Senior Admin Official Tells Politico Biden is ‘Not a Pleasant Person’ and Staffers are ‘Scared Shitless of Him’

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

A Politico report published on Tuesday described just how much President Joe Biden’s most senior advisors kept him insulated from the public before his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump .

Eli Stokols , Elana Schneider , Jonathan Lemire , and Adam Cancryn spoke to several White House staffers off the record who shared how the president’s inner circle has been making efforts to keep Biden isolated from not just the public but from the people working for him. Many of them describe a fraught environment “curated” to keep Biden shielded from public scrutiny as well as scrutiny from inside his own house:

“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.”

Politico reported that senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates denied that this kind of curation was taking place.

Internally, staffers were caught off-guard by the announcement that there would be two presidential debates. Three administration officials told Politico that White House staff “had no idea” it was happening, meanwhile it was being hashed out between Biden’s cabal of advisors, campaign staffers in Wilmington, Delaware, and the networks.

“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.”

The advisors in question — Anita Dunn , her husband and Biden’s lawyer Bob Bauer , Mike Donilon , Steve Ricchetti , Bruce Reed , Ted Kaufman , and Ron Klain — as well as First Lady Jill Biden were seen as the ones standing between Biden and basically everyone else. Which was why Biden’s subdued, shaky performance at the debate came as a shock to many who work for him.

John Morgan , a Democratic “megadonor” who spoke on the record, blamed these advisors directly for what happened at the debate: “The whole planning, preparation was political malpractice.” He added, “I think he has a misplaced trust in these three people, and I believe he has from the inception.”