Biden biographer Chris Whipple recently said he doesn’t believe former President Barack Obama could convince Biden to give up on reelection.
Recent Interview with NewsNationWhipple, author of “The Greatest Fight of My Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House,” said it was “simply not true” that Obama might try to lobby Biden to step down amid growing calls within the Democratic Party for him to step aside.
In the interview, I said the president has “adopted a defiant attitude” and that tensions with former President Barack Obama’s team could prevent Biden from getting the former president’s advice. “It’s certainly a strained relationship” between the two, Whipple said.
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President Joe Biden’s biographer said he doesn’t believe former President Barack Obama could persuade Biden to drop out of the presidential race. (Getty Images)
Whipple’s comments came in the wake of reports that Obama has influenced calls to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee following Biden’s disastrous defeat in last month’s debate.
Some in the media, including MSNBC co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, have speculated that Obama is pressuring prominent liberals to abandon Biden. “I have to stress here, so that our viewers understand what’s going on behind the scenes, that the Biden campaign and many senior Democrats believe that President Barack Obama is quietly orchestrating this behind the scenes,” Scarborough said this week.
They also accused Obama of influencing actor and Biden donor George Clooney to write a New York Times op-ed urging Biden to give another candidate a chance.
“One thing I need to emphasize here so viewers understand what’s going on behind the scenes is that the Biden campaign and many Democratic leaders believe that Barack Obama is quietly orchestrating this behind the scenes,” Scarborough said.
“We were just talking about reports that President Obama is worried that Biden won’t win,” Whipple told network host Elizabeth Vargas on Friday, adding, “The relationship between those two is really complicated. A lot of people are saying, ‘The only person who can tell Biden to step aside is former President Obama,’ and that’s just not true.”
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Former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden. (Getty Images)
The author, who spoke with Biden’s aides and allies over the years for his book, acknowledged that the two leaders had a “really close” relationship, saying, “They bonded when Beau Biden was dying of brain cancer, and President Obama was really protective of Joe Biden.”
Still, he said the rift between them is large enough that Biden may be forced to ignore the former president’s advice amid the current Democratic post-debate turmoil.
According to Whipple, Biden considers himself an outsider among Obama’s typical peers. He told Vargas: “He always said he was a Syracuse law guy, and Obama’s inner circle was all from Harvard and Yale, and they despised him. And then, of course, he bet on Hillary Clinton in 2016. So there’s certainly tension.”
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