The president America wanted to kick to the curb last year — even before the 2024 election — is finding the transition from the White House to be “less lucrative than what he’d expected,” according to a new report.
According to the Wall Street Journal, former President Joe Biden is not a hot commodity for a number of reasons.
The Journal cited Biden’s “advanced age” and “his unpopularity in Democratic circles.”
The report noted that the increasing scorn Democrats have heaped on Biden’s re-election campaign has also led to less interest in him
Biden offers to speak for between $300,000 and $500,000, but there are few takers, the report said, with at least one group trying to go below Biden’s minimum, a claim Biden’s representatives denied.
Biden wanted to pay off about $800,000 in debt when he left the White House, including some loans on the $2.7 million beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, he bought in 2017, the Journal wrote, citing a source it did not name.
Biden is hardly broke. He will get $10 million from a book deal and gets about $416,000 a year in federal pensions.
Biden is trying to raise money for a presidential center at the University of Delaware; however, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Lingering frustration with how Biden left the campaign and his lack of transparency about his age-related limitations have made raising money a heavier lift.”
Although Biden had one time said the the University of Pennsylvania wanted to host his presidential center, the Journal indicated that the college was “underwhelmed by the light programming Biden provided” for the Penn Biden Center.
Will Biden’s book be a flop?
Even Democrats that try to look forward cannot help but debate Biden’s last stand, according to The Washinton Post.
“The overwhelming majority of elected Democrats are focused on moving forward. There’s no interest for them in re-litigating this and neither are the vast majority of voters,” said Tommy Vietor, an ex-Obama administration official who co-hosts the podcast “Pod Save America.”
“But that kind of candor is going to be a prerequisite to be seen as credible. I think it will be important for the 2028 primary; people will be asked, ‘What did you know when?’” he said.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized Biden’s decision to seek a second term that ended when he stepped aside for her to run against President Donald Trump.
“The stakes were simply too high,” she wrote in her new book.
“This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,” she wrote.
Ammar Moussa, who worked on for Biden and Harris in the 2024 campaign season, said the question will linger.
“The Joe Biden age question really fundamentally broke America’s trust in the Democratic Party after years of them feeling that promises had been broken,” Moussa said.
“I don’t think it’s a top concern. I don’t think voters are going to make their decisions for 2026 based on who said what about Joe Biden,” Moussa said. “But if you’re a politician running for office in 2026 and 2028 and you don’t have a good answer on ‘Should Joe Biden have run in 2024’ and come up with the same spin, voters are going to see through you.”
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