Politico: President Biden yells at his staff & loves an ‘angry interrogation’

The backstory on the “Dark Brandon” thing is always funny to me. “Let’s Go Brandon” was the stupid code MAGAts used in the place of “f–k Joe Biden.” Then those same MAGAts tried to make “Joe Biden is all-powerful and evil” into a thing, only they made him sound ridiculously cool. That was when liberals adopted “Dark Brandon” as a real thing – behind President Biden’s grandfatherly old-fart image was an omniscient badass who always wins and always drinks Nazi tears. Well, Politico is still trying to make “Joe Biden is secretly a bad guy” into a thing and they just make him sound kind of cool? I mean, it’s not cool to yell at people, but mostly it sounds like President Biden has little patience for Washington double-speak and he doesn’t like it when people waste his time. Some highlights from Politico’s “Old yeller: Biden’s private fury.”

Biden yells at idiots: In private, he’s prone to yelling. Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast. The president’s admonitions include: “God dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!” and “Get the f**k out of here!” — according to current and former Biden aides who have witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts. Why it matters: The private eruptions paint a more complicated picture of Biden as a manager and president than his carefully cultivated image as a kindly uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream.

Biden’s people want him to be angry in public: Some Biden aides think the president would be better off occasionally displaying his temper in public as a way to assuage voter concerns that the 80-year-old president is disengaged and too old for the office.

Anger or accountability? Biden aides still talk about how angry he got at Jeff Zients, then the administration’s “COVID czar,” in late 2021 when there was a shortage of testing kits as the Omicron variant spread. (The rage was temporary. Zients is now Biden’s chief of staff.)

Oh, so Biden actually is angry for a reason: Biden’s temper comes in the form of angry interrogations rather than erratic tantrums. He’ll grill aides on topics until it’s clear they don’t know the answer to a question — a routine that some see as meticulous and others call “stump the chump” or “stump the dummy.” Being yelled at by the president has become an internal initiation ceremony in this White House, aides say — if Biden doesn’t yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn’t respect you.

Biden hates Washington double-speak: Some administration officials, many of whom went to elite schools, struggle with Biden’s demand to ditch wonky, acronym-filled language and brief him as if they were talking to a close family member who isn’t in the D.C. bubble.

This is hilarious: Connaughton wrote that as a senator, Biden was an “egomaniacal autocrat … determined to manage his staff through fear.” He told of a time during the 2008 presidential campaign when a 23-year-old fundraising staffer got into the car with Biden. “Okay, senator, time to do some fundraising calls,” the aide said. Biden responded by looking at him and snapping: “Get the f**k out of the car.”

[From Axios]

First thing – this is white male privilege entirely. A woman couldn’t behave like this and be elected president without all of her staffers running around, crying about how she’s so angry and mean and unladylike. Now, that being said, Politico seems to be categorizing every curse as Biden “yelling” at someone. Biden telling Obama “this is a big f–king deal” isn’t Biden “yelling” or getting “angry.” Biden calling Steve Doocey a “dumb son of a bitch” is Biden speaking his truth, it’s not an angry outburst. Many of these stories are about Biden’s managerial style, which is about cutting out bullsh-t and getting the most information possible in a concise way. This feels like another Dark Brandon moment – they’re trying to make Biden sound like an angry old man, but many people are like “he sounds like a tough-but-fair manager and he gets sh-t done.”

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red, Backgrid.