Democratic figures and even the former first family’s aides are saying that former President Biden needs to stay out of politics, according to a new report from “The Hill.”
The outlet’s senior political correspondent, Amie Parnes, spoke to former first lady Jill Biden’s communications director Michael LaRosa, who stated that Biden’s staff needs to steer him away from the spotlight because the party is not interested in seeing him.
“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,” the former Biden staffer said.
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Parnes spoke to LaRosa following Biden’s speech at a disability advocacy conference in Chicago earlier this week. The speech, which the ex-president gave on the state of the Social Security Administration, was Biden’s first major address since leaving the White House in January.
During the speech, Biden ripped the Trump administration, saying, “fewer than 100 days, this new administration has made so much damage… and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking.”
According to LaRosa, Biden’s return was not a welcome moment within the party and that his handlers should recognize that.
“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,” he said.
The former Jill Biden staffer continued, noting the party feels that the only people benefitting from Biden’s return is the Trump administration and conservatives, who have been able to use the unpopular ex-president’s appearance as a distraction.
It 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,” LaRosa told Parnes.
Weeks before leaving office, CNN polling revealed only 36 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s job as president, with 64 percent disapproving. The CNN poll also showed that 61 percent of respondents saw Biden’s presidency as a failure overall.
Parnes co-authored “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” a recently-published book that has delved into the Democratic Party’s chaotic 2024 campaign featuring major scoops from people close to Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama on how these figures navigated Biden’s withdrawal from the race and his subsequent replacement by Harris.
In one excerpt from the book, Parnes and co-author Jonathan Allen, an NBC reporter, wrote about how Biden may have sabotaged her campaign by controlling her policy points.
“Whether she won or lost the election, he thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so,” they wrote, adding that Biden met with Harris to ensure she knew to protect him.
It has been widely speculated that Harris not deviating enough from Biden’s policy damaged her own chances.
In his comments to Parnes, LaRosa lamented this sad end to Biden’s political career, stating again that both the Bidens and their handlers should recognize the moment and act accordingly.
“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.”