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'How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge'

<https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-the-white-house-functioned-with-a-diminished-biden-in-charge/ar-AA1w9cBy>

'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.


Biden and Jill Biden at a North Carolina campaign event on June 28, the
day after the presidential debate.
Biden and Jill Biden at a North Carolina campaign event on June 28, the
day after the presidential debate.
© elizabeth frantz/Reuters
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’
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.


Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 27 made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue.
Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 27 made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue.
© Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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.

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.


Taliban forces in Kabul after the U.S. military’s withdrawal from
Afghanistan in 2021.
Taliban forces in Kabul after the U.S. military’s withdrawal from
Afghanistan in 2021.
© Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi/Associated Press
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.

Former administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had
his finger on the pulse.


Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had an arm’s length relationship with
Biden.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had an arm’s length relationship with
Biden.
© Haiyun Jiang/Bloomberg News
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.


Biden with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Defense
Secretary Lloyd Austin in March.
Biden with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Defense
Secretary Lloyd Austin in March.
© Associated Press
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.

The White House said that the work by staff to guide Biden through
events is standard for high-level officials.


Biden with aide Annie Tomasini in April.
Biden with aide Annie Tomasini in April.
© Jim Lo Scalzo/press pool

Biden with aide Ashley Williams in September.
Biden with aide Ashley Williams in September.
© Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
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.


Biden campaigned in Detroit on July 12.
Biden campaigned in Detroit on July 12.
© Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
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'

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