President Joe Biden’s family is seeking to become more involved in the president’s campaign and the state of affairs at the White House as their anger toward his staff becomes more public.
“This debate debacle paved the way for the family to reach out beyond the staff and begin to help their beloved father and brother,” said one person familiar with the family dynamic.
There has been a long-simmering rift between the president’s family and some of his closest aides, and the president’s performance in the debate exacerbated that dynamic, 13 sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. Some Biden aides see the family as seizing an opportunity to settle old scores, while the family sees the debate as the culmination of bad advice from aides who they believe aren’t helping the president maximize his political appeal.
The infighting has infuriated some Biden staffers, who feel the blame game is hindering a concerted effort to help the president fight the crisis.
“It’s not helpful,” one Biden campaign aide said. Some Biden supporters believe the president’s aides are doing most of the managing and coordinating the post-debate strategy, with family members dealing with the situation more emotionally.
Another person close to the president said the Bidens were not seeing the political reality clearly.
“That’s Shakespearean,” this person said.
Biden said Friday he took full responsibility for his performance in the debate, telling ABC News in an interview that “it’s nobody’s fault, it’s mine.”
Hunter Biden’s attendance at this week’s White House meetings is just one example of the Biden family’s expected deeper involvement. The president’s sister, Valerie Owens, also visited Washington this week and was due to join other family members at the White House for a first-hand look at her brother’s campaign.
Biden family members have discussed whether Biden should fire White House senior adviser Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, who is Biden’s personal lawyer, according to two people familiar with the matter. But there’s no active effort to shake things up at this point, according to four sources close to the Biden family. They said there’s an effort among those close to the president to be careful, focused, thoughtful and cautious.
“The president and first lady have the utmost confidence in Anita, Bob and their team,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients said in a statement. “There is absolutely no truth to these baseless and offensive rumors.”
Since the debate, Biden’s family has felt that some of the president’s top officials in the White House and campaign have betrayed him rather than take responsibility for what led to his disastrous debate performance, one of the people said.
“I think the Biden family has seen gaffe after gaffe by key staffers, but the debate seemed to be the breaking point,” the source said. “After the debate, instead of taking responsibility, supposedly loyal staffers blamed the president and said, ‘It’s his fault.’ I can’t think of any other single action that would have been more destabilizing for the Biden family.”
The bigger concern among Biden’s aides is that disagreements long since resolved internally could bubble up into the open as pressure on the president mounts. Family discussions are focused primarily on how to continue to support the president, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Relations have become so tense that after Biden was informed of reports on Sunday that his family was criticizing his debate preparation team, he called his former chief of staff and longtime adviser Ron Klain directly and said it did not reflect the views of him or his family.
It’s often said among Biden’s aides that he is at his most effective when he improvises and speaks without a script — his most powerful moments in the past two State of the Union addresses, for example, came when he debated Republican critics on the House floor rather than reading from a teleprompter.
But when asked why he is not there more often, they often point the finger at one another, suggesting that a different group of advisers is shielding him from scrutiny or from places where he might make mistakes.
While some family supporters have accused the “firm” of what they say is excessively controlling the president, advisers have often suggested, in subtle tones, that the family, which includes both the president’s blood relatives and longtime staff members who are considered family, is being overly protective.
That has raised questions among allies about whether Biden has been overly protected and insulated out of fear of making a gaffe, or whether those protections have been in place for so long that he has become less adept in such situations than he was before.
Hunter Biden’s increased involvement has troubled some White House staff and reopened a long-standing dilemma.
For the family, this feels like “re-opening old wounds,” particularly as Bauer and Dunn recommended that Hunter Biden keep a lower profile than he has over the past two years, a source familiar with the family and staff dynamic said.
Former White House communications director for the first lady, Michael LaRosa, defended Hunter Biden’s involvement in politicized issues, saying the president’s son has proven his knowledge as a Yale-educated lawyer.
“He’s been much more effective in his media strategy and his political tactics than any previous campaign has been. His campaign has $250 million to spend,” LaRosa said in an interview.
“At the end of the day, [president Biden is] He is very close with his children, his brother and his sister and appreciates their honest advice… and it’s understandable that he feels annoyed when they feel like they’re on the outside looking in.”
Asked to comment on Hunter’s attendance at the White House meeting this week, White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement, “Hunter returned from a weekend with the President and his family at Camp David and immediately began preparing his speech with the President,” referring to Biden’s prepared remarks about the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity.
Hunter Biden was convicted of gun-related charges in federal court in Delaware last month and remains charged with felony tax charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Hunter Biden has long been the target of Republican attacks, including from former President Donald Trump himself, that have focused on his overseas business dealings and questions about whether he profited from his father’s political office.
Messrs. Dunn and Bauer have not hesitated to tell the president and his wife “the truth,” said a source familiar with the family and staff dynamics, even though other aides who have worked with them for much longer may sometimes shy away from telling them the truth.
“Anita is one of the most respected figures in the White House, the campaign and the entire Democratic Party,” a Biden aide said. “We truly fear that without her leadership, we may not be able to bounce back and win, just as she helped the president bounce back from his early 2020 primary defeat and defeat Trump.”
Biden referred repeatedly to his 2020 victory during a television interview on Friday, pointing to his ability to beat Trump once and the Democrats’ unexpectedly strong showing in the 2022 midterm elections, where he said they were previously expected to lose but delivered.
“We’ve done better in our off years than any sitting president has ever done,” Biden said.
He also rejected any calls for him to resign, saying only “Almighty God” could convince him to withdraw from the election, and that “Almighty God will not come down.”
