perpetual bogeyman.
Mentioning Biden reminds voters that not so long ago, they were unhappy enough with high prices and illegal border crossings that they repudiated him and his hand-picked successor, Kamala Harris. Biden may also be a useful diversion from the whiplash of Trump’s term, shifting attention to the aged ex-president who struggled through speeches and looked unsteady on his feet.
As children pushed their pink and yellow eggs at the White House’s annual Easter Egg Roll on Monday, Trump mingled with the crowd and mocked Biden over an incident that many may have forgotten, if they were ever aware of it at all. Three years ago, Biden hosted the Easter Egg Roll and was redirected at one point by an aide dressed in a bunny costume.
“Do you remember the bunny with Joe Biden?” Trump said. “Do you remember when the bunny took Joe Biden out? He’s not taking Trump out.” At that, a costume bunny standing alongside shook its head in agreement.
Amplifying the point, the White House’s official account on X posted video of the moment with the caption “The White House is no longer a nursing home.”
In a statement for this article, White House spokesperson Liz Huston also invoked Biden and the work Trump has done moving on from his predecessor’s administration.
“President Trump has spent the first three months of his presidency cleaning up the disasters created by Joe Biden and Making America Great Again,” Huston said. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the border is secure, inflation is cooling, jobs are up, and common sense is restored.”
Trump’s running commentary on Biden brims with grievances large and small. To this day, he says he legitimately won the 2020 election. He has blamed Biden and other Democrats for the criminal investigations he faced in the aftermath.
“The 2020 election was totally rigged,” he told reporters last month aboard Air Force One. He described Biden as a kind of presidential impostor who usurped Trump’s rightful place and then did “such a bad job.”
In his Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in February, the topic turned to the war between Russia and Ukraine. After he lay blame on Biden, Trump said it pained him to say as much.
“I hate to say that about somebody that sat here just before me, but he did a terrible, terrible job,” Trump said.
Unpleasant as it may be, Trump seldom tires of it.
He has called Biden “pathetic,” “sad,” “a disaster,” “incompetent” and the worst president in history. Biden had “no clue.” He “didn’t know he was alive.”
Trump’s beef extends from matters of high foreign policy to White House decor. In February, he said he had approached the Biden administration with an offer to build a ballroom for the White House — something “beautiful” at a cost of about $100 million — but never heard back.
“This question takes me back to 2017 and everyone asking why he mentions Hillary so much,” said Michael Dubke, a White House communications director in Trump’s first term. “‘She lost; you won. Let’s move on, Mr. President.’ The foil is key to his central premise that those that came before broke it and I will fix it. Even now that the campaign is over, the foil still has value.”
There may be another dynamic at work. Always mindful of his popularity, Trump may see Biden as competition for a place in the history books. In the zero-sum game of presidential rankings, if Biden falls in history’s estimation, Trump could rise.
“In MAGA land, Biden was a false president. And Trump is trying to keep banging that drum so he can drive that narrative into the history books,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian.
The numbers tell the story — of a president who, as much as he may want to make America great again, would be happy to see Americans abhor Biden for all time.
So far, Trump has spoken about Biden, his family or his administration at least 580 times either in public remarks or on his social media site, an NBC News analysis shows. That’s an average of six times every day of his presidency.
After he won the 2020 election, by contrast, Biden mentioned Trump 29 times in the first 100 days of his presidency. That’s an average of once every 3½ days. Even then, he did so with a certain reluctance.
“I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump,” Biden said at a town hall-style event.
Last month, Trump used a televised event showcasing Elon Musk’s Tesla vehicles to take multiple digs at Biden. Holding notes showing prices of Tesla cars, Trump said: “They gave me notes. I said, ‘I’m not Biden, I don’t need notes.’”
He then climbed into a red Model S sitting on the White House’s South Lawn.
“You think Biden could get into that car?” he told the assembled reporters.
Trump has given no sign that his preoccupation with Biden is waning. He’s using the ample communication tools at a president’s disposal to keep his predecessor front and center, with aides and subordinates stepping forward to sustain the drumbeat.
Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has mentioned Biden 78 times in the 16 briefings she has given thus far, including 37 times unprompted in her opening remarks.
Cabinet members have gotten into the act, as well. When he was called upon during a televised Cabinet meeting April 10, Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, opened with “Mr. President, the Biden EPA was strangulating the economy.”
Later in the meeting, when it was his turn to speak, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, told Trump: “You came into an emergency situation where President Biden left us with a $1.2 trillion trade deficit. It’s the largest of any country in human history.” (A number of economists argue that running a trade deficit isn’t necessarily harmful. The United States gets valuable goods in return.)
Trump jumped in.
“You said the largest in history, right?” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like what he left us. He left us a mess. His whole administration was a mess.”
Four other officials at the table in the Cabinet Room that day — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Kelly Loeffler, head of the Small Business Administration — also used their public remarks to take swipes at the Biden administration.
At times, Trump-friendly conservative news outlets have teed up fresh opportunities for him to skewer Biden. At a joint news conference at the White House with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a reporter for The Gateway Pundit asked Modi whether he was more confident of a successful relationship with the United States under Trump “versus with Biden’s incompetence and weakness over the last four years.”
Before Modi could answer, Trump laughed.
“I agree with you,” he said. “Yeah, gross incompetence.”
Since he took office, Trump aides have exercised tighter control over which news outlets are allowed onto Air Force One and into smaller spaces that can accommodate only a certain number of journalists.
In February, the White House stripped The Associated Press of its traditional spot in the small group of journalists allowed to cover the president in such settings, citing its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” the name Trump has given it.
No AP reporters were on board during an Air Force One flight April 13 when Trump stopped by the press cabin to take questions. A reporter from Real America’s Voice was on the plane, however, and at one point posed this question: “How do you do it, Mr. President? I haven’t stayed up to 2 a.m. in the morning since I was 25. And now we’re 2:16 in the morning having a press conference. How do you do it?”
“Biden was sleeping for 10 hours already,” Trump said.
Asked about Trump’s fixation with Biden, a White House aide to the former president said: “It’s bizarre.”
“I think it’s his attempt to distract from what he’s doing to the economy. I also don’t think he is over the fact that Biden beat him in 2020,” the person added, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely.
Denouncing Biden is easy enough; proving the point is tougher.
Trump has faulted Biden for giving Ukraine aid in the form of a grant, as opposed to Europe, which he said will be getting its money back. Both Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron corrected him on that point in separate Oval Office meetings.
He has accused Biden of weaponizing government and said he ended the practice. Trump’s detractors say he has used his power to retaliate against perceived political foes, including Chris Krebs, who was a homeland security official in the first term. Trump signed an executive memo this month yanking Krebs’ security clearance. Among the sins spelled out in the memo was Krebs’ denial that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen.”
An argument Trump makes is that Russian President Vladimir Putin so disrespected Biden that he felt free to wage war with Ukraine. Now that Biden is gone and Trump is back in the White House, “President Putin wants to have peace,” Trump told reporters in February.
Putin, he said, “didn’t want to have peace with Biden. And you tell me why that is, OK?”
Though Trump promised during the campaign to end the war on his first day as president, administration officials have lately sounded resigned to its continuation. Indeed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this month that the United States may be ready to “move on” from its attempts to broker a peace agreement.
As the 100-day milestone approaches, Trump is nearing the point where it’s becoming harder to blame Biden for what goes wrong.
Trump’s start-and-stop approach to worldwide tariffs has rattled the financial markets, jeopardizing the 401(k) plans that millions of people rely on for retirement. Consumer confidence has dropped.
People may now be less interested in what Biden did than in how Trump will dig out of a hole rooted in his seesawing trade policies.
“It always gets more challenging to blame current conditions on your predecessor the farther you get from your predecessor’s time in office,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “That’s especially true with the economy, which has reacted rather strongly to Trump’s tariffs and trade war.”
Axios reporter hits media for whiffing on coverage of Biden’s decline at White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Journalist Alex Thompson called out the press for failing to properly report on former President Joe Biden’s declining health at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
Thompson, a reporter for Axios, accepted the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage. His reporting closely documented Biden’s disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump, the events leading up to it, and Biden’s eventual decision to exit the race. In his acceptance speech, Thompson acknowledged that the press fell short in covering the story of Biden’s decline.
“Being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of this story,” Thompson said, speaking before a room of journalists from major news outlets.
He added, “President Biden’s decline and its cover-up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.”
President Biden’s disastrous debate performance last year led to him exiting the race. ((Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) | (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images))
Following Biden’s withdrawal from the race, several journalists admitted they had not sufficiently scrutinized the president’s health. Concerns mounted after Biden’s debate performance, when viewers noted his rambling answers and raspy voice.
BIDEN’S TEAM HID THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS HEALTH ALL ALONG: WH PRESS SEC
Thompson said the media’s failure to investigate and report more aggressively on Biden’s condition contributed to growing public distrust of journalism.
“Some people trust us less because of it,” he said. “We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust, and being defensive about them further erodes it.”
He concluded with a stark admission: “We should have done better.”
Gallup polling from October 2024 reflects the erosion of trust in American institutions, including the press. Only 31% of Americans reported having a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news accurately.
Thompson’s comments come amid broader conversations about media accountability. Earlier this year, NPR CEO Katherine Maher testified before Congress, admitting the organization mishandled its coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election.
“I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner,” Maher told lawmakers. She later described the lack of coverage as a “mistake.”
Biden relegated to back of world leaders section at pope’s funeral: ‘No longer part of cool kids club’
Biden was the second Catholic US president to serve in the White House
Former President Joe Biden was among many global luminaries in attendance at Pope Francis’ funeral Saturday at the Vatican, but no longer being the leader of the free world changes everything.
Biden was accompanied by his wife, former first lady Jill Biden, but they were not seated near President Donald Trump and other world leaders. The couple instead sat toward the back of the foreign dignitaries section because they are no longer heads of state.
“Biden is no longer part of the cool kids club,” one account commented on X, sharing an image of Biden near the back of the section at the funeral.
“LMAO! They put Biden in the way back at the funeral of Pope Francis,” another person commented on X.
“Look at how lost he looks.”
“They put Biden in the back of the Pope’s funeral like a dog,” another X user wrote.
“Joe Biden was treated like a nursing home patient on the world stage President Trump is treated like a Rockstar on the world stage!” another person posted on X, showing the former president far away from Trump and other world leaders.
Biden was also seen being escorted to his seat by his wife and a priest, gripping onto both and moving cautiously.
Once in his seating area, Biden took selfies with Uganda Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa before the pope’s funeral began.
Biden posed in several other photos with other mourners in attendance at the funeral, and he was smiling in each snapshot.
Biden, the second Catholic U.S. president, visited the Vatican in October 2021, when he and Pope Francis met to discuss topics like climate change and advocacy for the poor, according to a transcript fdrom the meeting.
Pope Francis meets President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden at the Apostolic Palace Oct. 29, 2021, in Vatican City, Vatican. (Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)
Biden had previously met Pope Francis on several other occasions, including during the pope’s visit to the U.S. in 2015.
Biden also met with Pope Francis in June at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Apulia, Italy, where the two discussed the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, according to a readout of the meeting.
Biden, who awarded Pope Francis the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January, described him as a “consequential” leader Monday who was a “Pope for everyone.”
“He was unlike any who came before him,” Biden said in a post on X Monday morning. “Pope Francis will be remembered as one of the most consequential leaders of our time and I am better for having known him. For decades, he served the most vulnerable across Argentina and his mission of serving the poor never ceased. As Pope, he was a loving pastor and challenging teacher who reached out to different faiths.”
Francis, who had battled pneumonia for weeks before being released from the hospital, faced health complications for many years and had half a lung removed when he was young.
Francis, 88, died Monday morning, the day after Easter, at the Vatican.
Dr. Andrea Arcangeli, the head of the Vatican’s health department, said the pope died of a cerebral stroke that ultimately caused heart failure, which put him into a coma and led to irreversible heart failure, according to Vatican officials.
He was elected to the papacy on March 13, 2013, and was the first Jesuit to become pope.
The pope’s last public appearance was on Easter Sunday at St. Peter’s Square.
Biden’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy contributed to this report.
Democrats want Joe Biden to stay away
Democrats trying to find their way back from their 2024 election losses are taking aim at former President Biden for reemerging on the national stage.
Biden came back into view this week to deliver his first public postpresidency speech after largely being absent from the political discussion.
But some Democrats said they’d prefer the former president take a back seat as the party puts its shoulder into its rebuilding efforts.
Even longtime Biden loyalists who support him and former first lady Jill Biden are calling the timing into question.
“I love both Bidens dearly, but staff loyalty means there is a responsibility to provide them with an honest situational awareness, especially when it comes to their public image, no matter how hurtful it is to hear,” said Michael LaRosa, who served as Jill Biden’s communications director.
“If they had advisers who had their hand on the pulse of the Democratic Party or national politics, they would have understood the intense level of anger or indifference to them that remains inside our party and isn’t going away anytime soon,” LaRosa said.
“It’s a heartbreaking and tragic ending to their time in public life, but it’s also the truth, and they should index the political realities into their decisionmaking,” the former aide continued.
LaRosa argued former President Biden’s return was a “lovely gift for the White House, President Trump and conservative media at a time when they were playing defense and under the kind of heavy scrutiny over the botched tariff policy in ways we haven’t seen since Trump was elected.”
“Biden’s reemergence, while it changed very little in the news cycle, provided a detour for the president to distract his cadre of supporters with Biden taunts and blame, giving Fox News nearly 48 hours of fresh new programming, taking editorial aim at the former president instead of the current one,” he said.
Other Democratic strategists also say it’s an inopportune time for Biden to pop up, particularly as polling has shown that Americans are starting to blame Trump for his handling of the economy.
Polls show Trump’s approval numbers have fallen in recent weeks after the tumultuous moves around the tariffs and the volatile stock market.
A CBS News poll out last week showed that 44 percent approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, down 4 percent from March 30. Trump’s overall approval rating also fell in the survey, from 53 percent in February to 47 percent this month.
“The CBS News poll shows that Americans have directed their anger about the economy away from Biden and redirected it towards Trump,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said. “So it’s a bad time for Biden to reemerge and remind them of the bad old days.”
“Biden’s appearance takes the spotlight away from the incumbent’s economic malfeasance and the suffering he has caused millions of people in the last three months,” Bannon added.
Biden had become a punching bag of sorts for Democrats even before leaving the White House. But that narrative has gained steam in recent weeks as Democrats try to pin the blame for November’s loss on Biden.
“The word I’m hearing a lot is ‘betrayal,’ said one Democratic strategist who still supports the former president. “People feel betrayed. And because his people held back then, it’s a lot worse now.”
Since departing the White House, Biden has kept a relatively low profile, attending a Broadway show and a St. Patrick’s Day event but avoiding the spotlight. This week, though, he ramped up his appearances.
In the major speech in Chicago on Tuesday, Biden took aim at the Trump administration’s position on Social Security and spoke more broadly about his former rival’s tenure.
In that address, Biden said that in “fewer than 100 days, this new administration has made so much damage … and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking.”
On Wednesday, Biden also made private remarks to a small group of students at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
While speaking at Harvard, the former president made a gaffe and had to be corrected by his longtime adviser Mike Donilon, who is a resident fellow at the school, according to The Harvard Crimson.
During his chat with students, he mixed up Ukraine with Iraq when talking about the war with Russia, the Crimson reported.
Last month, after NBC News reported Biden had met with the newly elected Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin and said he was willing to help with fundraising and other rebuilding efforts, some Democrats cringed.
“Read the room,” one Democratic donor and longtime supporter of Biden said. “No one is asking for Biden’s help right now, and if they’re not aware of that, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?”
A second Democratic strategist said if Biden wanted to do anything to be helpful to the party, he should start by offering up an explanation of why he chose to run for reelection when there were lingering and growing concerns about his age and mental acuity.
“I do think before Biden can speak with full credibility about the political moment and be listened to, there has to be some kind of accountability about his political decisionmaking and the last two years of his presidency,” said the strategist, who also was a longtime advocate of the former president. “I think it is required for his legacy and also for people in the party to start to get beyond everything.”
The strategist added: “It can’t be a surrogate in the media claiming that he would beat Trump.”
