Some White House staffers have been forced to tiptoe around President Biden when briefing him on certain topics because they want to avoid eliciting his wrath and are “scared s–tless” of him, a new report says.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’”a senior administration official told Politico, referring to how some of the 81-year-old president’s aides feel they have to walk through a minefield before briefings to avoid him getting angry with them.
“It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing,” the source said. “Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared s—less of him.”
Biden “doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it,” the source said.
The White House vehemently rejected the characterizations of the president, with Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates stressing to The Post on Tuesday, “That’s simply not who he is.”
In the past, allegations have emerged about Biden having a hair-trigger temper and reaming out aides — sometimes with profane language — when vexed by certain developments.
The president’s temper has flared publicly on occasion, too, including when faced with tough questions from The Post.
Other aides have reportedly sought to bring a colleague with them to meetings for moral support.
Biden has leaned on a very tight-knit inner circle that has tried to provide cover for him from the media and other groups.
His protective go-to people include senior adviser Anita Dunn, former chief of staff Ron Klain, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed.
The Post learned that Biden’s son Hunter also has been participating in West Wing meetings this week, after the president’s disastrous debate against GOP foe Donald Trump. --->READ MORE HERE
Call him Old Yeller.
President Biden has displayed a hair-trigger temper with aides behind closed doors and is known for cursing out White House staffers, according to a new report — the latest to contradict the octogenarian’s carefully cultivated image as a folksy, kindly grandfather.
Current and former Biden aides told Axios the 80-year-old president has hurled insults such as “God dammit, how the f–- don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f–-ing bulls— me!” and “Get the f–- out of here!”
Some say they are so fearful of the president’s wrath that they bring along colleagues to meetings as a kind of shield against Biden’s paint-stripping language.
“No one is safe,” not even senior aides, one administration official told the outlet.
In one particularly memorable exchange, Biden bore down on then-COVID czar and current White House chief of staff Jeff Zients in late 2021 for bungling the testing kit rollout for the Omicron variant.
The commander-in-chief will also angrily question West Wing staffers in an attempt to “stump” them, prodding them to brief him on topics in a conversational way that some have dubbed “speaking Biden.”
“If there is something that’s not in the brief, he’s going to find it,” Ted Kaufman, Biden’s chief of staff from his time as a US senator, told the outlet. “It’s not to embarrass people, it’s because he wants to get to the right decision. Most people who have worked for him like the fact that he challenges them and gets them to a better decision.”
“There’s no question that the Biden temper is for real,” added Chris Whipple, author of “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.” “It may not be as volcanic as Bill Clinton’s, but it’s definitely there.”
Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, was quoted in Whipple’s book as telling Biden, “I know we have a really good, trusting relationship when you yell at me the first time.” The author noted that Psaki “wouldn’t have to wait long.”
Jeff Connaughton, Kaufman’s ex-chief of staff and a former Biden campaign aide, called the now-president an “egomaniacal autocrat” who was “determined to manage his staff through fear” in his 2012 book “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Wins.” --->READ MORE HERE
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