{"id":11867,"date":"2025-07-31T10:31:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T10:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/inside-joe-bidens-post-presidency\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T10:31:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T10:31:52","slug":"inside-joe-bidens-post-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/inside-joe-bidens-post-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Joe Biden\u2019s post-presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

For more than five decades, Joe Biden\u2019s existence was not only incredibly public but busy \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

In \u201cWhat It Takes<\/u><\/a>,\u201d Richard Ben Cramer\u2019s 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: \u201cthere were typists upstairs, waiting, and gurus present for consultations, and Joe’s parents were over, just to help out \u2026 there were a hundred media calls and a million staff and volunteer calls and VIP arrangements \u2014 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 \u2018Is Joe there?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Biden had what it took to win the presidency.<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s on the other side of the mountain. And his life has entered a new phase that is quieter and smaller.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s still Amtrak Joe<\/u><\/a>. But he\u2019s also American Airlines Joe<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very in the wild,\u201d a person familiar with Biden\u2019s comings and goings told Blue Light News. \u201cHis footprint is significantly smaller, and it\u2019s sort of shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

In quiet moments outside the Beltway, Biden is often greeted warmly<\/u><\/a> by passersby offering handshakes<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in Washington, his closest and most loyal advisers sit for closed-door depositions and transcribed interviews on the alleged \u201ccover-up\u201d of his decline and his use of an autopen as president. And as his own party\u2019s still-developing 2028 primary bursts at the seams, Biden\u2019s presidency is still something of a millstone around its neck.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the split screen Biden steps into Thursday night, when he speaks at the closing gala of the National Bar Association\u2019s Centennial Convention in Chicago. His remarks will center on \u201cthe progress we\u2019ve made, and the important work that remains to further the cause of justice in America,\u201d a person familiar tells Blue Light News.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s post-presidency is already striking. His memoir sold<\/u><\/a> for $10 million \u2014 a major sum, but tens of millions less than Barack Obama\u2019s. At least one report<\/u><\/a> has suggested he may be struggling to raise money for his presidential library, though a spokesperson described this characterization to Blue Light News as \u201cunfair.\u201d This June, in San Diego, he spoke to SHRM25<\/u><\/a>, a conference of human resource managers, telling them \u201cthanks to you, the people in your workplace feel secure and respected. I think you underestimate what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

In official Washington, there is little such expression of appreciation for the former president.<\/p>\n

The former president still casts a long shadow over his party. In recent days, his former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to answer<\/u><\/a> for whether he said all he knew about Biden\u2019s cognition in office. (\u201cI told the truth, which is that he was old,\u201d Buttigieg told NPR\u2019s Steve Inskeep<\/u><\/a>. \u201cYou could see that he was old.\u201d) And had his former Vice President Kamala Harris actually run for California governor, the NYT noted<\/u><\/a>, she would \u201chave faced difficult questions about how much she knew about President Biden\u2019s decline and whether she participated in shielding his diminished health from the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That comes one day after former Biden aide Steve Ricchetti\u2019s hourslong testimony<\/u><\/a> in which he attacked<\/u><\/a> Republicans\u2019 \u201cefforts to taint President Biden\u2019s legacy with baseless assertions about President Biden\u2019s mental health,\u201d calling them \u201can obvious attempt to deflect from the chaos of this Administration\u2019s first six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oversight Republicans were unfazed by the Biden aide\u2019s accusation. In an appearance last night on Fox News<\/u><\/a>, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) turned the focus back to Biden world\u2019s insistence that the former president hadn\u2019t experienced cognitive decline. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like they\u2019re a cult,\u201d Comer said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s thinking told Blue Light News.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s really keeping himself at a distance \u2014 deliberately and intentionally \u2014 because he honors the oversight process,\u201d one of those people said.<\/p>\n

A Republican source familiar disputed this, telling Blue Light News that during Wednesday\u2019s transcribed interview, Ricchetti stated he had recent conversations with Biden regarding his legal strategy before the transcribed interview.<\/p>\n

A person close to the Biden side outside the investigation said \u201cbeing updated and being kept abreast on the investigations is far from being involved or putting pressure for a specific tactic for former staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Biden\u2019s orbit views the Oversight Committee\u2019s efforts as not having rated in the news cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really hasn’t been meaningfully breaking through for a wide array of reasons,\u201d said the first person familiar with Biden\u2019s thinking. \u201cThey’re more or less trying to make the damning case that Joe Biden is and was old in office. \u2026 Everybody that has been interviewed knows there is no smoking gun. Everything that happened or didn\u2019t happen was reported in the books. The reputational damage to some folks was already baked in, and there’s nothing new.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee disputed this. \u201cAmericans have witnessed President Biden\u2019s cognitive decline with their own eyes, yet his inner circle continues to claim that everything is fine,\u201d Jessica Collins told Blue Light News. \u201cThe American people see through these denials, especially now, as President Biden\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s allies have also sometimes grimaced at his son Hunter Biden\u2019s recent incursion into the news cycle, as when he sat down for more than three hours<\/u><\/a> with Channel 5, went on an expletive-laden<\/u><\/a> tear and suggested that his father\u2019s disastrous debate performance in June 2024 was attributable to Ambien<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Was Hunter acting as his father\u2019s anger translator, saying what the elder Biden wishes he could say but can\u2019t?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe probably thinks<\/i> he is and thinks he is doing what is best and defending his father,\u201d a former Biden White House official told Blue Light News. \u201cBut it\u2019s not helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n

A storm of clinical and critical tell-all books mostly behind him, Biden is now regularly writing his own book, according to an aide.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s not<\/i> doing it with Mark Zwonitzer, the writer who helped Biden with 2007\u2019s \u201cPromises to Keep\u201d and 2017\u2019s \u201cPromise Me, Dad,\u201d and decades earlier worked as a research assistant on Richard Ben Cramer\u2019s \u201cWhat It Takes.\u201d A Biden Foundation spokesperson declined to say who was helping him craft his memoir this time around.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s smaller entourage now often includes just Annie Tomasini, Biden Foundation spokesperson Kelly Scully and a Secret Service detail.<\/p>\n

That smaller footprint allows for some genuinely unscripted moments<\/u>, members of Biden\u2019s team tell Blue Light News. While waiting for flights at major airports, he has posed for photos<\/u><\/a> with other passengers and took the time to handwrite an encouraging note<\/a> to a Boy Scout during one such interlude in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

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<\/u><\/a> \u2014 doing a photo line<\/u><\/a>, speaking with church leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were there for three, four hours \u2014 it was a long program. And he wanted to stay,\u201d a person traveling with him said. \u201cAnyone who wanted to talk to him had the opportunity to talk to him.\u201d Biden and his small entourage didn\u2019t arrive back<\/u><\/a> at their hotel, the Marriott Marquis in Houston, until after 11 p.m.<\/p>\n

All of it recalls that vivid scene in Cramer\u2019s book \u2014 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 \u201cIs Joe there?”<\/p>\n

The answer is yes. Joe is still here.<\/i> But fewer people are around him now, and it\u2019s far closer to the end of a political life than the beginning of one.<\/p>\n

Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s <\/i>Playbook newsletter<\/i><\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For more than five decades, Joe Biden\u2019s existence was not only incredibly public but busy \u2014 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 \u201cWhat It Takes,\u201d Richard Ben Cramer\u2019s magnum opus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}