“Uncle Joe” Biden may not as folksy and warm as he would like voters to think.
Former aides to Biden told the New Yorker that his staffers were too “intimidated” to express concerns about Biden’s son, Hunter, which have become a source of scandal for the former vice president, because they feared backlash from the short-tempered Democrat. According to former staffers of Biden, his employees have learned to walk on eggshells when he is near.
“Everyone who works for him has been screamed at,” a former adviser told the magazine.
Two faces of Joe
The article paints a much different picture of Biden than his public persona as down-home and personable would suggest. According to anonymous former staffers, Biden’s employees are careful to avoid upsetting him. Aides said they were “too intimidated” to raise concerns about his son Hunter, whose Jerry Springer-esque misadventures and business dealings are the subject of the magazine’s 10,000 word article.
Hunter’s wild personal life, including reported drug abuse and a relationship with the widow of his deceased brother Beau Biden, have drawn negative attention to the Biden family. Perhaps more of an issue for “Uncle Joe’s” White House ambitions are his son’s ambiguous business entanglements in countries the former vice president dealt with diplomatically, namely China and the Ukraine. Hunter’s dealings, which have been detailed by Clinton Cash author Peter Schweitzer, have been seen as a possible conflict-of-interest scandal that is only beginning to receive due attention now that Biden is running for president.
Staffers of Biden’s were reportedly worried about how it would look for Hunter to introduce a Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li, to his father. Hunter secured a $1 billion dollar contract with the Chinese government for his private equity firm after a trip the duo took to the communist country.
“When I asked members of Biden’s staff whether they discussed their concerns with the vice president, several of them said that they had been too intimidated to do so,” a former staffer said.
Other sources said that Biden is easily offended when sensitive family matters are broached, with a business associate of Biden’s recalling a particular instance when Biden “got deeply melancholy, which, to me, is more painful than if someone yelled and screamed at me.”
“It’s like you’ve hurt him terribly. That was always my fear, that I would be really touching a very fragile part of him,” the person said.
Biden slipping
The article’s publication is badly, or perhaps oddly, timed. The report comes amid a slide in the polls by the Democrat, who until recently was widely considered the frontrunner in the Democratic primary.
After surviving a maelstrom of early campaign controversies including a groping scandal, Biden assumed a comfortable lead, but his recent drop seems to have cut into that position and is raising questions as to whether his top status is as secure as it once seemed. Biden’s debate performance Thursday night provided the first real test of speculation, brewing for weeks, that the Democrat is too old and out of touch to be the nominee of an increasingly radical Democratic party.
The poll numbers appeared to tell a story: Biden suffered a steep drop after being savaged by Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) , who attacked recent comments Biden made about working with segregationist Democrats in the past. Harris also criticized Biden’s past opposition to federal busing to end segregation in schools.
The Democrat feebly defended his record on civil rights and argued that he only opposed busing mandated by the federal government — a rationale not likely to persuade many Democratic voters. The following day, Biden attempted to fix the mess of the previous night’s debate with a 25-minute speech on civil rights at an event hosted by Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Biden has sustained consistent and increasing attacks from the left over his complicated record on race, abortion, and other issues. The former pro-life Democrat flip-flopped on the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortions, and he has faced strong criticism from the left for his key role in supporting tough-on-crime policies such as the 1994 crime bill.
The accounts of Biden’s verbal abuse are reminiscent of reports earlier this year that Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) routinely routinely berated and even threw objects at her staff. In an especially bizarre example of employee mistreatment, it was claimed that the Democrat ate a salad with a comb, which she then forced a staffer to clean.
No comments: