The Sound and the Fury: Biden Reportedly Yells and Curses at Staff in Private

President Joe Biden has a hair-trigger temper and is “prone to yelling” and cursing at White House staff, according to a report from Axios.

Summary

President Joe Biden has a hair-trigger temper and is “prone to yelling” and cursing at White House staff, according to a report from Axios.

• Alex Thompson reported the president has been known to yell, “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!” at his aides, according to several current and former staff who spoke with Axios off the record.
• “No one is safe,” one administration official told Axios. Biden’s fury has been directed at both senior and junior staffers.
• White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, then serving as Covid czar, was reportedly the target of a particularly nasty outburst in late 2021 when the administration was found to have a shortage of testing kits just as the Omicron variant was surging.
• Chris Whipple, a historian whose written tomes on chiefs of staff, CIA directors, and now the Biden White House, told Axios, “There’s no question that the Biden temper is for real.”
• One of Biden’s preferred tactics has been nicknamed “stump the chump” or “stump the dummy” by staff. The president tends to channel his anger into interrogations where he asks aides a series of questions to demonstrate that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
• Some White House aides likened being on the receiving end of a Biden tirade to an “internal initiation ceremony” (or in less kind terms, a fraternity hazing ritual).
• Counterintuitively, “if Biden doesn’t yell at you, it could be a sign he doesn’t respect you.”
• The president’s lack of self-control has at times slipped into public view. In January 2022 Biden was caught on a hot mic calling Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch.”
• Just on Sunday, Biden let slip that he decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine because the US military was running low on 155 mm artillery shells. The author extends his condolences to the White House staffer who presumably got an earful after that one.
• To add insult to injury, Axios titled their report “Old yeller.”

• The Daily Beast noted Biden’s fury and his “curse-filled tirades” have made some aides fearful of meeting with him one-on-one.
• Mediaite highlighted one passage from the Axios report defending Biden’s actions. ““Biden’s defenders acknowledge he can be tough, but they also say he can be more generous and compassionate than many powerful politicians and can make them feel like family. That’s partly why so many aides have worked with Biden for decades.”
• Biden’s outbursts haven’t just been directed at staff – world leaders have also been on the receiving end of Biden’s ire. As NBC News reported in October 2022, Biden lost his temper with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a June 2022 phone call after Zelensky asked the president for more aid. Biden lost it, raised his voice, and told Zelensky he could “show a little more gratitude.”

• Fox News observed that White House aides tried to spin Biden’s invective to Axios as “a desire for accuracy and competence.”
• The Washington Examiner noted the report from Axios undermines “the White House’s efforts to tailor an ice cream-loving grandfather public image” for President Biden.
• According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, “some of [Biden’s] aides believe it might be to his benefit to show this side of himself. This, in their opinion, might fend off criticism that he is too old and isn’t pulling the strings in the White House.”

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© Dominic Moore, 2023