(Photo Kenny Holston-Pool)
A longtime aide to former President Joe Biden admitted that White House staff felt justified doing “undemocratic things” during his term in office because they believed President Donald Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy.
The revelation came during an appearance by Axios reporter Alex Thompson on “Fox News Sunday” with Shannon Bream, where he discussed insider accounts from his reporting on the Biden administration. Thompson described a mindset inside the White House — one in which unelected aides saw themselves as the real decision makers while shielding Biden from scrutiny and managing the presidency behind the scenes.
“If you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe — that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy, you can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things,” Thompson said.
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Thompson also cited a quote from his reporting in which a longtime Biden aide openly admitted the president “just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years.”
“He’d only have to show proof of life every once in a while,” the aide reportedly told Thompson. “His aides could pick up the slack.”
Access to Biden was tightly controlled by an inner circle of unelected staffers who managed his schedule and limited who could speak to him directly, Thompson said.
“When you’re voting for president, you’re voting for the aides around him,” the aide said.
