A rift has emerged between former White House insiders regarding President Joe Biden’s fitness for a second term, highlighted by a heated exchange between Biden’s former Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, and David Axelrod, a top advisor to former President Barack Obama.
The disagreement centers on concerns about President Biden’s age, a recurring point of discussion among political analysts and the public. Axelrod raised the issue in a 2022 interview with The New York Times, stating, “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue.”
According to the book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios political correspondent Alex Thompson, Klain reacted strongly to Axelrod’s comments. In a phone call shortly after the Times’ article was published, Klain reportedly challenged Axelrod’s perspective. “Who’s going to beat Trump? President Biden is the only one who has done it. You better have a lot of certainty about a different candidate before you say the president should step aside. The future of the country depends on it!” Klain told Axelrod, according to the authors. The book suggests that Klain believed Biden was the only viable candidate to defeat Trump, dismissing the prospects of others.
However, Axelrod, echoing the concerns of many Americans, remained worried about the implications of the first octogenarian president serving another four years. As the chief strategist behind Obama’s successful presidential campaigns, Axelrod was among the last advisors to meet with Biden before Obama selected him as his running mate in 2008. The book reveals that Axelrod had previously discouraged Biden from running for president in 2015 and was surprised by his decision to run in 2020 at age 77.
Tapper and Thompson recount an instance in 2018 where Biden invited Axelrod to his Virginia rental home after Axelrod made positive remarks about him to a reporter. During this meeting, Axelrod reportedly was struck by Biden’s apparent aging. While acknowledging his concerns about age being a campaign issue, Axelrod reportedly encouraged Biden to emphasize his experience and wisdom. By the time Biden was nearing his decision on whether to seek re-election, Axelrod felt strongly that a 2024 run was ill-advised. He expressed to Tapper and Thompson his hope that someone within the White House could have convinced Biden and his family against it.
Pointing to unfavorable poll numbers in key battleground states in 2023, Axelrod took his concerns public, urging Biden to withdraw from the race through a series of social media posts. He emphasized the high stakes involved, stating, “The stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.” In one post directed at Biden, Axelrod questioned the wisdom of running again, asking whether it was in his best interest or the country’s.
Klain responded publicly to Axelrod’s social media commentary, referencing Axelrod’s past remarks about Biden from the 2019 Democratic primary debates. The book further details that Biden himself privately called Axelrod a “prick” in response to the 2023 posts, a sentiment that was later leaked to Politico. According to the book, Axelrod also received private messages of agreement from other prominent Democrats who chose to remain publicly silent, accepting Biden’s candidacy as inevitable and not wanting to undermine him in a potential rematch with Trump.
Fox News Digital has extensively covered concerns about President Biden’s cognitive abilities since the 2020 presidential campaign, also reporting on alleged efforts by his inner circle to downplay these concerns.
In response to the claims made in the book, a Biden spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “There is nothing in this book that shows Joe Biden failed to do his job, as the authors have alleged, nor did they prove their allegation that there was a cover-up or conspiracy. Nowhere do they show that our national security was threatened or where the president wasn’t otherwise engaged in the important matters of the presidency. In fact, Joe Biden was an effective president who led our country with empathy and skill.”
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