President Joe Biden’s campaign believes former president Barack Obama is "quietly working behind the scenes" to undermine the incumbent and his reelection bid, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough reported Thursday.
"What’s going on behind the scenes is the Biden campaign and many Democratic officials do believe that Barack Obama is quietly working behind the scenes to orchestrate this," Scarborough said. "The pathway to Joe Biden graciously stepping aside does not go through the Obamas or the Clintons … Joe Biden is deeply resentful of his treatment under, not only the Obama staff but also the way he was pushed aside for Hillary Clinton."
The claim came after it was reported that actor and Democratic mega-donor George Clooney reached out to Obama before he published his all-telling New York Times op-ed on Wednesday, calling on Biden to suspend his reelection campaign. Although Obama did not "encourage" or "advise" Clooney’s narrative, he didn’t object to it either, people familiar with the exchange told Politico.
Both Democratic dignitaries were at the Biden fundraiser Clooney co-hosted last month that raised over $28 million for the candidate he is now calling on to stand down. Clooney said he knew Biden shouldn’t run for reelection at that fundraiser three weeks ago.
"It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big f—king deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate," Clooney wrote in his op-ed. "We are not going to win in November with this president."
Although the 44th president was one of the first to defend Biden after his abysmal debate performance last month, the Obama-Biden relationship has been growing tense since 2015. That year, then-vice president Biden was weighing a presidential run and President Obama discouraged it, putting his support behind Hillary Clinton instead.
Considerable Obama allies have since defended Clooney’s piece. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist, and Jon Favreau, a former Obama aide, told Dana Bash Clooney hit the nail on the head in his op-ed.
"Clooney was exactly right, and every single person I talked to at the fundraiser thought the same thing except the people working for Joe Biden," Favreau, who was at Clooney’s June fundraiser, said.
"That is devastating," Axelrod added. "It’s devastating, and it’s what people fear."