‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate

Over the course of his presidency, Joe Biden’s small clutch of advisers have built an increasingly protective circle around him, limiting his exposure to the media and outside advice — an effort to manage public perceptions of the oldest person to ever hold the office and tightly control his political operation.

But inside the White House, Biden’s growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last week’s debate, with the senior team’s management of the president growing more strictly controlled as his term has gone on. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.”

The official said, “He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it.”

The debate, however, was so dismal for Biden that nobody could ignore it. For as furiously as Biden’s advisers have pushed back on concerns about his age, the now 81-year-old president’s halting, soft-spoken and scattered responses to former President Donald Trump, 78, shattered the party’s magical thinking on the subject. That the president’s difficulties came as such a shock was largely the result of how effectively his top aides and the White House on the whole has, for three and a half years, kept him in a cocoon — far away from cameras, questions and more intense public scrutiny.

Even the president’s family, which gathered Sunday at Camp David for a previously scheduled portrait session with photographer Annie Leibovitz and private conversations about where to go from here, was pointing the finger at long-standing members of the senior team: senior adviser Anita Dunn, one of several proponents of the earlier debate, and former chief of staff Ron Klain, who oversaw the week of debate prep at Camp David. But Biden himself told those aides he wasn’t blaming them, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

“The whole planning, preparation was political malpractice," Democratic megadonor John Morgan said in an interview, laying blame on “the cabal" of the president’s closest aides, including Klain, Dunn and her husband, Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer. "I think he has a misplaced trust in these three people, and I believe he has from the inception."

It’s not just those aides. Democrats frustrated with Biden’s insular senior team are well acquainted with the longtime aides who continue to have the president’s ear: Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, as well as Ted Kaufman and Klain on the outside. “It’s the same people — he has not changed those people for 40 years,” said one Democratic operative and close adviser to several members of Congress, who blamed the entire group for refusing to shift course even as Biden trailed Trump for months in the polls. “All these guys running the campaign from the White House is not working.”

As a Democratic strategist in a battleground state put it: “The number of people who have access to the president has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. They’ve been digging deeper into the bunker for months now.” And, the strategist said, “the more you get into the bunker, the less you listen to anyone."

This article was based on interviews with more than two dozen people, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive subject. The White House disputed the characterization of Biden as isolated, asserting that he frequently seeks input from policy and political staff and that briefings often include as many as eight to 10 people. They specifically disputed the claim that Biden is protected from dissenting opinions, noting that it’s been the job of a staff secretary in every administration to make sure the president gets all of the information he needs and nothing extraneous. Senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates denied that briefing materials have been curated to avoid upsetting Biden, calling that suggestion “false.”

But now, after Biden’s abysmal performance in the first debate, even some White House staffers are among a growing group of Democratic lawmakers, fundraisers, operatives and activists who have concluded — with sudden clarity — that the cloistered Biden inner sanctum itself is to blame for their current predicament.

By the time Biden’s campaign proposed two debates with Trump , many White House staffers had no idea it was in the works, according to three administration officials. The plan and quiet negotiations with networks had been especially tightly held by the president’s small inner circle, spread between the West Wing and his Wilmington-based campaign headquarters.

“Everyone was told this was for the best,” said a White House staffer. “Now, it’s the worst possible outcome. And we’re all trying to figure out why the people who know him best and make all the decisions didn’t seem to anticipate that this might happen.”

Following the debate, the pervasive view throughout much of the party is of Biden’s inner circle as an impenetrable group of enablers who deluded themselves about his ability to run again even as they’ve assiduously worked to accommodate his limitations and shield them from view.

For months, that mostly worked. Democrats’ strong 2022 showing, Biden’s top aides claimed, offered validation for his reelection bid, helping shut down credible primary challenges and spurring the Democratic National Committee to reshuffle the early state calendar to Biden’s benefit. When aides to the president suggested he was the best and only candidate who could beat Trump, few pushed back.

“The fact is, there wasn’t an open dialogue about whether he should run except for the people who would benefit from him running,” said a Democratic operative close to the campaign. They described the inner circle, Donilon especially, as convinced “that this was going to be about Trump, not about Biden, and at the end of the day, people just wouldn’t vote for Trump. But here we are, we're sitting in July, and the race is about Biden, and it's about a trait you can't fix.”

Two Biden officials disputed that characterization of Donilon’s point of view. One prominent Biden donor in close touch with the White House and campaign was more circumspect: “We’ve all enabled the situation,” they said.

No one has done more to keep the president isolated — and shielded from tough conversations — than his wife, first lady Jill Biden, and sister, Valerie Biden Owens. The president’s determination to spend weekends at home in Wilmington, away from most aides and the formal trappings of the White House, may be the clearest manifestation of Biden’s strong preference for familiarity and privacy.

Most aides who have worked for Biden for any significant length of time share the president’s own resentments about an elite political and media class that has never, in their view, given him his due. And they tend to view Biden’s debate meltdown and the ensuing party-wide freak-out about his candidacy as just another moment of being counted out. Their recent experience — Biden’s 2020 win and the Democrats’ history-defying midterm success in 2022 — has many convinced that he’ll survive this, too.

Yet while the campaign has sought to reassure top donors and activists, there’s been little outreach to Democrats on Capitol Hill, where some front-line members are already being targeted with TV ads casting their support of Biden against his debate performance.

"I think the Biden team is pretty insular and doesn’t really care what anybody says," said one senior House Democrat, who described a palpable and growing fear among vulnerable Democrats that they may lose because of Biden.

“There’s definitely groupthink,” one Democratic donor-adviser said about Biden’s inner circle. “They’ve known each other a long time. They’re kind of a team of rivals. But they’re not going to challenge him.”

A Democratic operative in frequent communication with the White House and the campaign said suggestions can be quickly dismissed. "If I’m talking to Anita, and I say, 'what about X?' She's quick to say, 'The president’s not going to do that. No chance.’ It shuts off options, yes, but it also [lets] you move more quickly because they know him so well.”

Another operative painted a similar picture: "They don’t take dissent,” they said. “If you try, then you don’t get invited to the next call, the next meeting."

White House and campaign aides argued that all presidential administrations or campaigns feature a clutch of top decision-makers, and Biden’s is no different. They also noted that several new faces have been brought in for senior roles, including chief of staff Jeff Zients, campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, White House communications director Ben LaBolt, Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to the DNC, campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez and deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks.

“In every administration, there are individuals who would prefer to spend more time with the president and senior officials,” Bates said in a statement to POLITICO. “President Biden fights hard for families every day, working with a wide range of team members at what he is proud is the most diverse White House ever — and achieving historic results for the American people because of his determination, values, and experience.”

After publication, Bates provided an additional response, casting complaints about a tightly controlled inner circle as "unfair distortions of processes that exist in every administration," and saying Biden "actively seeks input from a wide range of individuals inside and outside the administration."

As Biden’s campaign and prominent Democrats have tried to rally around him amid calls for him to end his bid for a second term, they’ve presented various other explanations (the president had a cold) and scapegoats (CNN’s moderators, senior aides) in an effort to shift the focus away from Biden’s diminished presence and inability to formulate clear responses on the fly and without a teleprompter.

“Even really smart people can fall into wishful thinking,” said the Democratic donor adviser. “Any reasonable person watching the debate would have concerns, and dismissing them is, to a lot of people, patronizing.”

Patrick Gaspard, the CEO of the Democrat-aligned Center for American Progress, said in an interview that Biden can still win in November and that Democrats broadly are likely to stick with him as long as he’s a candidate. But he also suggested the main campaign team should be more open to criticism and advice from outside the circle.

“Campaigns are really long slogs,” he said. “It’s only natural that you start turning to the people who are in tight ranks with you. But at some point, it’s also natural that you then have enough confidence in what you put together to start opening up a bit and pulling other folks in to be helpful.”

In a way, the defensiveness over Biden’s age is muscle memory at this point. The White House press shop has been merciless about working to kill and water down stories focused on the subject, and aggressively attacking holes in them after they’re published, as was the case last month with a lengthy Wall Street Journal report that leaned on GOP lawmakers for a portrayal of how Biden was “slipping.”

Last June, when Biden tripped and fell while on stage at the Air Force Academy’s commencement ceremony, the White House responded in minutes with an explanation: that he simply tripped on a sandbag. But that incident coincided with noticeable adjustments to protocol aimed at avoiding additional stumbles: the president switching to thick-soled sneakers more often and to using the lower, less wobbly stairs when getting on and off Air Force One. And when conservative outlets fixated on a video of Biden walking away from other leaders at the G7 a few weeks ago to suggest he was disoriented, the White House dismissed the coverage as dishonest and slanted .

But the administration’s accommodations to Biden’s age go far deeper than the press shop’s efforts to push reporters off the spot. From the earliest months of his term, Biden was carefully managed by senior adviser to the first lady Anthony Bernal, deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, Klain and others. After a campaign spent largely inside his Delaware home, the president remained in a protective bubble at the behest of senior staff and family, who believed it was the best way to manage the president’s health given the ongoing Covid-19 risk and his reelection chances, according to five people familiar but not authorized to publicly discuss internal decisions.

Bernal and Tomasini, in particular, have grown particularly close to the president and first lady. Traveling with the Bidens everywhere they go, the duo often seems to other aides more like an extension of the president’s family than staff — so much so that some aides have joked that “Annie and Anthony will climb into the coffins with [Biden],” according to a person familiar with Biden’s inner circle. Beyond their proximity to the principals, the two aides work closely with White House and campaign staff. They operate as a team and keep a tight grip on the controls, three current and former officials said, often influencing who is in some meetings or on Air Force One flight manifests.

“Covid gave Tomasini and Bernal an opportunity to shield Biden off from the outside world, and it never really changed,” a former administration official said. “It was just understood that only a very small number of aides got face time with him. It is all about how to make the Bidens’ lives easier and safe-guarding their privacy at every [turn].”

At times, Biden himself chafed at the restrictions.

As senator and vice president, he was famous for being readily available for a quote and having off-the-record discussions with reporters. He was known as one of Washington’s most tactile politicians, relishing extended chats with constituents. But suddenly, aides were more nervous about a potential gaffe or senior moment that would dominate headlines, according to the five people familiar with internal decisions. Though he acquiesced to his staff’s suggestions, the president sometimes complained to confidantes about being treated “with kid gloves,” according to two of those people.

Biden’s schedule has also been carefully managed, according to the two people. Very few early morning events are scheduled, and if an evening event was unavoidable, adjustments were made elsewhere to compensate. And while every president’s schedule includes down time on foreign trips, more has often been added to Biden’s itinerary. Earlier this month, he arrived in France a full 24 hours ahead of D-Day anniversary events and spent his first day entirely inside his Paris hotel.

“President Biden takes round-the-world trips that reporters publicly call exhausting and has gone to two active war zones,” said Bates, the senior deputy White House press secretary, who also asserted that Biden “works around the clock and does many evening events.”

The first lady is also deeply protective of her husband’s schedule and stamina. When Biden’s first news conference as president was held in March 2021, it ended up running more than an hour, which was longer than aides had planned, and Biden’s performance faded somewhat near the end. After it was over, Jill Biden vociferously complained to aides, including Klain, that it was allowed to run so long, according to two of the people familiar.

Biden hasn’t done another press conference like that and has subjected himself to fewer sit-down interviews than any of his recent predecessors. Over his first three years in office, he did just one interview with a print reporter; he’s done two more this year. And the White House has also spurned requests from most TV networks, even turning down the traditional Super Bowl pregame interview this year with CBS. The president’s senior advisers have long been convinced that in a fractured media environment, there was far less upside with those interviews because their influence had diminished — and too high a risk.

Those aides didn’t want Biden frequently facing tough questions, preferring him to sit for friendly interviews with podcasters, social media stars and other influencers. Bates noted that Biden has done 43 interviews so far this year and pointed to Biden’s habit of semi-frequently fielding shouted questions from the press as proof of his media availability, though those encounters are less substantive and have also dwindled in recent months.

Biden’s far more energetic appearance at a rally in North Carolina the day after the debate — his explanation about his poor performance and determination to “get back up” and keep fighting are already being featured in a campaign ad — came with the aid of a teleprompter, which the president has also taken to using at some fundraisers. The president’s growing reliance on the prompter isn’t reassuring many donors. But top surrogates, who are rallying behind Biden publicly, are arguing for aides to loosen the reins.

“The answer is not going to be to put the president away,” Wes Moore, the Democratic governor of Maryland, told POLITICO during a campaign swing through Wisconsin. “The answer is going to be to continue to have them out there. We continue that, the president’s going to win.”

Lauren Egan, Kimberly Leonard and Brakkton Booker contributed to this report.