WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A new book about\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0portrays the president as someone whose\u00a0middle-class upbringing\u00a0helped foster a resentment of intellectual elitism that shaped his political career and sometimes caused strain with his onetime boss, Harvard-educated\u00a0Barack Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden, who spent eight years as Obama\u2019s vice president, told a friend that Obama couldn\u2019t even curse properly, according to \u201cThe Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden\u2019s White House and the Struggle for America\u2019s Future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Released Tuesday and written by Franklin Foer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, the book says Biden said Obama was unable to deliver a \u201cf\u2014- you\u201d with \u201cthe right elongation of vowels and the necessary hardness of consonants; it was how they must curse in the ivory tower.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, as the president\u00a0runs for reelection, the early frontrunner among Republicans is former President\u00a0Donald Trump, whose supporters can sometimes resent the perceived elitism of Washington\u2019s political class \u2014 suggesting some overlap with Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anecdote also may resonate with Democrats. Ardent supporters of both Biden and Obama fondly recall the then-vice president telling Obama in a private aside that was captured on a hot mic, \u201cThis is a big f\u2014-ing deal,\u201d during the signing ceremony for Obama\u2019s signature\u00a0health care law\u00a0in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foer\u2019s book offers a deep examination of Biden\u2019s first two years in office, which the author describes as encompassing a lot of \u201cflailing\u201d before the president began to cement his legacy through\u00a0signature policy achievements\u00a0and \u201ccreative diplomacy\u201d that helped rally the world behind Ukraine in the face of\u00a0Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 80-year-old Biden continues to\u00a0face questions about his age, and Foer calls it \u201cstriking\u201d that Biden attends few meetings or public events before 10 a.m. In private, Biden would \u201coccasionally admit to friends he felt tired,\u201d the book says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
White House press secretary\u00a0Karine Jean-Pierre\u00a0was asked last week by a reporter citing an early excerpt from Foer\u2019s book if personal fatigue might help explain why Biden\u2019s morning schedule was often light. She responded, \u201cThat\u2019s a ridiculous assumption to make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jean-Pierre referred back to that exchange during her briefing with reporters at the White House on Tuesday, and provided updated comment, saying that administration officials had now \u201cseen the context of the excerpt.\u201d She said the book was actually praising Biden for helping to push major legislation through Congress and unify global support around Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It \u201cseemed to be making the opposite overall point about how the value of his experience and wisdom resulted in rallying the free world against authoritarianism,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jean-Pierre also said \u201cthere\u2019s gonna be a range, always, a range of books that are about every administration\u201d that would feature \u201ca variety of claims.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not unusual. That happens all the time,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re not going to litigate here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foer\u2019s book also describes struggles by\u00a0Vice President Kamala Harris\u00a0to carve out a role for herself as Biden\u2019s No. 2 that have been\u00a0well-documented\u00a0previously. But Foer suggests Harris may have hurt her own cause in that area, initially asking to be in charge of relations with Scandinavia because it was \u201caway from the spotlight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book reports that the vice president was initially excited about helping the administration tackle the\u00a0root causes of immigration\u00a0that have seen so many Central American migrants seeking asylum arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border \u2014 but that she eventually began to accept conventional wisdom that it was a thankless assignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foer\u2019s book says Biden tried to treat Harris more respectfully than he felt Obama often had treated him as vice president, calling her \u201cthe vice president\u201d instead of \u201cmy vice president.\u201d But, during his early days in office, as Biden was convening his team to combat the\u00a0coronavirus pandemic, Biden joked that the nation\u2019s top infectious disease expert,\u00a0Dr. Anthony Fauci, should sit in the vice president\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Last Politician\u201d describes the\u00a0chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan\u00a0in 2021. It says that when Biden\u2019s national security adviser,\u00a0Jake Sullivan, relayed to the president that Afghan President\u00a0Ashraf Ghani\u00a0had fled the country, leaving Kabul to fall to the Taliban, Biden declared in frustration, \u201cGive me a break!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also reports that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally intervened to help many women whose work in Afghanistan made them potential targets for the Taliban. She directed a group of them to wear white scarfs so they could be identified by U.S. Marines guarding the Kabul airport, and unilaterally contacted world leaders to find places for their eventual evacuation flights to land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The book says Clinton\u2019s call to Ukrainian President\u00a0Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u00a0drew a personal rebuke from Sullivan, former close advisor to Clinton, who told her \u201cWhat are you doing calling the Ukrainian government?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have to call if you guys would,\u201d Clinton responded, according to Foer\u2019s book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A new book about\u00a0Joe Biden\u00a0portrays t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2769,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions\/2769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}