Politics
Inside Joe Biden’s post-presidency
For more than five decades, Joe Biden’s existence was not only incredibly public but busy — his waking hours spent surrounded by a coterie of devoted aides and strategists, his calendar filled with speaking engagements and meetings, his home a bustling and buzzing swarm of activity.
In “What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s magnum opus on the candidates who sought the presidency in 1988, he captures the scene in the Biden household on the eve of his campaign announcement: “there were typists upstairs, waiting, and gurus present for consultations, and Joe’s parents were over, just to help out … there were a hundred media calls and a million staff and volunteer calls and VIP arrangements — train passes and hotel rooms, Wilmington cops, and state cops and Amtrak cops, the height of the podium (wrong, of course), money bigs with suggestions, food for the staff, people at the airport, people called and said ‘Is Joe there?’”
Ultimately, Biden had what it took to win the presidency.
Now, he’s on the other side of the mountain. And his life has entered a new phase that is quieter and smaller.
He’s staffed by only one or two aides and a small Secret Service detail. He holes up for hours at a time in Delaware working on his memoir with a new ghostwriter, while undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He flies commercial, an aide tells Blue Light News, with little of the luxury or exclusivity that is often associated with former heads of state.
He’s still Amtrak Joe. But he’s also American Airlines Joe.
“He’s very in the wild,” a person familiar with Biden’s comings and goings told Blue Light News. “His footprint is significantly smaller, and it’s sort of shocking.”
In quiet moments outside the Beltway, Biden is often greeted warmly by passersby offering handshakes.
But in Washington, his closest and most loyal advisers sit for closed-door depositions and transcribed interviews on the alleged “cover-up” of his decline and his use of an autopen as president. And as his own party’s still-developing 2028 primary bursts at the seams, Biden’s presidency is still something of a millstone around its neck.
That’s the split screen Biden steps into Thursday night, when he speaks at the closing gala of the National Bar Association’s Centennial Convention in Chicago. His remarks will center on “the progress we’ve made, and the important work that remains to further the cause of justice in America,” a person familiar tells Blue Light News.
Biden’s post-presidency is already striking. His memoir sold for $10 million — a major sum, but tens of millions less than Barack Obama’s. At least one report has suggested he may be struggling to raise money for his presidential library, though a spokesperson described this characterization to Blue Light News as “unfair.” This June, in San Diego, he spoke to SHRM25, a conference of human resource managers, telling them “thanks to you, the people in your workplace feel secure and respected. I think you underestimate what you do.”
In official Washington, there is little such expression of appreciation for the former president.
The former president still casts a long shadow over his party. In recent days, his former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to answer for whether he said all he knew about Biden’s cognition in office. (“I told the truth, which is that he was old,” Buttigieg told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “You could see that he was old.”) And had his former Vice President Kamala Harris actually run for California governor, the NYT noted, she would “have faced difficult questions about how much she knew about President Biden’s decline and whether she participated in shielding his diminished health from the public.”
Hours before Biden speaks in Chicago, Mike Donilon, his trusted aide of some four decades, will go behind closed doors to offer transcribed testimony for the House Oversight Committee.
That comes one day after former Biden aide Steve Ricchetti’s hourslong testimony in which he attacked Republicans’ “efforts to taint President Biden’s legacy with baseless assertions about President Biden’s mental health,” calling them “an obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this Administration’s first six months.”
Oversight Republicans were unfazed by the Biden aide’s accusation. In an appearance last night on Fox News, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) turned the focus back to Biden world’s insistence that the former president hadn’t experienced cognitive decline. “It’s almost like they’re a cult,” Comer said.
Biden, a son of the Senate who is respectful of congressional authority, has kept himself at a remove from the Oversight proceedings and the former aides who are testifying, receiving briefings from lawyers and aides after each session, two people familiar with Biden’s thinking told Blue Light News.
“He’s really keeping himself at a distance — deliberately and intentionally — because he honors the oversight process,” one of those people said.
A Republican source familiar disputed this, telling Blue Light News that during Wednesday’s transcribed interview, Ricchetti stated he had recent conversations with Biden regarding his legal strategy before the transcribed interview.
A person close to the Biden side outside the investigation said “being updated and being kept abreast on the investigations is far from being involved or putting pressure for a specific tactic for former staff.”
Still, Biden’s orbit views the Oversight Committee’s efforts as not having rated in the news cycle.
“It really hasn’t been meaningfully breaking through for a wide array of reasons,” said the first person familiar with Biden’s thinking. “They’re more or less trying to make the damning case that Joe Biden is and was old in office. … Everybody that has been interviewed knows there is no smoking gun. Everything that happened or didn’t happen was reported in the books. The reputational damage to some folks was already baked in, and there’s nothing new.”
A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee disputed this. “Americans have witnessed President Biden’s cognitive decline with their own eyes, yet his inner circle continues to claim that everything is fine,” Jessica Collins told Blue Light News. “The American people see through these denials, especially now, as President Biden’s doctor and some of his closest aides are pleading the Fifth to avoid self-incrimination. The Oversight Committee is currently conducting a thorough investigation to gather information through depositions and transcribed interviews, and will release a report of its findings upon conclusion.”
Biden’s allies have also sometimes grimaced at his son Hunter Biden’s recent incursion into the news cycle, as when he sat down for more than three hours with Channel 5, went on an expletive-laden tear and suggested that his father’s disastrous debate performance in June 2024 was attributable to Ambien.
Was Hunter acting as his father’s anger translator, saying what the elder Biden wishes he could say but can’t?
“He probably thinks he is and thinks he is doing what is best and defending his father,” a former Biden White House official told Blue Light News. “But it’s not helpful.”
A storm of clinical and critical tell-all books mostly behind him, Biden is now regularly writing his own book, according to an aide.
But he’s not doing it with Mark Zwonitzer, the writer who helped Biden with 2007’s “Promises to Keep” and 2017’s “Promise Me, Dad,” and decades earlier worked as a research assistant on Richard Ben Cramer’s “What It Takes.” A Biden Foundation spokesperson declined to say who was helping him craft his memoir this time around.
Biden’s smaller entourage now often includes just Annie Tomasini, Biden Foundation spokesperson Kelly Scully and a Secret Service detail.
That smaller footprint allows for some genuinely unscripted moments, members of Biden’s team tell Blue Light News. While waiting for flights at major airports, he has posed for photos with other passengers and took the time to handwrite an encouraging note to a Boy Scout during one such interlude in Philadelphia.
Last month, at a Juneteenth celebration at the Reedy Chapel-AME Church in Galveston, Texas, the president who made it an official federal holiday celebrated with congregants, lingering for hours — doing a photo line, speaking with church leadership.
“We were there for three, four hours — it was a long program. And he wanted to stay,” a person traveling with him said. “Anyone who wanted to talk to him had the opportunity to talk to him.” Biden and his small entourage didn’t arrive back at their hotel, the Marriott Marquis in Houston, until after 11 p.m.
All of it recalls that vivid scene in Cramer’s book — the swirl of activity around Biden, the typists upstairs and the gurus present for consultations, the money bigs with suggestions and the people who called and asked “Is Joe there?”
The answer is yes. Joe is still here. But fewer people are around him now, and it’s far closer to the end of a political life than the beginning of one.
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Alaska GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan can’t shake his same-name challenger.
Retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan punched a ticket out of the state’s top-four, all-party primary early Wednesday morning. He could now play spoiler in a high-stakes Senate clash between the Republican senator and former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola that could help swing control of the upper chamber.
Republicans fought and failed to keep Dan J. Sullivan off the primary ballot, arguing he was a Democratic plant designed to boost Peltola. Both Dan J. Sullivan and Peltola’s campaign have denied any coordination.
The senator’s allies have already taken steps to mitigate the second Sullivan’s potential vote siphoning, in some cases running ads using the senator’s middle initial to help differentiate between the same-named candidates.
Supporters of the state’s ranked-choice voting system, which kicks in for the general election, argue the process helps curtail the spoiler effect. But the presence of other candidates could still skew the results of the battleground race. Outside groups flooded the primary with more than $2 million to boost myriad fringe candidates — and could do so again ahead of November.
It’s not smooth sailing for Peltola, either, as she wages an uphill battle to flip a red seat in a state President Donald Trump won by 13 percentage points in 2024. She recently replaced her campaign manager in a staffing shakeup ahead of the primary, among other internal moves.
President Donald Trump notched a major win on Tuesday night. Republicans in battlegrounds wonder if it was the best use of his time and money.
Sen. Darline Graham defeated Rep. Ralph Norman in South Carolina’s snap Senate GOP runoff, handing Trump a revitalizing win after several of his endorsed candidates fell in recent primaries.
It was a victory that Graham, a complete political unknown six weeks ago, could not have pulled off without Trump’s steadfast support, underscoring just how much his influence still matters among the Republican electorate in the deeply conservative state.
But South Carolina’s Senate seat will not dictate the balance of power in Washington, and GOP strategists working on critical swing state campaigns are eager for Trump to finally direct his attention to them.
“The message coming out of this is that obviously the president’s support is still super powerful. The president’s operation still has the ability to move the needle in a lot of these states,” said a Republican strategist working on several battleground races, including in Georgia, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Trump’s involvement. “Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come that the president is willing to get involved and really start to move the needle in some other places that obviously matter a little bit more than South Carolina.”
Trump’s persistent backing of Graham defined the race: He championed her appointment to her late brother Sen. Lindsey Graham’s seat, he coaxed her into the race with an early endorsement, stood by her as she stumbled on the debate stage, and flew down to Myrtle Beach for a rare political rally that few of his chosen candidates have enjoyed this cycle. MAGA Inc., Trump’s behemoth super PAC, even spent a slice of highly sought after cash from its $400 million stockpile in the closing days of the race.
And yet, the president hasn’t taken a meaningful step into the states that will matter in a few short months — even as battleground Republicans have been clamoring for him to spend his MAGA Inc. money.
“It’s now or never. It’s put up or shut up time, and it’s really time to start to see if he’s going to get serious,” the GOP strategist said. “You’ve got September and October to really move the needle here, and it just doesn’t seem like there’s any sense of urgency, or like we understand that we are down big in some of these states.”
During her victory speech in Columbia, Graham acknowledged Trump’s heavy hand: “Our victory would not have been possible without you, and we are truly grateful,” Graham said of the president. “South Carolina is truly Trump country.”
Norman’s take on the president’s participation was not as rosy: “The president got involved. He has that right. That’s his prerogative,” Norman said in his concession speech Tuesday, prompting jeers from the crowd at his election night watch party. “Y’all,” he continued, “his policies are good. I never understood why he got in this race. It is what it is, and I’ll accept it.”
Norman’s bewilderment reflected several national and South Carolina Republicans’ confusion as to why the president would expend energy for the safe Republican seat when his MAGA allies like Mike Collins in Georgia, scandal-plagued Ken Paxton in Texas and Michael Whatley in North Carolina are facing tough Senate battles against Democratic opponents.
“There’s the principle,” said a North Carolina-based GOP strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the battleground picture. “If you’re not Trump and you have these people shoved down your throat, you’re like, ‘Okay, are you gonna help?’”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some Republicans are worried that though Trump helped power Graham’s win, the president’s overall unpopularity may be more of a curse than a boon in any highly competitive battleground state. A series of Trump-backed candidates lost gubernatorial and congressional primaries in recent weeks, including in Georgia and Iowa.
Republicans overall are facing a tough election environment given the ongoing and unpopular war in Iran, backlash to the administration’s highly-visible deportation agenda and voters’ persistent cost of living concerns.
“You have a president and maybe even a vice president that are just so underwater politically in the polls, that they might be a help by not intervening,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former State Department official in the first Trump administration.
Still, Trump swept the battlegrounds in 2024, and his ability to boost Graham despite her foreign policy debate gaffe and questions about her political inexperience serves as a reminder of his electoral prowess to campaign officials.
The question remains when — or if — he’ll throw them a presidential life raft.
“I wouldn’t count on the money if I were in these states,” said the North Carolina-based Republican strategist. “He still could. I’m just saying, I wouldn’t count on it. We’re not dealing with somebody that’s, you know, super calculated in the way they plan.”
For months, Republicans across the country have watched on as the president has continued to amass a remarkable pile of cash — and many have implored him to empty his pockets in their races. The president told reporters last week that he’ll spend “a lot of that money” to boost “Republican candidates that I think are good,” without being specific.
However, what some saw as a distraction from the greater Republican cause this year, others read as the first few drops of Trump’s cash flood.
“If they’re going to spend 800 grand in South Carolina, they’re going to spend in the midterms,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist based in Texas who worked on Sen. John Cornyn’s failed reelection campaign and is now backing the GOP ticket. “It signals they’re going to make a substantial investment in the midterms because you don’t make an 800-grand investment in South Carolina and say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to let everybody do their own thing.’ This was in some ways a test case.”
Trump’s targeted support for Graham — the kind that some Republicans are banking on to shift the dial later this fall — paid off for her in dividends on election night. Horry County, the site of the president’s marquee rally with the candidate late last week, resoundingly broke for Graham.
Trump’s backing also helped open the door to endorsements from key South Carolina Republican figures, including fellow GOP Sen. Tim Scott, who helped Graham shore up support in his Charleston-area home base, Gov. Henry McMaster, and two members of the state’s congressional delegation, Reps. Russell Fry and William Timmons.
Outside spending also proved crucial to Graham’s success. Her campaign and its allies outspent Norman by more than $5 million in the runoff alone, according to AdImpact.
Trump’s allies took a victory lap after Graham’s victory was confirmed Tuesday evening.
“The power of the Trump endorsement is alive and well in South Carolina,” said Mike Hahn, a GOP strategist involved in the midterms. “A good opening salvo for the team at MAGA Inc. and the president ahead of the midterms.”
Former state Sen. Mike Mazzei narrowly won Oklahoma’s GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday, boosted by President Donald Trump’s endorsement, a significant personal loan and a host of outside money.
His defeat of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond on Tuesday is a victory for Republican leaders in the state and Trump, who had endured a recent string of uncharacteristic primary losses, particularly in gubernatorial primaries. The president’s preferred picks for governor in Wyoming, Iowa, Georgia, Minnesota and South Carolina all lost their races, and a trio of Trump-backed House candidates fell in Michigan and Florida earlier this month.
Trump endorsed Mazzei in May, ahead of the state’s open primary, but the race remained competitive. Drummond beat Mazzei by 0.3 percentage points in the first round on June 16, forcing Tuesday’s runoff. And the race was defined by massive levels of self-funding in a historically expensive primary for the state.
Mazzei loaned his campaign $11.6 million, while Drummond loaned himself $3 million, according to campaign finance records. But Mazzei was also aided by outside money: The conservative group Club For Growth spent $8 million on TV ads boosting Mazzei and attacking Drummond, per the tracking firm AdImpact.
Ahead of the runoff, the state senator earned endorsements from Gov. Kevin Stitt and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who represented Oklahoma in Congress for 13 years.
Mazzei served in the state senate for 12 years before being term-limited in 2016. He joined Stitt’s administration for a year in 2019 as budget secretary. He’s the overwhelming favorite in a general election matchup against Democratic state Rep. Cyndi Munson in a state Trump won by 34 points in 2024.
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