Editor’s note: President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life sentences.
President Biden is preparing to leave the White House without much fuss.
Democrats are hoping to turn the page on a disappointing year in which they lost again to President-elect Trump, who has swallowed up much of the attention well before his second term in office.
Mr. Biden has taken several large-scale overseas trips since the election. He’s also pardoned his son, worked to reach a cease-fire in Gaza, stepped up aid to Ukraine and gone on a holiday tour, speaking in and around Washington.
Just before Christmas, he caused a stir by announcing that he would commute the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates.
But while a series of announcements about President Trump’s second Cabinet, network television interviews, and his first post-election press conference at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, home dominated the media atmosphere, the president His public presence is largely unrecorded.
That is, except that Trump and his allies actively participated in messy government funding negotiations at the end of the year, while Biden and the White House remained largely silent. That chorus was primarily led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Republicans said Biden’s absence from key moments was understandable, in addition to avoiding the press at almost all costs.
“He was missing for a long time. We saw him go to Africa, but he didn’t answer any questions for anyone to see and was largely shielded from the press. We know it’s going to Italy and it’s probably going to get the same amount of access from the media,” Republican strategist Doug Hay said.
Democrats have also done little to strengthen their leadership, instead expressing hope that Biden will step down as president, even if they don’t like who comes next.
“There’s a certain sense of great disappointment with the way this presidency has ended. It’s close to resignation at this point,” said a Democratic lobbyist.
“Among Democrats, no one is looking forward to Donald Trump becoming president, but everyone is gearing up for Biden’s inauguration.”
Former President Barack Obama’s speechwriter, Jon Favreau, said that Trump’s press conference, even though Biden himself was speaking at the Labor Department, while Trump was announcing a $100 billion investment from SoftBank. said it highlighted the perception that Biden is not in the public eye.
“It was more or less a standard presidential policy announcement, with the main difference being that Trump is not yet president. As Joe Biden appears to be fading from public life as his term ends, , this fact is increasingly being forgotten,” Favreau said on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
Favreau and his co-hosts also noted that Trump attended the Army-Navy game in early December, and emphasized that Biden never attended. Mr. Trump has once again attracted media attention, thanks in part to his inner circle, including embattled defense secretary candidate Pete Hegseth.
Some Democrats said they weren’t concerned about Trump stealing the spotlight in his final months, saying it wasn’t that he was acting inappropriately and that he was more cautious than he was eight years ago. He pointed out that it appeared to be the case.
Some point out that Mr. Obama was first elected in 2008 as former President George W. Bush left the White House and attracted media attention.
One longtime Democratic donor and donor called the fact that Trump is acting like a president before he’s officially inaugurated more of a “media problem” than an actual problem.
“I haven’t seen him do much of anything unpleasant. He’s encouraging people to invest in the United States, which is good. He’s meeting with foreign leaders. When others win elections, they often call foreign leaders. I’m sure a face-to-face conversation is not that different from a phone conversation,” the official said. “It would be a problem if he acted inappropriately, but he seems to be more cautious than he was eight years ago.”
Democrats are unhappy with the remainder of Biden’s term.
“I think people, including probably a lot of people in the White House, are looking forward to this thing being over. The administration has accomplished a lot, but the most important thing is winning, and we won. There wasn’t,” added the longtime Democratic donor and funder.
The White House continues to operate behind the scenes on two major external fronts: increasing aid to Ukraine and reaching a cease-fire agreement to end fighting in Gaza.
But President Trump has been in the spotlight again with several meetings with foreign leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who continued to threaten tariffs while joking about making Canada the 51st state. .
Adam Abrams, President Obama’s communications director, said Biden will remain in the spotlight in the final days of his presidency if he chooses to use his bullish pulpit to make his legacy his own. He argued that it can be defined as
“President Biden has taken full advantage of the bully pulpit to define his historical legacy, the incredible consistency of his values, the remarkable consistency of his accomplishments, and the “I can and will detail the breadth of it. After all, as president, I don’t have to compete for media and public attention; I can command it.” Abrams, a partner at Seven Letter, said.
“Amidst the continued frenzy of the Trump transition and year-end fundraising battles on Capitol Hill, President Biden is using the final stretch to advance his core priorities and aggressively improve his track record,” Abrams said. “
Biden has garnered so much attention, but it’s not for the most positive reasons.
Biden sparked renewed uproar among Democrats by announcing he would pardon his son Hunter Biden, who had insisted for months that he would not be pardoned.
The move left Democrats “disgusted” and “absolutely” pissed off by the entire Biden world, sources told The Hill.
That’s on top of the feelings many Democrats already had about Biden: that he should have chosen not to run for re-election or that he should have dropped out of the 2024 race sooner. It was something like that. Vice President Harris had only about 100 days left before her decisive loss to Trump.
Democrats lost the White House and the Senate, and failed to flip the House, but it was an eventful year overall.
Ivan Zapien, a former Democratic National Committee staffer, said the year-end sentiment was not centered on Biden, but on disappointment among Democrats as a whole.
“Losing is never fun, and I think we’re seeing things unfolding across the Democratic Party faction that aren’t fun,” Zapien said. “I wouldn’t call it Biden fatigue. It’s more like, ‘That sucked, rest up for the next game.'”
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