After his disastrous decision to run for reelection helped secure Donald Trump’s victory, former President Joe Biden is fighting for his reputation — and struggling to rake in cash.
The subject of recent books detailing his decline, Biden is apparently having trouble bringing in speaking fees and difficulty fundraising for his presidential library, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise. After Biden’s catastrophic 2024 debate performance against Trump revealed the extent of his declining health and marked the end of his campaign, why would anyone pay the former president to speak? And who would want to fund a Biden presidential library, as a monument to his legacy in office, when his legacy now includes Trump’s lawless and destructive second term?
Now that the election is over — and the damage is mounting from Trump’s presidency — people are becoming more comfortable talking about what went wrong. One new book in particular outlines how Biden and his inner circle covered up the extent of his failing health. Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, written by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, is based on 200 interviews with Biden insiders who say that things were much worse behind the scenes than his team let on.
This week, Biden’s personal office revealed he has stage 4 prostate cancer. The diagnosis is also putting more pressure on Biden to quickly build an inheritance for his grandchildren, as WSJ said in its report on Saturday.
Biden’s speaking fees — $300,000 to $500,000 — are reportedly below what former President Barack Obama charges, according to the paper. And that is if people hire him. He has given at least one paid speech, but “few organizations have been willing to pay for Biden,” wrote WSJ, which noted that some companies and organizations are reportedly afraid to provoke Trump.
Many Democratic donors are hesitant to donate to Biden’s presidential library. Fundraising for the library “will be a heavy lift in light of all that has transpired,” John Morgan, a lawyer and former major Biden donor, told WSJ.
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Morgan said that Biden, who once promised to be “a bridge” candidate, failed to create a bridge for the next generation of Democratic leaders. Donors who supported Biden said they don’t plan to give to his library, and some allies worry the library won’t open in Biden’s lifetime.
Tapper and Thompson’s book has drawn attention for showing that Biden was not in shape to have a second term.
“What we found by writing this book is that everything that we saw going on in front of the camera was much worse behind the scenes,” Tapper told The New Yorker’s David Remnick.
One glaring example highlighted in the book was when Biden did not recognize Democratic fundraiser and A-list actor George Clooney, even when an aide told him, “you know George.”
Tapper and Thompson reported that Biden’s White House produced an atmosphere that stifled dissent, where insiders blocked the president from criticism.
“The point with Biden was such that I have never seen, until maybe the current administration — an administration where the president is so surrounded by people who will never tell him anything negative, ever, and in fact will block negative stuff from coming to him,” Tapper told the New Yorker.
In another book, journalist Chris Whipple writes that Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, was “struck by how out of touch with American politics he was” on the campaign trail.
Earlier this month, Biden denied claims that his mental status is declining. “They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that,” he said on ABC’s The View.
“Then he launched into a rambling response that was consistent with some of the behavior that had alarmed some people who met with him,” WSJ wrote.
From Rolling Stone US
