Hüsker Dü
DA
Can’t find it, how about a link?
T 2.0
- Thread starter espola
- Start date
I posted the full story earlier. If you can't find it on here, try Google.
Hüsker Dü
DA
I tried Google, how far back did you post it?
Fox lied about the 2020 election on 11.3. They own stock with Dominion, so they paid themselves in fines. Fox is a joke and so is all Legacy Media Dumb. I did hear that Sean and Ainsley got engaged. You seem to come close to the truth but then your TDS kicks in. The Legacy Media Group got paid millions to push the mandates, lockdowns, mask, 6 feet away, wash hands and take all the jabs or else. You took all the jabs and some extra, right? Add the binge drinking and you got problems. I see the jabs have taken your mind and you can't think straight. I hope you can see the light someday Husker Du.
Vivek is right when he says that "...A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers..."
Vivek's full X post is here: https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507
tRump is backing Musk and Vivek on the H1B issue - at least for the moment.
Seems like a Revenge of the Nerds/beta males moment for Vivek and Elon.
Vivek's full X post is here: https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507
tRump is backing Musk and Vivek on the H1B issue - at least for the moment.
Seems like a Revenge of the Nerds/beta males moment for Vivek and Elon.
Well shit it was only a couple days ago and I did a quick look and couldn't find it either. But its hard to find anything amongst Crush's endless posts. So here you go, even though you will find some reason to deny it. Reality is a bitch.
How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge
Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.
By Annie Linskey, Rebecca Ballhaus, Emily Glazer and Siobhan Hughes Dec. 19, 2024 5:00 am ET
During the 2020 presidential primary, Jill Biden campaigned so extensively across Iowa that she held events in more counties than her husband—a fact her press secretary at the time, Michael LaRosa, touted to a local reporter.
His superior in the Biden campaign quickly chided him. As the three rode in a minivan through the state’s cornfields, Anthony Bernal, then a deputy campaign manager and chief of staff to Jill Biden, pressed LaRosa to contact the reporter again and play down any comparison in campaign appearances between Joe Biden, then 77, and his wife, who is eight years his junior. Her energetic schedule only highlighted her husband’s more plodding pace, LaRosa recalls being told.
The message from Biden’s team was clear. “The more you talk her up, the more you make him look bad,” LaRosa said.
The small correction foreshadowed how Biden’s closest aides and advisers would manage the limitations of the oldest president in U.S. history during his four years in office.
To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.
Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.
Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.
Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.
Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. “They body him to such a high degree,” a person who witnessed it said, adding that the “hand holding” is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.
The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid—which unraveled spectacularly after his halting performance in a June debate with Donald Trump made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue. Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket and was decisively defeated by Trump in a shortened campaign—leaving Democrats to debate whether their chances were undercut by Biden’s refusal to yield earlier.
This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.
Many of those who criticized Biden’s insularity said his system nonetheless kept his agenda on track.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden “earned the most accomplished record of any modern commander in chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives.” Bates, who rejected the notion that Biden has declined, added that the president has often solicited opinions from outside experts, which has informed his policymaking.
He said it is the job of senior White House staff to have high-level meetings regularly and that they were executing Biden’s agenda at his direction.
He also said that staff alerted the president to “significant” negative news stories. Bernal, via the White House press office, declined to comment.
‘Good days and bad days’
Continued on next post.
The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.
Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.
The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.
The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.
The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.
Biden, staffed with advisers since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well that they could be particularly effective proxies. They didn’t tolerate criticism of Biden’s performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president’s decision to run for a second term.
Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.
They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.
Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.
The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.
Continued again.
Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.
The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.
The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.
The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.
Biden, staffed with advisers since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well that they could be particularly effective proxies. They didn’t tolerate criticism of Biden’s performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president’s decision to run for a second term.
Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.
They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.
Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.
The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.
Continued again.
If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.
While it isn’t uncommon for politicians to want more time with the president than they get, some Democrats felt Biden was unusually hard to reach.
That’s what Rep. Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Smith, a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.
“I was begging them to set expectations low,” said Smith, who had worked extensively on the issue and harbored concerns about how the withdrawal might go. He sought to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the region but couldn’t get on the phone with him, Smith said.
After the disastrous withdrawal, which left 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghans dead, Smith made a critical comment to the Washington Post about the administration lacking a “clear-eyed view” of the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani government’s durability. It was among comments that triggered an angry phone call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who ended up getting an earful from the frustrated chairman. Shortly after, Smith got an apologetic call from Biden. It was the only phone call Biden made to Smith in his four years in office, Smith said.
“The Biden White House was more insulated than most,” Smith said. “I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his interactions with the White House in the past two years were primarily focused on the reauthorization of a vital section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes broad national security surveillance powers. Biden’s senior advisers and other top administration officials worked with Himes on the issue, and he praised the collaboration.
But Biden wasn’t part of the conversation. “I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior,” said Himes, who took office in 2009. Congress extended the surveillance authority for two years instead of the administration’s goal of five years.
Bates said that in every administration, some in Washington would prefer to spend more time with the president and that Biden put significant effort into promoting his legislative agenda.
One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of Biden’s term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn’t sure Biden had been able to sustain.
“I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight,” Manchin said in an interview. “The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it.”
Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden’s staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the “eager beavers”—a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. “They were going, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ ” Manchin said.
Klain, who was chief of staff for Biden’s first two years in office, said that “the agenda and pace” of the White House was at the “president’s direction and leadership.”
Dealing with advisers
Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said.
One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said.
Multiple former senior cabinet aides described a top-down dynamic in which the White House would issue decisions and expect cabinet agencies to carry them out, rather than making cabinet secretaries active participants in the policymaking process. Some of them said it was hard for them to discern to what degree Biden was insulated because of his age versus his preference for a powerful inner circle.
Bates said Biden has daily conversations with members of his cabinet. Several cabinet secretaries contacted the Journal at the White House’s request to attest to the smooth operations between their agencies and the White House. They said Biden would call them individually on the phone when seeking information or to give direction.
“I spoke with him whenever we needed his guidance or his help,” said Denis McDonough, Biden’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former chief of staff to Obama. “A lot of times it was him reaching out to us.”
Most often, however, they dealt with the president’s advisers, not the president himself, some of them said.
“If I had an issue or I needed attention on something, I had multiple avenues to explore to raise the issue,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “You don’t always have to raise the issue with the president.”
Vilsack, who also served as the agriculture secretary under Obama, said that presidents should primarily get involved when there’s a dispute between agencies.
Obama would often meet with smaller groups of cabinet members to hash out a policy debate, former administration officials said.
But that often wasn’t the experience under Biden’s administration. Instead, cabinet members most often met alone or with a member of the president’s senior staff, including Brainard, the economic adviser, or National Security Adviser Sullivan. The senior adviser would then bring the issue to the president and report back, former administration officials said.
Continued...
While it isn’t uncommon for politicians to want more time with the president than they get, some Democrats felt Biden was unusually hard to reach.
That’s what Rep. Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Smith, a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.
“I was begging them to set expectations low,” said Smith, who had worked extensively on the issue and harbored concerns about how the withdrawal might go. He sought to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the region but couldn’t get on the phone with him, Smith said.
After the disastrous withdrawal, which left 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghans dead, Smith made a critical comment to the Washington Post about the administration lacking a “clear-eyed view” of the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani government’s durability. It was among comments that triggered an angry phone call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who ended up getting an earful from the frustrated chairman. Shortly after, Smith got an apologetic call from Biden. It was the only phone call Biden made to Smith in his four years in office, Smith said.
“The Biden White House was more insulated than most,” Smith said. “I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his interactions with the White House in the past two years were primarily focused on the reauthorization of a vital section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes broad national security surveillance powers. Biden’s senior advisers and other top administration officials worked with Himes on the issue, and he praised the collaboration.
But Biden wasn’t part of the conversation. “I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior,” said Himes, who took office in 2009. Congress extended the surveillance authority for two years instead of the administration’s goal of five years.
Bates said that in every administration, some in Washington would prefer to spend more time with the president and that Biden put significant effort into promoting his legislative agenda.
One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of Biden’s term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn’t sure Biden had been able to sustain.
“I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight,” Manchin said in an interview. “The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it.”
Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden’s staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the “eager beavers”—a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. “They were going, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ ” Manchin said.
Klain, who was chief of staff for Biden’s first two years in office, said that “the agenda and pace” of the White House was at the “president’s direction and leadership.”
Dealing with advisers
Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said.
One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said.
Multiple former senior cabinet aides described a top-down dynamic in which the White House would issue decisions and expect cabinet agencies to carry them out, rather than making cabinet secretaries active participants in the policymaking process. Some of them said it was hard for them to discern to what degree Biden was insulated because of his age versus his preference for a powerful inner circle.
Bates said Biden has daily conversations with members of his cabinet. Several cabinet secretaries contacted the Journal at the White House’s request to attest to the smooth operations between their agencies and the White House. They said Biden would call them individually on the phone when seeking information or to give direction.
“I spoke with him whenever we needed his guidance or his help,” said Denis McDonough, Biden’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former chief of staff to Obama. “A lot of times it was him reaching out to us.”
Most often, however, they dealt with the president’s advisers, not the president himself, some of them said.
“If I had an issue or I needed attention on something, I had multiple avenues to explore to raise the issue,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “You don’t always have to raise the issue with the president.”
Vilsack, who also served as the agriculture secretary under Obama, said that presidents should primarily get involved when there’s a dispute between agencies.
Obama would often meet with smaller groups of cabinet members to hash out a policy debate, former administration officials said.
But that often wasn’t the experience under Biden’s administration. Instead, cabinet members most often met alone or with a member of the president’s senior staff, including Brainard, the economic adviser, or National Security Adviser Sullivan. The senior adviser would then bring the issue to the president and report back, former administration officials said.
Continued...
Former administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.
Traditionally, presidents have more frequent interactions with certain cabinet secretaries—often Treasury, Defense and State—than others.
But Treasury Secretary Yellen had an arm’s length relationship with the president for much of the administration. She was part of the economics team that regularly briefed the president, but one-on-one discussions were more rare, and she typically dealt with the NEC or with the president’s advisers rather than Biden directly, according to people familiar with the interactions.
Some current and former administration officials said they would have expected a closer relationship between the two.
Bates, the White House spokesman, said Biden “deeply values Secretary Yellen’s expertise and counsel” and is “grateful for her service.” The Treasury Department declined to comment.
Defense Secretary Austin also saw his close relationship with Biden grow more distant over the course of the administration, with Austin’s regular access to Biden becoming increasingly rare in the past two years, people familiar with the relationship said.
During the first half of the administration, Austin was one of the cabinet members who would regularly attend Biden’s presidential daily briefing on a rotational basis each week. That briefing would be followed with a routine one-on-one in which Austin and Biden would meet personally behind closed doors.
Officials familiar with these meetings said they helped cabinet members to understand the commander in chief’s intentions directly, instead of being filtered through others, such as Sullivan, the national security adviser.
But in the past two years—a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention—Austin’s invitation to the briefing came less frequently, to the point where the one-on-one meeting was seldom scheduled. When the one-on-one meetings did take place, they were more typically virtual meetings, not in-person. Still, Austin could always get an unscheduled meeting with the president if he needed it.
Bates disputed that there was any decline in regular contact or attendance to presidential daily briefings, adding that Austin “is a fixture in these briefings and they speak often.”
A Pentagon spokesman said Biden frequently called Austin on the phone for matters that varied from urgent to lower in priority.
Biden has a close relationship with Secretary of State Blinken, whom he has known for decades, former administration officials said.
Over four years, Biden held nine full cabinet meetings—three in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and just one this year. In their first terms, Obama held 19 and Trump held 25, according to data compiled by former CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller.
Early in his vice presidency during the Obama administration, Biden sought to gather cabinet leaders once a week, saying in a speech that the synergy brought about by the regular meetings made the government more competent.
The White House said Biden meets with smaller groups of his agency heads and that the contemporary work environment means full cabinet meetings can be fewer and far between.
In the fall of 2023, Biden faced a major test when Hur, the special counsel, wanted to interview him. The president wanted to do it, and his top aides felt that his willingness to sit down with investigators set up a favorable contrast with Trump, who stonewalled the probe into why classified documents appeared at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the sessions.
The prep sessions took about three hours a day for about a week ahead of the interview, according to a person familiar with the preparation. During these sessions, Biden’s energy levels were up and down. He couldn’t recall lines that his team had previously discussed with him, the person said.
A White House official pushed back on the notion that Biden’s age showed in prep, saying that the concerns that arose during those sessions were related to Biden’s tendency to over-share.
The actual interview didn’t go well. Transcripts showed multiple blunders, including that Biden didn’t initially recall that in prep sessions he had been shown his own handwritten memo arguing against a surge of troops in Afghanistan.
The report—one of just a few lengthy interviews with Biden over the past four years—concluded with a recommendation that Biden not be prosecuted for having classified documents in his home because a jury was likely to view him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Insulated on campaign
Biden’s team also insulated him on the campaign trail. In the summer of 2023, one prominent Democratic donor put together a small event for Biden’s re-election bid. The donor was shocked when a campaign official told him that attendees shouldn’t expect to have a free ranging question-and-answer session with the president. Instead, the organizer was told to send in two or three questions ahead of time that Biden would answer.
At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time.
Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline. Throughout his presidency—and especially later in the term—Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was vice president, or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies, people who have witnessed their interactions said.
These aides, which include Annie Tomasini and Ashley Williams, were often with the president as he traveled and stayed within earshot or eye distance, the people said. They would often repeat basic instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage.
People who witnessed it felt differently. In the past, aides performing these duties were often on their phones, chatting with other people or fetching something from a car or a computer nearby, they said.
The president’s team of pollsters also had limited access to Biden, according to people familiar with the president’s polling. The key advisers have famously had the president’s ear in most past White Houses.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.
By the 2024 campaign, the pollsters weren’t talking to the president about their findings, and instead sent memos that went to top campaign staff.
Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.
People close to the president said he relied on Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s core inner circle advisers. With a background in polling, Donilon could sift through the information and present it to the president.
Bates said that Biden stayed abreast of polling data.
But this summer, Democratic insiders became alarmed by the way Biden described his own polling, publicly characterizing the race as a tossup when polls released in the weeks after the disastrous June debate consistently showed Trump ahead. They worried he wasn’t getting an unvarnished look at his standing in the race.
Those fears intensified on July 11, when Biden’s top advisers met behind closed doors with Democratic senators, where the advisers laid out a road map for Biden’s victory. The message from the advisers was so disconnected from public polling—which showed Trump leading Biden nationally—that it left Democratic senators incredulous. It spurred Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to speak to Biden directly, according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to pierce what the senators saw as a wall erected by Donilon to shield Biden from bad information. Donilon didn’t respond to requests for comment.
On July 13, Biden held an uncomfortable call with a group of Democratic lawmakers called the New Democrat Coalition, aimed at reassuring them about his ability to stay in the race.
The president told participants that polling showed he was doing fine. He became angry when challenged, according to lawmakers on the call. At one point, Biden looked up and abruptly told the group he had to go to church. Some lawmakers on the call believed someone behind the camera was shutting it down.
Biden dropped out of the race eight days later.
Gordon Lubold and Erich Schwartzel contributed to this article.
Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com Rebecca Ballhaus at rebecca.ballhaus@wsj.com Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at Siobha
Traditionally, presidents have more frequent interactions with certain cabinet secretaries—often Treasury, Defense and State—than others.
But Treasury Secretary Yellen had an arm’s length relationship with the president for much of the administration. She was part of the economics team that regularly briefed the president, but one-on-one discussions were more rare, and she typically dealt with the NEC or with the president’s advisers rather than Biden directly, according to people familiar with the interactions.
Some current and former administration officials said they would have expected a closer relationship between the two.
Bates, the White House spokesman, said Biden “deeply values Secretary Yellen’s expertise and counsel” and is “grateful for her service.” The Treasury Department declined to comment.
Defense Secretary Austin also saw his close relationship with Biden grow more distant over the course of the administration, with Austin’s regular access to Biden becoming increasingly rare in the past two years, people familiar with the relationship said.
During the first half of the administration, Austin was one of the cabinet members who would regularly attend Biden’s presidential daily briefing on a rotational basis each week. That briefing would be followed with a routine one-on-one in which Austin and Biden would meet personally behind closed doors.
Officials familiar with these meetings said they helped cabinet members to understand the commander in chief’s intentions directly, instead of being filtered through others, such as Sullivan, the national security adviser.
But in the past two years—a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention—Austin’s invitation to the briefing came less frequently, to the point where the one-on-one meeting was seldom scheduled. When the one-on-one meetings did take place, they were more typically virtual meetings, not in-person. Still, Austin could always get an unscheduled meeting with the president if he needed it.
Bates disputed that there was any decline in regular contact or attendance to presidential daily briefings, adding that Austin “is a fixture in these briefings and they speak often.”
A Pentagon spokesman said Biden frequently called Austin on the phone for matters that varied from urgent to lower in priority.
Biden has a close relationship with Secretary of State Blinken, whom he has known for decades, former administration officials said.
Over four years, Biden held nine full cabinet meetings—three in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and just one this year. In their first terms, Obama held 19 and Trump held 25, according to data compiled by former CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller.
Early in his vice presidency during the Obama administration, Biden sought to gather cabinet leaders once a week, saying in a speech that the synergy brought about by the regular meetings made the government more competent.
The White House said Biden meets with smaller groups of his agency heads and that the contemporary work environment means full cabinet meetings can be fewer and far between.
In the fall of 2023, Biden faced a major test when Hur, the special counsel, wanted to interview him. The president wanted to do it, and his top aides felt that his willingness to sit down with investigators set up a favorable contrast with Trump, who stonewalled the probe into why classified documents appeared at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the sessions.
The prep sessions took about three hours a day for about a week ahead of the interview, according to a person familiar with the preparation. During these sessions, Biden’s energy levels were up and down. He couldn’t recall lines that his team had previously discussed with him, the person said.
A White House official pushed back on the notion that Biden’s age showed in prep, saying that the concerns that arose during those sessions were related to Biden’s tendency to over-share.
The actual interview didn’t go well. Transcripts showed multiple blunders, including that Biden didn’t initially recall that in prep sessions he had been shown his own handwritten memo arguing against a surge of troops in Afghanistan.
The report—one of just a few lengthy interviews with Biden over the past four years—concluded with a recommendation that Biden not be prosecuted for having classified documents in his home because a jury was likely to view him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Insulated on campaign
Biden’s team also insulated him on the campaign trail. In the summer of 2023, one prominent Democratic donor put together a small event for Biden’s re-election bid. The donor was shocked when a campaign official told him that attendees shouldn’t expect to have a free ranging question-and-answer session with the president. Instead, the organizer was told to send in two or three questions ahead of time that Biden would answer.
At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time.
Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline. Throughout his presidency—and especially later in the term—Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was vice president, or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies, people who have witnessed their interactions said.
These aides, which include Annie Tomasini and Ashley Williams, were often with the president as he traveled and stayed within earshot or eye distance, the people said. They would often repeat basic instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage.
People who witnessed it felt differently. In the past, aides performing these duties were often on their phones, chatting with other people or fetching something from a car or a computer nearby, they said.
The president’s team of pollsters also had limited access to Biden, according to people familiar with the president’s polling. The key advisers have famously had the president’s ear in most past White Houses.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.
By the 2024 campaign, the pollsters weren’t talking to the president about their findings, and instead sent memos that went to top campaign staff.
Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.
People close to the president said he relied on Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s core inner circle advisers. With a background in polling, Donilon could sift through the information and present it to the president.
Bates said that Biden stayed abreast of polling data.
But this summer, Democratic insiders became alarmed by the way Biden described his own polling, publicly characterizing the race as a tossup when polls released in the weeks after the disastrous June debate consistently showed Trump ahead. They worried he wasn’t getting an unvarnished look at his standing in the race.
Those fears intensified on July 11, when Biden’s top advisers met behind closed doors with Democratic senators, where the advisers laid out a road map for Biden’s victory. The message from the advisers was so disconnected from public polling—which showed Trump leading Biden nationally—that it left Democratic senators incredulous. It spurred Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to speak to Biden directly, according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to pierce what the senators saw as a wall erected by Donilon to shield Biden from bad information. Donilon didn’t respond to requests for comment.
On July 13, Biden held an uncomfortable call with a group of Democratic lawmakers called the New Democrat Coalition, aimed at reassuring them about his ability to stay in the race.
The president told participants that polling showed he was doing fine. He became angry when challenged, according to lawmakers on the call. At one point, Biden looked up and abruptly told the group he had to go to church. Some lawmakers on the call believed someone behind the camera was shutting it down.
Biden dropped out of the race eight days later.
Gordon Lubold and Erich Schwartzel contributed to this article.
Write to Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com Rebecca Ballhaus at rebecca.ballhaus@wsj.com Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at Siobha
No, I was thinking the 2024 election. But yeah, there we're polls after the 2020 election that indicated people would have voted differently if the knew the laptop was true. Hard to say if it would have actually swung the election, but the polls seemed to indicate so.
You probably have already heard the story, but CBS blocked their own reporter Catherine Herridge's findings on the validity of the Hunter laptop.
CHR - How Hunter Biden Laptop Got The CBS News Treatment
CHR - It's the question I get asked the most, "What happened in October 2020?"
catherineherridgereports.com
Does it make your little pecker stiff to type tRump? What the fuck is it with you liberal fucktards?
whatithink
GOLD
You are continually trying to put words in my mouth, to support your preexisting bias I expect, but what do I know. I have not refuted or disputed media bias on this thread. I've pointed out the minor impact it has, or the fact that its been quoted as a talking point for years now as a weapon to separate us, but I suppose you buy into all that - I don't.
Its not really that hard to get unbiased news, or to get both sides. The link I gave (I use the app) is interesting - they aggregate news and give links to right, center and left leaning sources for the same stories. They also highlight if certain stories are a blindspot for the right or left, which is interesting in and of itself.
Either way, you seem hung up on them vs us, not least based on the love fest in the last few pages where y'all railed against the MSM machine, lol. Its really not that, but continue to be led based on the daily
We are certainly going to be entertained over the next few years!
That website has an underhanded way of getting your email address and credit card info. No thanks.
Hüsker Dü
DA
Still the daily activity log when put up against trump’s would fall heavily in Old Joe’s favor. At least he did briefings, listened to advice from experts, kept his focus on the work and had a capable team around him that kept things going. We will soon, once again, miss boring old, business as usual, the people’s work being done.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
This was all blatantly obvious OUTSIDE of the Biden regime long ago. It’s good that it’s being reported now. But “now” is very much after the fact.
Your idea of “trusted sources”, mentioned in a previous post, needs to be expanded beyond the Legacy media. If anything, the last few years shows how these relatively few outlets can be corrupted. We need decentralized reporting and instantaneous feedback. X supports that. Simply ask yourself the last time legacy media broke any news that didn’t support the Church of Latter Day Marxists narrative.
You still think Crooked Joe got 81,000,000 votes? President Trump as the CIC knew without a doubt these rats would cheat, kill and lie and boy did they. He and the Military set the trap and now the rats are caught. Released a bioweapon on all of us. Are you still in denial? Sold us out to China because Hunter wanted free crack & hookers. Elite kids get what they want, trust me.No, I was thinking the 2024 election. But yeah, there we're polls after the 2020 election that indicated people would have voted differently if the knew the laptop was true. Hard to say if it would have actually swung the election, but the polls seemed to indicate so.
You probably have already heard the story, but CBS blocked their own reporter Catherine Herridge's findings on the validity of the Hunter laptop.
CHR - How Hunter Biden Laptop Got The CBS News Treatment
CHR - It's the question I get asked the most, "What happened in October 2020?"
You're starting to write like Grace.
He also took showers with his daughter and had a team of fucking liars and wolves surrounding him. He gave his son over to the Chinese as the middleman. You sure are a messed-up person, whatever you are.
Read what your President Elect Trump just posted. This should help your little brain understand things better. Like I said, I'm here to help. You have been brainwashed by the Legacy Media Group. You are a losing legacy on the forum. Everyone knows I won the great debate with you, Dad4, EOTL, espola and Mr. Slim Shady Surf Futbol. Watty say's it's hard to post because of all my meme bombs. This is the final battle. As we sit online trolling each other and debating the important issues of the day, the good guys have been arresting the bad guys.
"We are the Party of COMMON SENSE, a primary reason that we WON, in a landslide, the magnificent and historic Presidential Election of 2024. ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, 312 ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES, AND THE POPULAR VOTE BY MILLIONS OF VOTERS (Despite large scale voter fraud taking place in numerous states, including California, where votes are ridiculously still being counted, or under review!), ALL WON WITH EASE, CALM, & PROFESSIONALISM. Republicans are being praised for having run a “legendary” campaign! Democrats are being excoriated for their effort, having wasted 2.5 Billion Dollars, much of it unaccounted for, with some being used to illegally buy endorsements ($11,000,000 to Beyoncé, who never even sang a song, $2,000,000 to Oprah for doing next to nothing, and even $500,000 to Reverend AL, a professional con man and instigator, who agreed to “interview” their “star spangled” candidates, Kamala and Joe). We ran a flawless campaign, having spent FAR LESS, with lots of money left over. They ran a very expensive “sinking ship,” embracing DOJ & FBI WEAPONIZATION against their political opponent, ME. BUT IT DIDN’T WORK, IT WAS A DISASTER!!! LETS NOT BLOW THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY WHICH WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN. The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all of the destructive policies of the last Administration. Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!" President Trump
No, I was thinking the 2024 election. But yeah, there we're polls after the 2020 election that indicated people would have voted differently if the knew the laptop was true. Hard to say if it would have actually swung the election, but the polls seemed to indicate so.
You probably have already heard the story, but CBS blocked their own reporter Catherine Herridge's findings on the validity of the Hunter laptop.
CHR - How Hunter Biden Laptop Got The CBS News Treatment
CHR - It's the question I get asked the most, "What happened in October 2020?"
The Top 10 Hoaxes The Propaganda Press Peddled In 2024 and Husker Du came on here as the Propaganda Press's #1 parrot. Then dude lies and says he doesn't even watch the news but hates Fox News and knows everything about Fox.
1) Bloodbath- Taking Trump’s remarks out of context is one of legacy media’s favorite pastimes, just like Husker Du
2) War on SCOTUS- These nutjobs go crazy when they don't win. They only know how to cheat, kill, lie and steal to win
3) Hiding Biden’s Cognitive Decline- Chuck Todd
4) Project 2025- More lies and Husker Du took the bait
5) What's a Border Czar- Husker Du told all of us that kids that go missing (500,000) are just runaways
6) Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Visit- Talk about a Husker Du hissy fit
7) Show Me the Garbage!- Legacy media propagandists had their hands full in the closing days of the 2024 election after Biden referred to the tens of millions of Americans who support Trump as “garbage.” Look at all the names Husker Du has called MAGA. He's a parrot of the legacy media group
8) Trumps Liz Cheney Comments- One of the biggest media-driven hoaxes concocted this year was the manipulation of Trump’s remarks about Liz Cheney. “Let’s put her with a rifle, standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it … when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,’”
9) What Assassination Attempts? espola said the same thing and even made fun of T getting shot in the head.
10) The Atlantic’s Hitler Hysteria- Husker Du ran with this one as well. This is the Legacy Media Group. They & Them train little e and Husker Du how to parrot what they want. Once Dumb & Dumber get their marching orders, they come on here like a little Legacy Parrot.