New York Magazine’s “Intelligencer” feature ran a fawning portrayal of President Joe Biden Friday, which mostly focused on his ice cream habits, cute text arguments with wife Jill, and his aching desire to be home in Delaware.
The tone of the article was mostly, “what a nice older gentleman, aren’t his foibles endearing,” but several details describe someone who doesn’t sound all that decent. For starters, he makes Vice President Kamala Harris sit through self-congratulating slide shows.
As little sympathy as I have for the quote-challenged VP, I have to admit this sounds like Chinese water torture:
Once a week, Biden eats lunch with Harris, following a pattern he established when he was vice-president to Barack Obama. The White House photo office pulls together a slideshow of images from their recent travel and events that the two watch on a monitor as they eat, allowing them to reflect on their week.
The author also notes that the once-weekly lunches have become notably less frequent. The question is whether Kamala finds excuses not to attend because she can’t bear the thought of another slide show or whether Biden has trimmed back the schedule because even he doesn’t understand what she’s saying half the time.
The article goes on to describe how Biden “eats like a child,” hides a TV in the Oval Office, and can’t tell you whether he has a Peloton because it’s a security risk. All pretty humdrum stuff.
But it takes on a slightly more ominous tone when describing how the president treats the staff. In short: not well.
In May 2021, the New York Times reported that Biden has a “short fuse and an obsession with details,” when it comes to policy issues, and can take “days or weeks to make up his mind as he examines and second-guesses himself and others.” This process involves snapping at advisers:
Before making up his mind, the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic “journey” before arriving at a conclusion.
Those trips are often difficult for his advisers, who are peppered with sometimes obscure questions. Avoiding Mr. Biden’s ire during one of his decision-making seminars means not only going beyond the vague talking points that he will reject, but also steering clear of responses laced with acronyms or too much policy minutiae, which will prompt an outburst of frustration, often laced with profanity.
He often hangs up on people, she notes. ”Let’s talk plain English here,” the normally fawning writer is forced to admit, “he will often snap.” She could have said he’s often a jerk.
The piece also discusses Biden’s feelings of discomfort in the White House and his desire to spend more time in Delaware. Again she is pulled out of puff-piece mode because she’s forced to admit that he usually is in Delaware—and spends more time on vacation than any other modern president (as we’ve reported).
The obvious question is, if you didn’t want to be in the White House, why did you run for the job? And why are you running again?
Although the reporter here valiantly tries to go along with the narrative that Joey is your nice old grandpa who loves ice cream, she inadvertently reveals what we all know: that he’s an irritable, cruel boss who often treats the press and his subordinates like garbage. I thought his September 2022 “Battle for the Soul of the Nation” speech was one of the angriest, most vitriolic addresses by a U.S. president in our nation’s history, and his refusal to even recognize his granddaughter Navy Joan Roberts is morally incomprehensible.
People on the left need to take off their rose-colored glass and stop pretending we have Mr. Rogers as president—when what we have is a short-tempered, grumpy old man.