Biden family tries to get more involved in campaign as long-standing tensions with aides spill over

President Joe Biden’s family is trying to get more involved in his campaign and White House affairs as their anger with his staff spills into public view.

“The debate fiasco has opened a path for the family to go beyond the staff and start helping their much-loved father and brother,” said one of the people with knowledge of the family dynamic.

The rift between the president’s family and some of his closest aides has been simmering for a long time, and his debate performance has exacerbated the dynamic, sources familiar with the dynamic told NBC News 13. From the perspective of some Biden associates, the family is using the opportunity to try to settle old scores. From the perspective of family members, the debate is the culmination of misguided advice from aides who don’t believe it helped the president better present his political appeal.

The infighting has angered some Biden aides, who have found finger-pointing to be an obstacle to an approach that will help the president deal with this crisis.

“It’s not helpful,” said a Biden campaign aide. The view of some Biden allies is that the president’s aides do most of the management and coordination of strategy after the debate, while the family takes a more emotional approach to the situation.

Another person close to the president said the Biden family does not see political reality clearly.

“It’s Shakespearean,” said this person.

On Friday, Biden said he took full responsibility for his performance in the debate, saying in an interview with ABC News that he was “nobody’s fault but me.”

Hunter Biden’s appearance at White House meetings this week was just one example of what is expected to be the deepening involvement of the Biden family. The president’s sister, Valerie Owens, too traveled to Washington this week to join other family members at the White House and scheduled face-to-face meetings with her brother’s campaign.

Members of the Biden family have was discussed whether to fire senior White House adviser Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, who is Biden’s personal lawyer, two people familiar with the matter said. Even so, four sources close to the Biden family said there is no active effort to shake up the staff at this time. They said there is an effort among those close to the president to be measured, focused, thoughtful and deliberate.

“The president and first lady have complete confidence in their team, including Anita and Bob,” White House chief of staff Jeff Ziedz said in a statement. “There is absolutely no truth to these baseless and offensive rumours.”

Since the debate, members of the Biden family have felt that some of the president’s top White House and campaign aides they have thrown the president under the bus instead of taking responsibility for what led to a disastrous performance in the debate, according to one of the sources.

“I believe the family has witnessed blunder after blunder by key staff and the debate is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back,” the source said. “After the debate, the supposedly loyal staff, instead of taking responsibility, pointed the finger at the president and said, ‘It’s his fault.’ I can think of no other single action that will upset the Biden family more.”

The biggest concern now among some of Biden’s inner circle is that the kind of differences between them that had long been resolved internally are at risk of playing out publicly as pressure on the president mounts. The family talks have largely focused on how to continue to support the president moving forward, five sources familiar with the matter said.

The dynamic has become so uncomfortable that after Biden was informed on Sunday that he had mentioned the family pointing fingers at the debate prep team, the president personally called Ron Klein, his former chief of staff and longtime adviser, to say that it does not reflect his own. or the thought of family.

Among Biden’s closest advisers, there has often been an acknowledgment that Biden is at his best when he’s off the cuff and off-script. Some of his strongest moments in the last two State of the Union addresses, for example, were when he was sparring with Republican critics on the floor of the House instead of reading from a teleprompter.

But when pressed about not being in those settings more often, they often point to each other, suggesting that it’s a different set of advisors protecting him from scrutiny or protecting him from settings where he might make mistakes.

Some aligned with the family have blamed “the company,” as they call it, for overmanaging the president, but advisers, often subtly, have suggested it’s the family — and his blood relatives and some longtime staff who are considered family. – protective on fault.

It has led allies to question whether the fear of a blunder has kept Biden overly sheltered and isolated, or whether this kind of bubble wrap for a longer period of time has made him less adept at these arrangements than in the past.

Hunter Biden’s involvement has grown cursed some White House staff members and revived a long-standing pain.

For the family, it’s all about “old wounds being reopened,” particularly with Bauer and Dunn and their recommendations that Hunter Biden keep a lower profile than he has for the past two years, said a source who knows family and staff dynamics.

Michael LaRosa, a former White House press secretary, defended Hunter Biden’s involvement in political affairs, saying that as a Yale-educated lawyer, the president’s son has shown knowledge.

“He’s been much more effective in media strategy and political backbiting than the campaign has been, and they have $250 million,” La Rosa said in an interview.

“At the end of the day, [president Biden is] extremely close to his children, brothers and sister and appreciates their unfiltered advice … and it would be understandable for them to be frustrated if they feel they are being watched from the outside.”

He was asked to comment Hunter’s presence at White House meetings this week, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement: “Hunter returned with the President from their family weekend at Camp David and went with the President straight into speech preparation,” referring to his preparation Biden for remarks about the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

Hunter Biden was was found guilty last month by a grand jury in federal court in Delaware on gun-related charges. He remains charged with tax crimes, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

He has long been the focus of attacks by Republicans — including former President Donald Trump himself — who have focused on Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and questions about whether he benefited from his father’s political stature.

Dunn and Bauer weren’t afraid to tell the president and first lady “the truth,” said a source familiar with the family and staff dynamics, when other aides who have been with them much longer might sometimes shy away. this.

“Anita is one of the most respected people in both the White House and the campaign and the Democratic Party,” said a Biden aide, “and without her leadership there are real fears that we may not be able to recover and win. just as he helped the President do when he fought back losses in early 2020 and went on to beat Trump.”

In his televised interview on Friday, Biden referred to the 2020 victory again and again, pointing to his ability to defeat Trump once and the unexpectedly strong midterm results for Democrats in 2022, saying he had been counted on before and succeeded.

“We’ve done better in an off-year than almost any sitting president has ever done,” Biden said.

He also rejected any calls to step aside, saying that only “The Lord Almighty” could convince him to leave the fight and that “The Lord Almighty does not come down.”