Rahm Emanuel says the country is suffering the repercussions of former President Joseph R. Biden’s “arrogance” — distancing himself from his former boss as he looks to carve out a larger role in the Democratic Party ahead of a potential 2028 presidential bid.
Mr. Emanuel, who served as the Biden administration’s ambassador to Japan, said the White House paid a price for barricading itself from most of the world.
“The one thing I know about the White House: That Oval Office is seduction and that White House is insular, and that is what happened,” Mr. Emanuel said Wednesday on “The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller.” “They decided to put a barrier around [Mr. Biden] and he made a decision he didn’t want to hear anything else about it, and it’s wrong.”
“And the country, forget the party, the country is more important, is paying a massive price for this arrogance, no doubt about it,” he said.
Mr. Emanuel is a grizzled veteran of Democratic politics. He had served in the U.S. House, as chief of staff to President Barack Obama and as mayor of Chicago before Mr. Biden tapped him to lead the nation’s diplomatic efforts in Tokyo.
He has since been raising his profile ahead of a possible White House bid.
Mr. Emanuel also dinged Mr. Biden for walking back comments he made during his final State of the Union Address after he called an immigrant an “illegal.”
Mr. Biden later said he should have used “undocumented” to describe the illegal immigrant who was charged with and later convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Lake Riley while she was jogging in 2024.
“In his last State of the Union, President Biden … when he went off script, and everybody said, ‘Look, watch,’ he said, ‘illegal immigrants,’” Mr. Emanuel said. “The next day, because a bunch of Washington 202 area code jerks yelled at him, he said, ‘I meant undocumented.’ That was the slowest pitch over the plate.”
“Had he done his moment like Bill Clinton did, like Barack Obama did on their different issues, or Jack Kennedy did, had he said, ‘Look, man, they’re immigrants, crossed the border illegally — illegal immigrants, you use whatever, undocumented, whatever you want. I’m going to say illegal immigrants. End of story,’” Mr. Emanuel said. “He would have shown what people want from a president.”
“Nobody thinks you deserve to go into the Oval Office if a group in Washington can stare you down because they don’t think you can stare down [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] or [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” he said.
