WH Chaos: Aide 'Forced Out' for Security Breach, Aide Then Drops Dirt
What was that Jill Biden preached at us back in 2020? Decency is on the ballot.
I wrote a VIP story about why, yes, indeed it is in 2024 -- after all the chaos, falsehoods, and failures of the Biden team.
READ: Decency Is on the Ballot
Now there's another report that raises some deep concerns about security and how they run things.
Back in July 2022, we wrote about how the White House was in chaos, with people heading for the exits. Among those people was then-press secretary for Jill Biden, Michael LaRosa. This was right after Jill's infamous line where she compared San Antonio Hispanics to "breakfast tacos."
But it turns out there was much more to the story about his leaving, according to a new report from the Daily Mail.
The First Lady's press secretary Michael LaRosa tried to take a date he'd just met up to his room on a secure floor while overseas in a hotel where the president was staying, insiders exclusively tell DailyMail.com.
Sources say LaRosa, 40, did it twice during the same trip while accompanying Jill Biden to the NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, in June 2022, and that this was part of a pattern of behavior that led to his forced resignation the following month.
A Secret Service source confirmed the incident and claimed that it happened twice on the same trip.
'He was caught by Secret Service not once, but twice bringing dates to a secure floor, obviously putting the First Lady's safety at risk because you're not supposed to bring people in who are not fully vetted,' one senior White House staffer told DailyMail.com.
That's a bit of a problem since that can put the security of the Bidens at risk.
'There was a long line of chaotic behavior, outbursts, unreliability, unpredictability, and lack of judgment that went into his last six months before his departure,' one official said.
LaRosa, who is gay, admitted to the Daily Mail that he did try to bring a man up to his room. That "date" was a male staffer from another country's delegation LaRosa said he met at the conference.
But, he disputed that he was forced out saying he left on good terms, and they said nice things about him when he left.
So why are we only hearing this report now? They're upset that he's now criticizing them, so now they're spilling the beans.
Presenting himself as a former high-level staffer with deep knowledge of the inner workings of the Biden administration, he now makes regular appearances as a political commentator on MSNBC and CNN. And he hasn't been shy about sticking his finger in the eyes of some of his old colleague as he dissects news of the day.
On Biden's dismal poll numbers, LaRosa, a former MSNBC producer, last month blamed it on staff for not responding to smears as he called for a shakeup.
'I've been a squeaky wheel for months arguing this is the wrong approach to GOP attacks on Biden's integrity, reputation + family,' he tweeted on Nov. 7. 'Poll after poll validates everything I've been saying+writing for months. Changing his team now will look like he actually cares+sees same #'s we do.'
The WH folks told the Mail he wasn't as high level as he's suggesting.
This whole idea that he was this very senior insider and was like very close to the president or First Lady, and focused on the campaign and political strategy, that could not be farther from the truth,' a source who served with him in the White House told DailyMail.com.
'He was never allowed into any senior White House strategy meetings, and the way he is portraying himself for media, for Twitter, for clicks, whatever, it's not just an eyeroll. It's truly wrong and it's annoying to me personally.'
They claimed he was unreliable and leaked things. A White House official claimed that he leaked information about an off-the-record trip to Ukraine and that he'd erupt at meetings.
But the problem with that is that only shows how chaotic their operation is. Here they are leaking things in response to his criticisms, and this only adds to the sense that they are an operation with deep problems.
LaRosa shot back and dropped some more information.
He disputed some of the depictions of him including some of the leaks and some of the claims that he erupted at people. Indeed he said that it was more the Chief of Staff Anthony Bernal who had tirades.
As for claims about his alleged shouting at staff, he admitted shouting at a staffer in Connecticut, saying he’d yelled at the First Lady’s digital director near New Haven when he opposed stopping at an ice cream store, where she ended up getting up getting jeered by protesters.
He said that, if anything, Bernal was the one known for having tirades.
‘If you do a simple Google search on our office, the culture was instilled,’ he said. ‘If you Google Anthony Bernal, you’ll get a flavor of the culture of that office, meaning people in the White House and on the campaign were recording conversations with Anthony because he was abusive and a bully. That wasn’t me.’
Oh.
Are they recording each other? How screwed up is this operation?
Jill Biden's current press secretary, Vanessa Valdivia, claimed what LaRosa said was "wildly inaccurate" and the White House denied the story about Bernal.
"I've been the only one out there defending Hunter and saying the White House should be more aggressive in defending him," LaRosa told DailyMail.com.
'It's very clear that I've been a big advocate for Hunter, and their strategy has always been to downplay the Hunter stuff. So they haven't been happy with me about that.'
'I guess they're mad that I can be critical sometimes of the strategy for the president and the campaign staff,' he continued.
'They want to do things to try to make me stop talking or going on TV or saying things in print that are critical. I get it, it comes with the territory when you try to be objective instead of a knee jerk partisan.
'Washington's a tough place. But I'm a really small fish in the pond, I would think. I don't know why they care so much what I say.'
But these are the characters that we have in charge now. 2024 can't come fast enough.
Post a Comment